After reading Scott Hanselman's post about introducing your younglings to Star Wars, I was intrigued by the suggested 'Machete order' (courtey of Rod Hilton)

• 4 - Star Wars: A New Hope
• 5 - Empire Strikes Back
• 2 - Attack of The Clones
• 3 - Revenge of the Sith
• 6 - Return of the Jedi

Which lead to deep conversations with myself about which order I should use when introducing my daughers to 'The Lord of the Rings'.

The three films can be arranged into 6 possible non-repeating combinations:

• Fellowship, Towers, King
• Fellowship, King, Towers
• Towers, Fellowship, King
• Towers, King, Fellowship
• King, Fellowship, Towers
• King, Towers, Fellowship

All of which have their own pluses and minuses, but none of which would qualify as a true 'machete' reordering.

I finally settled on the following order, which you'll agree is the best possible version of events:

• 1. The Two Towers -- A good story always starts in the midst of the action, and leaps past the boring parts.
• 2. The Hobbit, An Unexpected Journey -- having established the story we now move learn the origin of the Ring and Gollum.
• 3. How to Train your Dragon -- the loveable Toothless and Hiccup show us that not all dragons are nasty Smaugs.
• 3a. Read all of the books -- that way you can complain bitterly about the missing 'Scourge of the Shire' segment during:
• 4. Return of the King, Disc 2 -- 5 minutes of chucking a ring in a pit, a quick eagle ride, and two hours saying goodbye.
• 5. Return of the King, Disc 1 -- Awesome battle scene. Best war ever.

I dub this the Chop-Suey Reordering, and in line with Oracle's copyright on the arrangement of the Java Api's, I claim ownership of this and all derivative reorderings of the LOTR franchise.