This might be the best way to introduce your kids to 'Star Wars' — and it's not the order George Lucas had in mind

Picture this: You love "Star Wars," you have friends or kids who haven't seen the movies and you want to expose them to the classics.

Do you show them the movies in the order they came out, starting with Episode IV, or do you start with 1999's "rotten" Episode I and tackle the series in order?

Try neither.

Self-proclaimed "movie nerd" Rod Hilton has a novel approach to introducing newbies to "Star Wars" that radically changes the order of the films.

"How can you ensure that a viewing keeps the Vader reveal a surprise, while introducing young Anakin before the end of Return of the Jedi?" Hilton asks as he lays out his method. "Next time you want to introduce someone to 'Star Wars' for the first time, watch the films with them in this order: IV, V, II, III, VI."

Images via wcm1111/flickr

Hilton has a lot of compelling support for his take on the series order.

"Effectively, this order keeps the story Luke's tale," Hilton writes, explaining that no matter what George Lucas might say, "Star Wars" is Luke Skywalker's story, not Anakin's. "Just when Luke is left with the burning question 'How did my father become Darth Vader?' we take an extended flashback to explain exactly how. Once we understand how his father turned to the dark side, we go back to the main storyline and see how Luke is able to rescue him from it and salvage the good in him."

Hilton excludes Episode I completely because, as he puts it, "Episode I is a failure on every possible level. Luckily, George Lucas has done everyone a favor by making the content of Episode I completely irrelevant to the rest of the series."

Hilton contends that Episode I contains hardly any useful plot development, and almost all of it is restated in Episode II.

Plus, when he tested his method on his brother-in-law's girlfriend, he said he had an extremely gratifying moment when she finished the series and didn't recognize "one of the worst and most hated characters of the film industry and the Star Wars franchise" (having not seen Episode I).

"I asked her if she found Jar Jar [Binks] annoying and she asked, 'Who's Jar Jar?'" Hilton recalls. "Mission accomplished."

The original blog post laying out what Hilton calls the "Machete Method" was published in November 2011, but the idea is enjoying new popularity online after being posted to Reddit on Monday.

People seem to like the approach to the classic films.

The top comment on Hilton's blog post reads, "This one post is why the Internet was invented. I thank you."

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