When do you think it is best for a person with no prior Star Wars knowledge...

When do you think it is best for a person with no prior Star Wars knowledge, and who is going through the franchise for the first time, to watch TCW: Before, or after episode III?

The series was made way after the last prequel movie, so it was written with that in mind, and it has a lot of references and foreshadowing moments that you'd only really get if you'd already watched episode III, BUT at the same time, I feel like watching it afterwards could make Ep. III feel a lot heavier, especially during and after the execution of order 66, for obvious reasons.

Also, kinda unrelated, but what viewing order for the films would you recommend for said person, considering said person might possibly be turned off by older movies?

Before. Think of EPIII as a grand finale.

Does the series spoil the fact that Sheev is the Emperor?

I know it's pretty obvious to us, but I remember not seeing it coming when I was a kid watching the prequel films for the first time.

It'll definitely be a very disappointing finale, then.

i dont think they outright say it but i remember painfully obvious scenes of sheev acting shady

I'm pretty sure you're supposed to watch it after

It's pretty heavy-handed and gets too obvious to miss in season 5, particularly the Maul arc.

I would watch RotS first to be honest. The Clone Wars gets better when you have that context of "Anakin and the clones are gonna kill like all of you".

Yeah, I guess that was the intention. But watching Episode III after going through TCW is much more impactful, I think. Anakin, the Clones and the rest of the Jedi order just don't get a lot of development in the movies. Maybe I'll go with Genndy's Clone Wars between ep II and III, I think it was meant to be watched as a link between the films.

I recommend always doing everything in release order. It's tempting to do it chronologically but it feels much more natural just going how they were released.

You're not going to be confused either way, but naturally the prequels were made assuming you had already seen the original trilogy.

It couldn't be any more obvious. In fact it's not even a "reveal" in the movie. In Phantom Menace you have somebody within the Senate sending messages dressed in the same robes and using the same voice that the Emperor used, and then you later meet a Senator who looks and sounds strikingly like a younger version of the Emperor, constantly says veiled evil things and by the third movie is made to blatantly be the bad guy manipulating Anakin.

I can only hope that user was extremely young when he watched these movies because even the movie doesn't treat it like it's some kind of twist. The way it's depicted is that the audience knows who Palpatine is but the characters don't.

Honestly that whole show can feel like a chore to get through. Especially for someone who is new to Star Wars. I'd recommend the first clone wars miniseries.

Watch it like this

Attack of the clones (skip it if you want since people often say it's the worst)
Genndy Wars Chapters 1 to mid-22 (pause after the Padme sees Anakin's scar scene)
CGI Clone Wars (film and tv series)
Genndy Wars resumes, Chapters mid-22 (unpause with Anakin and Kenobi on rainy planet) till 25
Revenge of the sith

OP here, I've done that before, and it's an awesome way to go through the series indeed, but I think it might be way too much work for someone completely new to the franchise.

>Genndywars
Style over substance, and doesn't even try to fit in the established universe.

That's why it's so good. The small amount of substance present in any Star Wars story is amplified by the stylization without betraying the garbage it truly is. It's the third greatest piece of Star Wars media ever made.

After, though I would love to have a conversation with somebody entirely unaware of the franchise (not even knowing about Luke's Daddy) who watched things in chronological order.

Maybe if I ever have kids.

>not even knowing about Luke's Daddy
You know in retrospect people not seeing it coming when the name of the character is "dark father" is kinda crazy.
Also if you watch in chronological order like OP it's not going to be a surprise anyway.
>hmm I wonder if that Luke Skywalker orphan kid is related to that Anakin Skywalker guy who became Darth Vader
>oh hey his dad was Obi Wan's disciple and friend too, neat coincidence, maybe he and Vader were friends!
Chronology kinda ruins one of the most climatic reveals of cinema's history. In other news Lucas is an idiot.

>In other news Lucas is an idiot.

Nah, he just didn't try to pull any kind of Plot Twist with the prequels, he just wrote a straight story about the rise of the empire, without resorting to any hack narrative devices to shock and awe the audience. We knew everything that happened was going to happen, he just showed us HOW it happened.

Writing and lore consistency are just as important to any star wars media as appearance. Genndywars had alright writing, nothing great, but it fell flat in lore, instead preferring to portray the jedi as Dragon-Ball esque powerhouses incapable of failure. Such feats make no sense in context with any of the films. If Jedi were capable of soloing droid armies, they wouldn't have suffered 90% casualties on Geonosis.

Worth note is that most Jedi seemed to suffer total amnesia concerning their ridiculous superpowers when fighting against the indomitable General Grievous.

Most people don't speak Dutch or German, why should they have seen it coming?

Even the krauts probably thought the name was a coincidence; the words are pronounced differently.

That's not the issue, the issue is that he ruined the plot twist of episode 5 for anyone who watches them """"in order"""".

He didn't ruin anything, you're not supposed to watch them "in order".

Source?
Why would a kid in 2001 or whatever it was not watch Phantom Menace first?

What's even the fucking point of making a prequel if you can't watch it first.

In that case Lucas shouldn't have gone with the episode numbering. With no foreknowledge everybody would start watching the saga with Episode I instead of IV because that's the obvious thing to do. They air chronologically on tv and that's how they are ordered on the dvd sets as well.
This isn't exactly the prequels' fault because Empire Strikes Back was marketed as Episode V all the way back, but Lucas should have at least kept it in mind when producing the prequels.

I would suggest they don't watch it at all.

there's 'acting shady' and there's 'oh Maul is alive, get me my ship' and him arriving on Mandalore in the same episode
not even mentioning Fives' last stand o7

Definitely before, it's much better when you know about Sheev. Then watch the trilogy again after, when it's not shitty because of the extra context and weight.