As my wife and I contemplated seeing the latest Star War tonight, she says, "Sure, but I won't have any idea what's going on."
"That's OK, I'll tell you," I respond. But then started wondering at what a truly daunting task that was. Here's what I came up with:
* Star Wars: Episode 4 (1977)
Back when it was released, it didn't have the subtitle "A New Hope," because they didn't flipping know that there were gonna be eight more of these things. It describes the conflict between the Empire, the evil rulers of the galaxy, and the Rebellion, who are fighting against them. Princess Leia is on a secret Rebel mission, but about to be caught by Darth Vader, the top enforcer for the Empire. At the last minute, she entrusts two droids, R2-D2 and C-3PO, with the maguffin: information about a secret Imperial weapon called the Death Star.
Artoo and Threepio head to a nearby desert planet to look for help - specifically an old ally Obi-Wan Kenobi. Instead, the droids run into Luke Skywalker, an orphan farmer who is a friend of "Ben" Kenobi, and takes them to him. Obi-Wan explains that R2 has important information about a big time Rebel mission, which Old Ben can't do himself, so he recruits Luke into joining him... but only after Imerpial troops slaughter Luke's family.
Luke and Obi-Wan enlist the help of Han Solo, a pilot/smuggler, and his first mate Chewbacca, who take them to their destination on their ship, the Millennium Falcon. The gang complete a daring rescue of Princess Leia, but Obi-Wan sacrifices himself in the process, throwing a lightsaber fight against Darth. Luke leads a heroic charge to destroy the Death Star and that's the end of movie number one.
* Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Some time later, the Empire discovers the new Rebel base, and our heroes are forced to evacuate. Luke follows a message from the ghost of Obi-Wan, and heads to meet up with Jedi Master Yoda, to learn the ways of the Force. Meanwhile, Han, Leia, Chewie, and 3PO are chased by Darth Vader to Cloud City, where Han seeks shelter with his friend Lando Calrissian. However, Lando makes a deal with Darth, and betrays his friends.
Luke, using his new Jedi Divination powers, gets visions of Han and Leia in trouble. He recklessly heads off to help them, against the wishes of Yoda and Ben's ghost, and is too late to help them anyway. Han gets frozen in carbonite and sold to the bounty hunter Boba Fett, but Lando double crosses Vader in order to help Leia and Chewie escape. Luke confronts Vader, who defeats our hero in a lightsaber duel, and then delivers the big reveal: "I am your father!"
* Episode 6: The Return of the Jedi (1983)
Frozen Han is in the custody of Jabba the Hutt, the gang launches a daring rescue mission, and that's all we need to say about that. Luke returns to Yoda to talk about the new shit that has come to light, Yoda confirms that Darth is Luke's dad, then dies. Later, the ghost of Obi-Wan explains that Vader used to be his student, Anakin Skywalker, who turned to the dark side. Then he delivers another big reveal: that Leia is Luke's twin sister!
Luke gives Leia the news while they're both on a mission to destroy... you guessed it, another Death Star. (They've already run out of ideas by the third movie, and there's six more coming!?) Luke surrenders and tries to convince Vader to abandon the dark side, but Vader turns him over to his boss, the Emperor. He reveals that the whole thing with the Death Star II was a trap to lure the rebels in, and to make Luke watch while they get destroyed!
However, Leia befriends the cuddly Ewoks, who help the Rebels turn the tides and defeat the Imperial army. Meanwhile, Luke almost succumbs to his anger, and defeats Darth in a duel. However, he makes his Wisdom saving throw, and refuses to turn to the dark side. The Emperor then goes to plan B, attacking Luke with force lightning! Vader, seeing his boss about to kill his son, lifts up the Emperor and tosses him off a railing, presumably to his death. Darth has a touching moment of redemption with Luke, who then burns his old armor on a pyre.
* Episode 1: The Phantom Menace (1999)
Probably about 30 years before the events of ANH, a young Obi-Wan and his boss Qui-Gon Jin are on some diplomatic mission for the Republic. They help the local Queen, Padme Amidala, who is disguised as one of her handmaidens, escape from an invasion, but end up stranded on Tatooine, the same desert planet where we met Luke in Episode 4. Qui-Gon meets young slave Anakin Skywalker (who in the movies is like nine, but the story probably would have made more sense if he was closer to 15), and finds that Anakin is very strong with the Force (and let's leave it at that).
They escape and go to the Republic's homeworld, where Padme fails to get support for her planet. At the same time, the Jedis take Anakin to the Jedi headquarters, where Qui-Gon requests to take on Anakin as an apprentice. Yoda refuses, however, saying that Anakin has too much anger, and is prone to corruption from the Dark Side. But Qui-Gon defies Yoda, and takes Anakin back with them to Padme's home planet to help stave off the invasion. Qui-Gon ends up getting killed by Darth Maul in the climactic end battle (who is later killed by Obi-Wan), leaving Obi-Wan in charge of Anakin's Jedi education.
* Episode 2: Attack of the Clones (2002?)
10 years after Episode 1, Anakin and Obi-Wan are a Jedi comedy team that's down on their luck. Padme is now a senator in the Republic, and she's engaged in a power struggle with Palpatine, who is also kind-of-secretly a bad guy who we all know will eventually go on to become the Emperor. Anakin is assigned guard duty to Padme, and they eventually fall in love and get married, but not before Anakin sees his mother get killed by some desert-planet bad guys, and it messes him up good.
Meanwhile, Obi-Wan investigates a clone army, which is I guess was spearheaded by Palpatine? I think he convinced the Republic senate to authorize it by coming up with a false flag operation? Also the clones are based on Boba Fett's dad? Also Yoda is very good at jumping and fighting with a lightsaber, even though he can barely walk two movies later? I didn't pay much attention in this one.
* Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith (2005?)
Anakin starts working with Palpatine somehow - I think it's because Anakin was getting Force-visions of Padme dying in childbirth, and Palpatine reveals himself as the Sith Lord Darth Sidious, and convinces Anakin that the Dark Side can prevent Padme's death. Meanwhile, in the senate, Palpatine seizes control of the clone army, and uses them to kill most of the exisitng Jedi. Notably Yoda and Obi-Wan escape, the latter of which confronts Anakin and tries to turn him away from his evil path, but from Anakin's point of view the JEDI are the ones who are evil.
Obi-Wan defeats Anakin, bisecting him and leaving him for dead. Padme does in fact die in childbirth, after giving birth to twins Luke and Leia, whom Obi-Wan decides to separate and hide from the newly-crowned Emperor. Speaking of which, Palpatine resuscitates Anakin, puts him in some Darth Vader-model life-support armor, and breaks the news of Padme's death in the least chill way possible.
* Episode 7: The Force Awakens (2015)
Some 30 years after the original trilogy, the political situation is exactly the same as it was at the start of the original trilogy, only it's the First Order instead of the Empire, and the Resistance instead of the Rebellion. We meet Poe Dameron, a Resistance pilot doing a super secret mission on a desert planet (but don't worry, it's a DIFFERENT desert planet). Poe receives a map to the location of Luke Skywalker, who has gone missing, and stores it inside his droid BB-8. However, Poe's secret mission is interrupted by a guy in black with a red lightsaber, with Kylo Ren playing Darth Vader to Poe's Princess Leia.
BB-8 runs into Rey, just like how R2-D2 ran into Luke, but this one is totally different because R2 was BLUE and BB-8 is ORANGE. Meanwhile, Poe gets interrogated/tortured on Kylo's ship, until he is saved by Finn, a Stormtrooper who has a change of heart. Finn and Poe escape to the desert planet, but Poe is presumed dead in the crash. Finn tracks down Rey and BB-8, and the three of them escape in the Millennium Falcon, which is coincidentally in a scrapyard on this very planet.
Han Solo and Chewie track down the Falcon and befriend our heroes, helping them escape the First Order. On a random planet where they're hiding out, Rey stumbles on Luke's old blue lightsaber, which is also Anakin's old blue lightsaber, but is then captured by Kylo Ren. Han, Chewie, and Finn are rescued by Poe, who it turns out is not dead after all, who takes them to meet the Resistance leader General Leia. There it's revealed that Han and Leia, who had the hots for each other and the end of the first trilogy, did get together. The partnership didn't last, but they did have a son together, whom they named Ben, but who subsequently changed it himself to... you guessed it: Kylo Ren.
Finn, Han, and Chewie travel to the First Order's superweapon, which is totally different than the first movie, because that one was called the Death STAR, and this one is called StarKILLER. They make a daring rescue attempt, with Han sacrificing himself in the process - he confronts Kylo/Ben and tries to convince him to turn away from the dark side, but Kylo's demons win out, and he kills his own father. Finn and Rey escape after taking turns fighting Kylo with a lightsaber (Rey does better than Finn). The movie ends with Rey showing up at Luke Skywalker's private island.
* Episode 8: The Last Jedi (2017)
Luke doesn't want to train Rey in the ways of the Jedi, because he tried that once before and it failed miserably. The result of this failure is Kylo Ren, one of Luke's pupils who turned to the Dark Side, just like Anakin did when he was being trained by Obi-Wan. Luke recognizes the futility of the same patterns arising over and over again in this story, and decides to break from tradition. However, Rey is convinced that she can somehow convince Kylo to turn back (much like how Luke tried to turn Vader in ROTJ), and goes to confront him.
Meanwhile, Poe, Finn, and Leia are being chased by the First Order. Poe is unhappy with Resistance leadership, so he stages a mutiny and sends Finn and his new mechanic friend Rose out on a daring mission to save the Resistance fleet... which fails miserably. Poe learns a valuable lesson about not being reckless, and to trust the decisions of strong female leaders. Back to Rey, it ALMOST seems like she convinced Kylo to come back to the light side, when he betrays and kills his boss Supreme Leader Snoke (basically the new trilogy's version of the Emperor). However, Kylo clarifies that he was just staging a coup, and now sits at the top of the First Order hierarchy.
Rey escapes back to the remainder Resistance, hiding out in an old abandoned base, but Kylo has them cornered. He's about to obliterate them, when who should show up to save the day, but Luke. The bad guys' weapons can't harm him, and Kylo eventually realizes that Luke was using the 7th level Dungeons and Dragons spell Project Image to make an illusory duplicate of himself, acting as a distraction to give the Resistance enough time to escape. However, the effort of casting such an advanced version of the spell was too much for Luke (its usual range is 500 miles, but Luke was on a completely different planet!), who fails his Constitution saving throw, and dies.
* Episode 9: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
And here we are! I've avoided trailers and spoilers as much as possible, and luckily the opinions I've seen on the movie are so split down the middle that I haven't even gotten a sense of what it might be like. Although I guess split down the middle is another way of saying 50/50, which is a pretty bad score on Rotten Tomatoes... But we were all fans of The Saga Begins, so I'm excited to see how the saga ends.
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