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Mary Chris
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| Posted: May 16 2005 at 7:36pm | IP Logged
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You will have to save your plans. Carter would love to make a Star Wars notebook 
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Blessings, Mary Chris Beardsley
mom to MacKenzie3/95, Carter 12/97 Ronan 3/00 and wife to Jim since 1/92
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Marybeth
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I am anxious to hear what people have to say about the final Star Wars. I remember being so excited to see the first three with my older siblings. I would feel so grown up b/c they would take my younger brother and me and away we would go!!! There are just not many movies I can see with my son these days. sigh....I just love going to the movies. I always get so giddy. It cracks my husband up--he thinks I am very easy to please. 
Marybeth
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Cindy Mac
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Here's what I read in People magazine:
IS IT OKAY FOR KIDS? - ONE PARENT'S DECISION
Revenge of the Sith is a PG-13 film, making it the firstStar Wars tale to carry the warning that its material may be inappropriate for young kids. Even George Lucas has said the stricter rating is deserved: "It's brutal in places, and [children] should be aware of that." More importantly, parents need to be aware. My son Jason,9, and daughter Emily, 6, have been clamoring for weeks to see the movie, having been relentlessly buffeted by the twin forces of peer hysteria and relentless marketing. But what they don't know, and what I, as a parent, have to consider is this: Sith is brutla. And violent. And emotionally dark. There are scenes of beheadings and dismemberment. One character is burned nearly to death. Children are slaughtered. (The actual massacre, thankfully, is offscreen. But you do see bodies) Anakin Skywalker's final transformation into Darth Vader is exceedingly violent. It's like The Passion of the Skywalker.
So how young is too young? Lucas has said he'd take a 9-year old. I'm not sure I'd agree. Keeping Emily away is a no-brainer. The tougher call will be telling Jason he can't go with his fourth-grade pals to see the summer's biggest film. He'll be disappointed, but that's a father's burden. May the Force be with me.
-Alber t Kim
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Cindy - wife to Chris, mommy to my 4 sons!
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Elizabeth
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| Posted: May 17 2005 at 10:12am | IP Logged
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Oh boy, now I have to think of something really great to do with several little people on Thursday....
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Elizabeth Foss is no longer a member of this forum. Discussions now reflect the current management & are not necessarily expressions of her book, *Real Learning*, her current work, or her philosophy. (posted by E. Foss, Jan 2011)
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Cindy Mac
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I'm always available to help!
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Elizabeth
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| Posted: May 17 2005 at 10:26am | IP Logged
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From decentfilms.com (where they are recommending only teens and up in the audience):
By Steven D. Greydanus
Almost thirty years ago, he strode onto movie theater screens for the first time, a caped, helmeted black knight amid the aftermath of battle on a captured Rebel freighter. His voice was the rich, powerful baritone of James Earl Jones, but he towered over his fellows like Frankenstein’s monster, for inside the suit was David Prowse, who had played that very creature three years earlier in the last of Hammer’s Frankenstein series, starring Peter Cushing as a twisted Dr. Frankenstein. (No wonder Princess Leia wasn’t surprised to find Cushing here “holding Vader’s leash” as the similarly twisted General Tarkin.)
Like the Wicked Witch of the West, he was evil, pure and simple — a vision as menacing as Dracula and Doctor Doom combined. He easily overwhelmed the old wizard Obi-Wan Kenboi when they clashed later in the film. Three years later, when Luke Skywalker first raised a lightsaber to him in the Cloud City of Bespin in The Empire Strikes Back, it seemed absurd, like a puppy taking on a Bengal tiger.
Yet Darth Vader revealed a twisted humanity in that battle, a human side that suggested that he was more like Frankenstein’s tragic creature after all than Dracula or the Wicked Witch. Luke was devastated by this revelation, yet sensed the humanity in the figure whose name has been interpreted as ”dark father.” That crisis set the stage for the redemptive climax of the third film, Return of the Jedi, and the series as a whole — a daring twist without parallel in the character-arc of any other similarly iconic evil character.
The new trilogy of Star Wars prequels set out to tell the opposite story: how a former Jedi knight taught by Obi-Wan was seduced by the dark side of the Force and destroyed the Jedi.
The first two prequels met with widespread disappointment, though I was an enthusiastic proponent of both films. Only now, with the saga finally complete, do I fully appreciate in retrospect the extent to which the opportunity of the first two films was squandered. Yes, I admit it: I was wrong. The scales have fallen from my eyes. (I thought about writing new reviews of Episodes I and II, but on rereading them I find that I still mostly agree with what I wrote at the time, though I have more to say now, all critical. Instead of revising my reviews, therefore, I’ve supplemented them with short “final thoughts” sections [coming soon] expressing my new difficulties.)
Here, suffice to say that in addition to the charmless characterizations and various irritations that left fans dissatisfied, what was most grievously lacking in Episodes I and II was the mythological and archetypal inspirations that made the original trilogy so resonant. The original trilogy was about good and evil, heroism and villainy, discipline and passion, temptation and redemption. By contrast, Episodes I and II are largely about political intrigue and debates, adolescent rebellion and tepid puppy love.
What makes the failure of the first two films so glaring, now, is that with Revenge of the Sith Lucas has finally again tapped into the inspiration of the original trilogy, and created the mythic precursor that he first conceived decades ago. Perhaps he really only had one real Star Wars prequel in him, and didn’t know how to properly set it up with the first two episodes.
It’s a shame, because the failure of Epiodes I and II undercuts the power that Revenge of the Sith could have had. The tragic weight of the fall of the Jedi ought to have been like the breaking of the Round Table, if only the first two films had established the Camelot-like glory of the Jedi at the height of their power that might have made us care. Given a different characterization of Anakin Skywalker in the first two films, we could have had the tragic corruption of a great man, rather than the subversion of a darkly petulant youth.
Yet, crippled as he is by the decisions of the first two films, Lucas still manages to invest the final chapter of his sprawling space opera with the grandly operatic spirit of the original trilogy. It’s still cornball, yes, and with all the usual weaknesses. But Episode III at last has heart.
“War!” proclaims the first word of the opening crawl. (About bloody time. Isn’t this series supposed to be called “Star Wars”? How can you have two whole Star Wars films without any war?) At last we get a tantalizing glimpse of Anakin as the “cunning warrior” and “best star pilot in the galaxy” that old Obi-Wan described all the way back in the original Star Wars movie, A New Hope.
The film opens with an extended rescue sequence climaxing with Anakin piloting a spaceship out of orbit for a crash-landing to the planet below, like Lucifer falling from the heavens. By the finale, Anakin’s descent into perdition is complete as — in a sequence rumored for decades — he falls in battle with his mentor Obi-Wan on a volcano planet amid raging rivers of lava, a veritable lake of fire casting a hellish glow over the combatants.
Revenge of the Sith is the first of the prequels that echoes elements in the original trilogy in such a way as to enhance the original films. The extended temptation of Luke Skywalker on the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi becomes more resonant and interesting now that we see how Anakin himself previously played out that same temptation scenario, more than once. In the first of these temptation scenes, Anakin plays out the role of his future son Luke. (In a nice touch, Anakin disarms his Sith opponent and wields the “evil” red lightsaber and his own green Jedi saber simultaneously, echoing the moral conflict within him.) The next time, Anakin finds himself in the same role he himself recapitulates at the very climax of Return of the Jedi.
Lucas has an answer to the mystery of Anakin’s fall — a spiritual failing warned against in many religious traditions, Christian and otherwise — and to the lure of the dark side that is behind his downfall and his insistence in the original series that “You don’t know the power of the dark side!”
Sounding intriguingly like a modernist theologian, the evil future Emperor Darth Sidious (Ian McDiarmid) tells Anakin that those who seek true mastery in the Force must take “a broader view” than the “narrow, dogmatic views of the Jedi,” and study the Force in “all its aspects,” the dark side as well as the good.
Unfortunately, the allegedly “narrow, dogmatic” Jedi orthodoxy never finds an equally articulate spokesman, not even in Obi-Wan or Yoda. Told by Anakin (in what may be a swipe at George W. Bush) that “If you’re not with me then you’re my enemy,” Obi-Wan retorts, “Only a Sith deals in absolutes.” (Really? The Jedi rejection of the dark side isn’t absolute?) And Yoda, his speech patterns sounding more convoluted and less sage-like than ever, has a final speech on the Jedi precept of detachment that goes well beyond Christian freedom from excessive attachment into Buddhist impassiveness. Attachment, Yoda teaches, is “a way to the dark side,” and our detachment and acceptance of death should be so complete that we shouldn’t even mourn the dead.
The problem with Yoda’s ethic of detachment is that it’s dead contrary to the unabashed humanism with which the whole story ends in Return of the Jedi, where human attachments — filial loyalty, paternal bonds — ultimately save the galaxy, destroy the Sith and the Empire, and redeem Anakin’ lost soul. Yoda and Obi-Wan consistently counsel Luke (and, in the prequels, Anakin) against the very bonds that finally lead to the triumph of good over evil.
In the end, alas, the Jedi do seem too “narrow” and “dogmatic,” not the great sages Lucas presumably wanted them to be. Perhaps the “prophecy of the one who will bring balance to the Force” was misinterpreted after all: Perhaps the prophecy was really fulfilled not by Anakin destroying the Sith order, but by Luke humanizing the Jedi ethic.
Characterization, dialogue and acting, which were at their nadir in Episode I and improved modestly in Episode II, take another modest step forward. That is, in Episode II the characters were allowed to have pulses, and in Episode III the pulses actually get raised from time to time. For the first time in the new trilogy, the characters and emotions matter.
At last Amidala and Obi-Wan display genuine feelings for Anakin; their mounting concern, dismay, and finally horror at his downward trajectory is palpable. Hayden Christiansen eventually rises to a credible approximation of Vader’s evil, though not for a second does he cut the figure Prowse did. There’s one wordless scene in which the suited Vader strides across the deck of a ship to stand beside his master, and crosses his arms across his chest. It’s a posture Prowse’s Vader would never have adopted.
Continuity problems mount. The film’s tragic climax blatantly contradicts an important exchange between Luke and Leia in Return of the Jedi, an inconsistency that even children will notice.
Of course, Revenge of the Sith isn't really for children anyway. It’s the grimmest and darkest of the films, setting the stage for the “New Hope” alluded to in the subtitle of the original Star Wars. The body count is higher than in previous films, and the violence reaches its height in the climactic battle between Obi-Wan and Vader which leaves him “more machine than man,” as old Obi-Wan said in Return of the Jedi.
Visually, Revenge of the Sith is the most gorgeous of all the Star Wars films, with stunningly painted dreamscapes and much of the film shot in real or simulated “golden hour” late afternoon lighting, foreshadowing the sun setting on the Republic and the coming night of the Empire. For the moment, the dark side is triumphant… but new hope will dawn again.
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Elizabeth Foss is no longer a member of this forum. Discussions now reflect the current management & are not necessarily expressions of her book, *Real Learning*, her current work, or her philosophy. (posted by E. Foss, Jan 2011)
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JSchaaf
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Ok, ok. But the light saber fights are really cool...
Jennifer
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Leonie
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Elizabeth,
Thanks for the article. It makes me want to see the movie even more, just for the sake of the ensuing discussions - humanism, Christian humanism, detachment...
Leonie in Sydney
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amiefriedl
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JSchaaf wrote:
Ok, ok. But the light saber fights are really cool...
Jennifer |
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In Christ the King through Mary our Mother,
Amie
Blessed with an awesome hubby and Mom of ds10, dd7, dd3 and dd 10months.
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Mary Chris
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| Posted: May 17 2005 at 10:14pm | IP Logged
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Elizabeth wrote:
| Oh boy, now I have to think of something really great to do with several little people on Thursday.... |
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Wednesday night at 9pm there is a show on Animal Planet that looks like it is about the animals the Star Wars creatures are based on. I have only seen the commercials so I know little about the show but it may help appease some little folks .
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Blessings, Mary Chris Beardsley
mom to MacKenzie3/95, Carter 12/97 Ronan 3/00 and wife to Jim since 1/92
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guitarnan
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| Posted: May 19 2005 at 3:39pm | IP Logged
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Elizabeth and Leonie,
Thanks for all your ideas; we used some of the activities Leonie provide the link for today and my children LOVED them. We storyboarded. We dreamed up alien characters. We discovered that we all prefer hearing films without seeing them to seeing films without hearing them. It was just great...and helped my son get over the fact that he couldn't see Episode III on opening day.
Thanks again!
__________________
Nancy in MD. Mom of ds (24) & dd (18); 31-year Navy wife, move coordinator and keeper of home fires. Writer and dance mom.
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Cindy Mac
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| Posted: May 19 2005 at 4:44pm | IP Logged
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Kind of long, but touches on the theology aspect of the movie - what do you think?
Star Wars and The Force for good
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sithis a commentary on technology, religion and human nature.
By Daniel Newkirk
(May 19, 2005)
Why does Star Wars have such broad appeal?
(TM and © Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved.)
Loyal fans (as well as life-long critics) have been patiently waiting for decades, suffering through the aggravation and disappointment of The Phantom Menaceand Attack of the Clones, and will once again brave the interminable lines to finally see Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) betray his Jedi heritage and embrace the Dark Side. While in the original trilogy we experienced the power of trust and love to redeem even Darth Vader, this latest installment draws us into the world of deception and frustrated desire that leads to darkness and evil. The story of Anakin’s fall demonstrates the inability of science to provide answers to ethical decisions. Because science cannot effectively address moral problems that always have and always will plague humanity, it must be held accountable to the restraint and guidance of a Jedi council.
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith is an excellent movie, possibly the finest Star Wars film to date, but Lucas again proves more skillful as a director than writer. The movie exhibits the same trite dialogue, hackneyed speech, and wooden acting that plagued the previous movies, though to a lesser degree, and the attempts at romantic drama interspersed throughout the film serve as particularly painful reminders of the shortcomings of the previous movies. Still, the compelling plot and stunning special effects coalesce with transcendent themes to rise above the script’s shortcomings.
As a six-part saga spanning three decades, Star Wars occupies a unique position amongst others at the box office as the progressive creator of the criteria by which each additional episode itself is judged. Most will come to the theaters with an inkling of what will happen and not be too startled when Anakin becomes Darth Vader. Lucas adroitly uses this distinct familiarity to turn what would merely be the tragic culmination of a lackluster trilogy into a remarkable bridge between the two cycles.
Everyone who has seen A New Hope knows about Darth Vader, but the film’s entertainment lies in its mystery. We finally get to see exactly what makes Darth Vader. Along the way, the dark and alluring power of the Dark Side is truly felt for the first time. Finally, when the man we knew as the endearing and precocious Anakin in The Phantom Menace finally rises in his sinister outfit as Darth Vader, it is difficult to shake the feeling that we have just witnessed the birth of a myth. The chilling “Yes, master,” followed immediately by his inquiry about the well-being of Padme, captures in a microcosm the twisted nature of the Dark Side.
The prequels remove all doubt that the story of Star Wars is really the story of Anakin Skywalker. The prominent role of Anakin in the latest movies reinforces Anakin’s central place in the saga. Anakin’s prominence perhaps became most evident in the title of the finale to the original trilogy, in which the use of the word Jedi in Return of the Jedi revealed the centrality of Vader’s character. This double entendre referred to the return of the Jedi religion as a whole through Luke and Lea, but primarily to the salvation of Darth Vader. While the original films centered on Vader’s redemptive return, the new ones tell the other half of the story—the departure of Anakin from the Jedi ranks and subsequent annihilation of the Jedi. The first two prequels then chronicled his rise to gifted Jedi knight. Now Sith brilliantly portrays his seduction to the Dark Side of the Force by the disarmingly beguiling Chancellor Palpatine.
The film begins with a thrilling and overwhelmingly frenzied battle scene over the city-planet of Coruscant, capital of the doomed republic and home of the Jedi Temple. Anakin and Obi-Wan dogfight with the rebel forces in a desperate attempt to save Chancellor Palpatine from the clutches of the fearsome and mechanized leader of the droid army, General Grievous. Even after Palpatine’s rescue, the action never stops. Anakin attempts to keep the secret of his marriage to Padme from the Jedi council while playing a crucial role in the empire’s attempts to quell the rebellion and its clones. At the same time, Anakin juggles his commitments to the Jedi with his growing friendship with Chancellor Palpatine.
Palpatine, a.k.a. the mysterious and allusive Lord Darth Sidious, cultivates the seeds of arrogance and suspicion in Anakin until he eventually doubts both the Jedi council and his own mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor). Palpatine introduces Anakin to the dark side of the Force as a solution to his concern for Padme. This is a side that has been hidden from him and he is promised that it will enable him to do what would be impossible for a Jedi. Under Palpatine’s attentive fostering, his distrust and wounded pride combine with a desperate fear for his family to blossom into full-blown hatred for all the Jedi.In the Jedi genocide that follows, Anakin fatally breaks the heart of his wife and seemingly cements his allegiance to the Dark Side.
Technophobia?
Once again Lucas has created a captivatingly imaginative world of both cute and repugnant aliens, light sabers and blasters, rebels and empires, star destroyers and tie fighters, and C3PO and R2D2. But, as we become more and more privy to the nature of Anakin’s downfall we are reminded of the timeless themes that have made this series so much more than mere special-effect extravaganzas.
Throughout the Star Wars saga, the technologically-challenged side always emerges victorious over the more scientifically advanced. Again and again, whether it is through Wookies, Ewoks, children, or Gungans, the movies juxtapose science, technology, and evil with good. Ultimately, the message of Star Wars is that the fate of the universe rests on individual choices between good and evil, between love-of-self and love-of-others, and between attachment to selfish desires and a broad concern for the world as a whole.
Those in tune with the Force evade technologically advanced attacks with ease, effortlessly turning back blaster shots with their light sabers and slaughtering battalions of droid armies without difficulty. The skirmishes between space destroyers and tie fighters have always been secondary to the battles between the Sith lord or his apprentice and a Jedi. Even Darth Vader, a leader on the side that builds death stars, recognized the triviality of technological superiority in this war between good and evil. He famously warns his comrade inebriated with the potential of the death star, “Don’t be so proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The power to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the force.” When Jedi eventually do fall to gunshots in Sith, they are fired on out of betrayal and taken from behind by surprise.
Lucas is definitely making a statement against misplaced hope in technology and the powerlessness of science to change proclivities toward evil, but is he technophobic? How does he understand the relationship between technology and religion? If we are looking for evidence of technophobia, the closing scene of Return of the Jedi could be construed as a technophobic coup de grace. As the death star burns overhead, Ewoks and humans use the helmets of storm troopers to beat out primal beats to which they dance around bonfires under beneficent watch of Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Yoda’s ghosts. Along the same lines, Darth Vader’s mechanical resurrection at the end of Sith could be read as the momentary triumph of technology over the Jedi’s spiritual orientation. Here the victory of science coincides with the zenith of the dark side and the nadir of the Jedi. There is powerful symmetry at work in these examples, and a strong case could be made that the spirituality of the Jedi fundamentally collides with the advances of science. In order to come to grips with the relationship between science and the spirituality in Star Wars, we need a better understanding of the Force.
The Force
Most are familiar with Yoda’s lesson/sermon given to Luke on Dagobah where Yoda declaims, “My ally is the force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.” You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere.” According to Yoda, the force is a universal product of life that binds the universe together and can somehow be felt and manipulated by the sensitive mind. However, because the Force ontologically depends upon life and not vice versa, it differs from similar concepts in the major religions.
And yet, for a Jedi to fully feel the force requires almost Zen-like detachment. While being trained by “Ben” Kenobi in A New Hope, Luke was only able to block the test machine’s bullets after he pulled down the blaster shield on the helmet and trusted his instincts. Similarly, in the same episode Luke’s shot at the death star is made, at the urging of Obi-Wan ghost, without the use of the ship’s computer. “Using the force” and using a computer appear to be incompatible. In Sith this theme continues. When Anakin approaches Yoda for help with his dreams foretelling the death of Padme, Yoda replies: “The fear of loss is a path to the dark side…Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them, do not. Miss them, do not. Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed, that is.” Only by training himself let go of everything that he feared to lose would he have had the clarity and serenity of mind necessary to be a master Jedi. In Sith it is because he cannot let go of his desire to save Padme that he is turned to the Dark Side.
Lucas has not been shy in interviews about his own religiosity or that of Star Wars. He commented in a 1999 issue of Time, “I don't see Star Wars as profoundly religious. I see Star Wars as taking all the issues that religion represents and trying to distill them down into a more modern and easily accessible construct—that there is a greater mystery out there .... I put the Force into the movie in order to try to awaken a certain kind of spirituality in young people—more a belief in God than a belief in any particular religious system. I wanted to make it so that young people would begin to ask questions about the mystery.”
Lucas has suggested that movies should not attempt to supply religious answers but should stimulate further questions about the nature of reality in a manner similar to Tillich’s correlative method. He seems to conceive of God as a reality that includes but transcends every religious attempt to capture or explain it. Believing that the greater number of religious perspectives that can fruitfully engage with Star Wars the better; he’s happy as long as the movies simulate further spiritual thought.
As part of its almost universal religious appeal, Star Wars exhibits a strong prophetic element. In both trilogies, references are made to a messiah figure who will somehow bring balance to the Force. In the original trilogy Luke plays this role, whereas in “Sith” Obi-Wan laments, “You were supposed to be the Chosen One!” as Anakin is burned by lava. In Phantom Menace Qui-Gon Jinn is the first to hypothesize that Anakin is the prophesied one on the basis of the high concentration of “midichlorians” in his blood.
Reductionism?
This controversial reference to “midichlorians;” symbiotic organisms that act as mediators between the Force and other life forms, seems to be reductionistic. Some might feel that the earlier films reflected the more spiritual culture of the seventies and reproach Lucas for capitulating to the materialism of the 21st century. However, the fact that midichlorians are brought up with mention to prophecy resists this reductionistic interpretation. The mediation of the Force by midichlorians explains how it can “run strong” in certain families without reducing the mystery of the Force itself. The midichlorians act as a go-between between the unknown and humanity; the way in which they do so remains a mystery.
The Jedi Temple might best exemplify Lucas’ vision of the potential harmony of science and spirituality. The fact that the center of Jedi spirituality is built on the city-planet capital of the empire Coruscant, the acme of technological achievement, teaches the real lesson of Star Wars concerning science. Spirituality can exist in harmony with science. It can tolerate scientific explanations of spiritual phenomena and the workings of the universe without ever losing a sense of wonder at it all. Not only is Jedi spirituality able to exist in partnership with the most advanced science, but the safety of the universe depends upon such a union. The most appropriate place for the Jedi Temple is on Coruscant. In order for Darth Sidious to exercise his evil to the fullest extent he must do away with the accountability of the Jedi.
Star Wars teaches us that science will be able to break the light-speed barrier, solve the problems of artificial intelligence, and create mind-bogglingly powerful weapons before it will be able to control human behavior. A Jedi-type spiritual watchdog must necessarily exist in order to curb selfish desires and the deceptive temptation to cling to “crude matter;” a temptation made all the more tempting in light of scientific advances. Proper use of science, like the Force, is only possible with clear and uncluttered altruistic motives. The temptations that lead to the Dark Side might be similar to the ones that result in the misuse of science. Science is not inherently evil, but it use must be monitored by those more in tune with the spiritual reality of the universe and the nature of the human condition.
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Leonie
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Nancy,
I am glad to hear that your son enjoyed the Star wars activities. We haven't got to them yet! lol! But we plan to spend a week on a mini Star Wars notebook.
Soon!
Leonie in Sydney
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MacBeth
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Elizabeth, I just got a sample copy of This Rock magazine, with an article about the conversion of Sir Alec Guiness. I thought this might be a nice addition to Star Wars studies. I think it might be in last month's issue, which is not online yet.
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God Bless!
MacBeth in NY
Don's wife since '88; "Mom" to the Fab 4
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Leonie
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And we have read Alec Guiness' autobiography ( we being myself and the older boys). The story of the Catholic faith in his life is interesting.
Leonie in Sydney
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LauraRB
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amiefriedl wrote:
When did the first, very, very first installment of Star Wars come out?? 1978?
How old were you all when you first saw the first 3?
We let my 7 yo see the very oldest episode recently, but we screened all the more violent scenes. He was suitably in awe of the whole experience.
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I was like three when I saw Return of the Jedi (in my PJ's at the drive in). My 4 year old has seen the first two (episode four and five) and he was scared watching an old Herbie movie so we usually don't let him watch anything over G. But since these are older movies, the violence and special effects are different than a movie made today. A lot of his friends have seen this latest one and the spiderman movies but that seems crazy to me-- my son was kind of scared by The Incredibles so there is no way I would let him see the newest one. Once an image is in your head, you can't get it out so I think it is better to be a bit conservative. You never know these days, even with the ratings...
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God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him.
(1 John 4:16b)
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Tina P.
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| Posted: Aug 21 2005 at 8:56am | IP Logged
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My son watched the first Star Wars at 10 (because older friends did). He adored it and had to watch whatever he could lay his hands on (excluding the newest). He would wake up at 5:00 a.m. to sneak in an episode before other brothers and sisters awoke. I didn't watch Star Wars myself until his interest spurred me on to do so. However, my husband watched it and seemed to think there was nothing wrong with it, so I consented. I was in and out of the living room, science fiction not being my cup of tea.
So then I figured that this year he could watch a Star Trek video with dh. What a flop that was!  He almost got sick and left the room before half of it was over. And here I'd thought that Star Treks were much milder than Star Wars. But I'd never really watched those with any kind of interest either. 
My kids are sticking to rated G movies until they're 13. Then PG until they're 17! Then, and only then, possibly PG 13. Shucks, even I don't like beyond that (except The Mission and Witness (I'm a Harrison Ford fan  ).
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Tina, wife to one and mom to 9 + 3 in heaven
Mary's Muse
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Tina P.
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| Posted: Aug 21 2005 at 9:02am | IP Logged
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And while I'm on the topic, some people inappropriately brought their 5, 6, 7 yos to see The Passion of the Christ. How could a little one understand that (not to mention having to read the subtitles).  That movie was too much for ME, muchless my tender-hearted children. However, the kids in front of me did not even blink (while I was crying my eyes out and heartily blowing my nose). That is what I call the epitome of desensitization. 
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Tina, wife to one and mom to 9 + 3 in heaven
Mary's Muse
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4Real Forums : Living Learning
Topic: Star Wars
