Star Wars: 3 lessons from watching every film in chronological order

Ahead of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, a journey watching every current Star Wars film in chronological order has revealed three core lessons to keep in mind as the series continues.

We’re only two weeks away from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker closing out a nine movie-long trilogy of trilogies. With the advent of Disney Plus, there seemed no better time to finally do something I’ve intended to do since the release of Solo: A Star Wars Story in May of 2018.

As of now, ten different live-action films exist in the Star Wars universe. Eight of them exist in the core trilogy of trilogies, with one more due to arrive in roughly two weeks. On top of the eight core films, Solo and Rogue One exist as standalone additions to the Star Wars canon.

In order to fully prepare for the release of Episode IX, I took the time to watch the prequel trilogy, then Solo, then Rogue One, then the original trilogy, and finally the first two-thirds of the sequel trilogy. While it did help to jog memories heading into the upcoming film, this journey also revealed three core lessons from watching all ten films back-to-back-to-back.

For clarity, I’ve not included things that could’ve been learned from the greater Star Wars Expanded Universe. Whether it be the books, comics, or even the Clone Wars animated series and film, those haven’t come into play here at all.

Here, we’re focused specifically on lessons learned from the films. As such, there may be things indicated or suggested by the films that were confirmed or clarified elsewhere, but which still require inference from the films alone.