Fortunately, the View Askewniverse is pretty straightforward; just watch the films in the order of their release and you’ll be fine. In other words:
- “Clerks” (1994)
- “Mallrats” (1995)
- “Chasing Amy” (1997)
- “Dogma” (1999)
- “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” (2001)
- “Clerks II” (2006)
- “Jay & Silent Bob’s Super Groovy Cartoon Movie!” (2013)
- “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot” (2019)
- “Clerks III” (2022)
In a way, you could break these films down into three trilogies, much like the Skywalker Saga. No doubt Smith, an avowed “Star Wars” enthusiast, would approve of this comparison.
The first set — “Clerks,” “Mallrats,” and “Chasing Amy” — reflects Smith’s early efforts to find his voice as a filmmaker. “Mallrats” is a more broadly comedic and otherwise commercial treatment of the themes and ideas from “Clerks,” once again following a motley crew of go-nowhere Gen-X slackers, their fed-up girlfriends, and the weird customers that parade in and out of a shopping establishment, this time in the form of a mall. “Chasing Amy,” on the other hand, finds Smith the artist working through his demons in the wake of his failed real-life relationship with the film’s star, Joey Lauren Adams. Its humor is even more emotionally painful and sexually frank than that of “Clerks,” and it remains one of Smith’s most personal stories (despite its complicated legacy as a work of queer cinema).