This Man Spent 42 Hours Alphabetizing Every Word in Star Wars

Photo courtesy of Tom Murphy VII

Tom Murphy VII is not crazy. He just woke up one morning with an odd idea in his head: what would a movie look and sound like if you ordered every word of dialogue alphabetically? And instead of rolling over and going back to sleep like the rest of us would, he spent the next 42 hours making it happen. But, no, “Tom 7,” as he goes by on Twitter, isn’t crazy—if he was, he wouldn’t have been able to create the brilliantly futile Star Wars video we showed you Thursday.

When we first saw the movie, all we could think was, why does this exist? And then, how long did it take to make? And perhaps most importantly, why can’t we stop watching it?

“The video is meant to be provocative in its uselessness,” Murphy says. “I don’t really know where it came from. I like to think of stuff like music or a book or Wikipedia or a movie as data—how can you take that and play around with it?”