Overheard from the 3yo next to us at the library, who's pointing to some book: "Is that Queen Amidala?"
His mother: "Yes."
What are you supposed to do when you find out a parent's let a kid watch Episodes I-III? It just breaks my heart.
Overheard from the 3yo next to us at the library, who's pointing to some book: "Is that Queen Amidala?"
His mother: "Yes."
What are you supposed to do when you find out a parent's let a kid watch Episodes I-III? It just breaks my heart.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCjMGOvMghY
I am having the same problem with our five year old son.
Though we've shown him SW 4-6 first, he watches a lot of the Clone Wars cartoons. His favorite character is Anakin and in all of our light saber battles I have to fight him - AS DARTH VADER.
His mind is gonna get blown by the time he's seven.
d'oh, of course, I think I blogged about that.
You make the decision not to ruin the young child's fun. Hype up the films that you think are good, talk to the child about why they like the films that they like, and discuss what are your favorite things and why.
But don't ruin their fun. They might like ep1 because they like the excitement of the pod race, or how creepy Darth Maul is. That's what my 7 year old told me last night. But I also noticed that he lost interest with most of the film in the time leading up to those scenes.
Did you ever like something as a child that your parents hated? Did your parents ever talk about how they didn't like a show, or why they thought it was stupid?
Their love for good movies will win out in the end. Trust your kids to eventually make the right decisions, and late them make this relatively safe mistake.
Maybe he only knows who she is from Lego Star Wars? My kid has never seen I-III, but he could give you a pretty good plot summary from playing the Lego game.
The Clone Wars explanation is also interesting. Kids these days, and their complex Star Wars universes...
I was never a huge Star Wars devotee as a kid, so my son's all consuming obsession with it has been an eye opener. That said, I let him watch the originals over the prequels more for the fact that the new movies with the improved special effects and such are just a bit too intense at this stage. We both love the Clone Wars cartoon though, it's one of the few action-type cartoons made in the last decade that I can stand to watch with him. If I can keep him away from Pokemon, Dragonball Z, and Bakugon, then we'll mainline Clone Wars 24/7.
my daughter threw a tantrum at target yesterday because i refused to buy the star wars bandaids because they had some shitty animated series graphics. i had to explain to her that we only allow 'original star wars' products in our home.
They'll figure it out in the end. I remember favoring Ugly Kid Joe's version of Cat's in the Cradle in middle school despite a huge Harry Chapin presence in our house. Now I think- what was I thinking??
lol, awesome, though that hardly narrows it down.
We've let my 5yr old see 4-6. And he LOVED them. He go so excited during 4 that we had to watch it in 30 minute increments, as after that point he had to run get my old SW action figures and act out whatever he'd just sat through. 5 and 6 when smoothly.
He still hasn't seen 1-3 or TCW animated series. 1 is just BAD, 2 is fantastic but trending dark and 3 is just too intense for a 5yr old, IMO.
As for the animated series, there are episodes I'd be fine with my little devil seeing, but so many installments are little other than giant shoot-outs- which I have mixed feelings about.
He DOES know all of the characters, though. I have SW: Complete Visual Reference, and my son keeps picking up Clone Wars books from the library.
I guess I don't specifically have a problem with him seeing 1-3 when the time is right, but I wanted to make sure he had the GOOD experience of seeing the real movies first.
We've watched everything but ROTS (saving that for this summer after we get caught up on Clone Wars) -- in my defense, we watched it in The Correct Order, ie. original trilogy first.
I have to admit, Clone Wars is starting to make up for the transgressions of the prequel movies; if I were a kid I would have flipped to be able to watch such a well-written, well produced sci-fi show on TV every week, let alone one about Star Wars. There are some flat spots in the first couple seasons but this past one has been nothing but solid classic Star Wars entertainment.
My five year old daughter has no idea what Star Wars is and I plan to keep it that way for as long as I can. I don't get the desire to get kids into SW so early. IMHO these films were not intended for such a young audience.
However, she is into Steely Dan, most straight ahead jazz, and Beakman's World. Oh, and she does a pretty spectacular dance to Rock Lobster if I do say so myself.
To each their own.