How do you make sense of A New Hope after watching the Star Wars prequels?

I’ve been huge Star Wars fan since childhood, but was a bit disappointed overall with some of the inconsistencies that cropped up when the prequels were released.  Keith Martin helps make sense of it all. He ties the prequels together with Star Wars: A New Hope (later to be called Episode IV) in his post “A New Sith, or Revenge of the Hope.” It is packed full of insights, some of which I’ve seen tossed around here and there, but he also adds a bit of humor in just the right places.

If we accept all the Star Wars films as the same canon (as it seems we must) then a lot that happens in the original films has to be reinterpreted in the light of the prequels. As we now know, the rebel Alliance was founded by Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Bail Organa. What can readily be deduced is that their first recruit, who soon became their top field agent, was R2-D2.

Check out the full post over at Keith’s live journal page:

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