Star Wars..

[spirit4ever]

Just wondering what everyone's take is on this and do they let their children watch the movies?

[wildmonkeys]

My 8 year old has seen the first two (the ones from the 70's/80's) but none of the newer ones. He was pretty neutral about them.

[mamazee]

My daughter loves Star Wars but we only let her watch the older ones at this point. The more recently filmed ones are scarier and more violent IMO. It will be a while before she watches those. We will let her watch the new cartoon Clone Wars movie when it comes out on DVD. Also, she occasionally plays Lego Star Wars on the game cube with her dad. Yes, there is violence, but I am not opposed to any pretend violence at all. The more realistic the violence, the bigger of a problem it is for me.

[feminist~mama]

My DP has let (encouraged really!) my 9 y-o dd to watch all of them. He took her to see Clone Wars yesterday.

Sigh. Lol.

[4evermom]

Don't think the cartoon one is less violent! Dh said there were some pretty intense battle scenes and likened it to some in Lord of the Rings!

That being said, ds has seen them all and loved the new Clone Wars movie. He is much more disturbed by emotional Disney movies.

[KyleAnn]

Ds is and has been obsessed with Star Wars for years.
Thanks to Christmas and birthday parties we have about 700 different Star Wars toys...ugh.
He has seen all the movies dozens and dozens of times, and we did go see The Clone Wars as soon as it came out.
For the last two Halloweens he was a SW character....he even gets the SW Insider magazine, compliments of his Granny.


...he's a real nerd, LOL.

[hottmama]

I let my boys watch all of them and they're obsessed. We haven't seen the new one because it got terrible reviews.
I was wary of showing them Episode 3 but they were fine with it. We watched them in the order they came out.
My 2.75 yr. old can name pretty much every star wars character. For a while after we watched them, he'd say "You're Sebulba!" to whoever he was mad at. They're into good and evil and the whole Anakin thing, from good to bad to good again, was really interesting to them.

[MommaFox]

My ds loves Star Wars. It's very popular around our house. I don't mind it because even tho there's violence, there's good lessons about honor as well. Even Darth Vader was a man of honor in the end... The very very end mind you, but he did come around. I put him on a spectrum of going from (and here's where my geek is gonna show) Lawful Evil to a patchy-looking Neutral Good. Temptation, good, evil, struggling for right. The good guys don't always win. Sometimes the good guys fail themselves and thier loved ones. It's a good metaphore for life. If everything was all sugar and cupcakes, I'd frankly get a little sick of it after a while. Life just isn't like that.

[marieangela]

My boys both love Star Wars. They are 5 1/2 and 3 years old. A part of me wishes that my dh hadn't shown my 3 year old the movies yet, but what's done is done. They spend a lot of time in imaginative play together- sometimes with Star Wars legos and sometimes with no props or anything. So, I guess some good has come out of it.

[Malva]

DH tried to get our almost 9yodd to watch the movies with him but she couldn't care less. She still doesn't really like shows and movies that aren't animated.

[JessicaTX]

My husband is an avid star wars geek. yes, my children have seen the movies. We went out to eat the other day and star wars started on the tv as we were leaving, I have a great picture of dh and ds standing staring at the screen while we were trying to walk out.

[*LoveBugMama*]

My son has seen the old ones, and the animated one. Not the new ones, yet. He loves Star Wars, and really wants to see the newer ones as well, but says he will wait a little while, since he doesn`t want to be scared. He has a pretty good sence of what he is ok with seeing and what he wants to wait a little while to see.

Btw: We LOVED the cartoon one! His father, also a big SW-fan, was really surprised, and said it was really awesome for a cartoon.

[dillonandmarasmom]

Originally Posted by marieangela

My boys both love Star Wars. They are 5 1/2 and 3 years old. A part of me wishes that my dh hadn't shown my 3 year old the movies yet, but what's done is done. They spend a lot of time in imaginative play together- sometimes with Star Wars legos and sometimes with no props or anything. So, I guess some good has come out of it.

Sounds familiar (except my youner is a DD).

The kids just recently saw the Original Star Wars with DH. He is typically very careful about what they watch (more so than me , so I was okay with it. We won't show any of the others for a few more years (likely) since DH feels a bit uneasy about showing this one.

[laohaire]

My DD, 3, has seen Return of the Jedi : with what we considered the scary scenes (like the monster in the pit) skipped.

DD loved it and did not seem scared, and we asked her if she was and she said no and that she wanted to keep watching.

Honestly, I was so tense the whole time that I hope DH will wait a few years before sharing more Star Wars with her.

Star Wars means a lot to DH so he's really excited to share it with her.

I personally remember as a kid being scared by the monster in the pit in ROTJ, and also the AT-AT Walkers in TESB. I would have had to have been about 6 or 7 when I remember seeing those.

[josybear]

ds, who will be 3 next month, saw the first of the original movies last night. from the very start he stood in the middle of the living room and 'fought' along with the movie. even in the peaceful parts he was making light saber noises, flailing wildly, and throwing himself on the floor. the 1yo and i sat on the couch and watched him. it was the best entertainment i've had in a loooong time.

i wouldn't let him watch the last two of the new trilogy, but i think the phantom menace is fine. and he's watched yoda's fight scenes on youtube ten million times.

i'm making the baby a yoda hat for winter.

yeah, we're geeks over here.

[madskye]

My 3 YO DD likes Star Wars (the 4th one, I guess, that came out when i was little.) It came on regular tv one rainy weekend, and I thought it would be too scary, but she really enjoyed it. Loves R2D2 and Chewbacca. She is generally scared by Disney movies, but not by this.

We've only watched the one, and that's all we need for now, but it's a nice alternative to Elmo.

[lucyem]

I am picky about what my sons see. Star Wars to me is in its own category. I am a star wars fan. I saw star wars when I was 6 and it first came out. Needless to say my sons have seen bits and pieces of the movies and have been exposed to it from day one. We do edit a couple of more scary scenes from empire & jedi when they are little. My 6 yr old has seen all of the original 3 and the phantom menace. He has seen a couple of parts of episode 2. He will not be allowed to see the rest of episode 2 and all of episode 3 until he is much older. I did take him to The Clone Wars which he loved. My 6 yr old has the legos (which I must admit I play with too cause they are just too cool). He did get a light saber for his 6th birthday from a friend. This year at halloween I will be taking out a clone and yoda

[columbusmomma]

DS has watched them all within the past 6 months or so. He watches them with DH and really likes them. We do reenact certain scenes and he likes to play Star Wars with his friends. He's not an over the top die hard fan though!

[grniys]

I doubt I'll get much say. My dh loves, adores and chrishes all things Star Wars. My ds is being Yoda for Halloween.

[milkybean]

If SW came out in May of '77, then I was 7 and my brother was 5. We were both fine with it, and in fact were absolutely mad for it.

Hubby is a big fan, and was so excited he couldn't keep himself from showing DS SW when DS was 3. His behavior became atrocious soon after, and then so did DH's when he realized it was Star Wars' fault. So it was put on the back burner for a year.

Right now the movies are in "time out" b/c his behavior was getting bad again, but it took MUCH longer for that to happen (and frankly quite a few movies were put away, and we're back to watching "kid" movies for a little while, to calm things down) this time at 4.

But before he gets too much of the movies, DS loves them! He will turn away at some parts, and he always asks questions about others. But he loves playing Luke, and I'm Leia while hubby's Han. He knows that L and L are sibs, but still thinks that they'll get married, LOL. I think that's b/c he's heavily into the "when I grow up I'll marry you and Papa will get married to you too" phase. He also thinks the ceremony at the end of SW is a wedding between Luke and Han.

He has seen A New Hope, Empire, and Jedi, and also Phantom Menace (which I despised when it came out, but with repeated viewing it is growing on me). Hubby Will Not Let DS see the other two, and states that DS will be 10 or 11 before he lets him see those 2. Considering the Cartoon Network junk he shows DS when he doesn't think I know (I try to let them have their own special time as long as it doesn't negatively affect DS), those are strong words coming from my hubby! But he feels that #2 is bad in some way, and #3 has horrid, scary, disgusting stuff in it that HE barely wants to think about, let alone showing it to a 4 year old.


The biggest thing my son loves is to watch the behind the scenes stuff! We have the laser discs of the first-made trilogy, but that has nothing extra, so we bought the single DVDs with the bonus feature of the non-enhanced movies. DS likes to choose which version to watch, and half the time he just wants to watch the "ads", as he calls it, which means the "making of" stuff. I think it's good for him to see that, b/c he can really SEE that it's not real, that it's quite a bit of computer "drawings", and so on.