Did you let your young child see Revenge of the Sith?

Kind of the same point made in Apocalypse Now.

 

I also think it has to do with how grounded a child is maturity wise. If I thought for one second my 7 year old couldn't handle it he wouldn't see it.

But, he knows it's just a movie.

 

JUST a movie!?!

 

If I had a child, I wouldn't let them see this film if they were under 13.

I remember before seeing it, I read the novelization and wondered how it didn't get an R rating. Well, of course, later I saw it and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be but still was worthy of it's PG-13 rating.

 

Trust me, ROTS isn't that graphic. I think kids under 9 should not see it, but a ten year old could handle it. Trust me. The burning scene wasn't that graphic, the flames covered most of it. I saw heaps of ten year olds when watched it at the movies, and they weren't whimpering, but looking rather sad which every adult did too.

 

I think the tone of ROTS is more serious and therefore more appropriate for PG-13 audiences.
The most upsetting part of ROTS is the political story.

 

I'm considerably sensitive to screen violence, having come within a hair's breadth of walking out of The Matrix (lobby shootout) and The Passion of the Christ. But I believe if a 9 year old is shown the OT first, much of the immolation's edge can be diminished. Children need to understand that Anakin has a future, however dour, and that he is fated for redemption.

If anything, seeing Luke and Leia's mommy being strangled and finally succumbing on the operating table would constitute the greater trauma, as Lucas provided no explicit closure for her character in the OT.

 

My six year old brother saw it, so did my four-year-old cousin. They liked it. The action parts rather than A/P's relationship thing

 

My ROTS dvd is labeled for over 11 years, but those days there was no mark for over 13 years in Finland. Now I think it would be labeled so.

Perhaps I have an opinion to say, because I was 13 when ROTS came in theathers. I watched it with my friend, brother and father. (Father is semi-fan, he likes the films but has perhaps seen them all only once. After the movie we had to teach him what some of parts meant in larger context.)
My brother was 10, but I think that he isn't as sensitive with scary parts as I am. I don't like movies with gore, too much sex or cursing. Luckily Star Wars isn't any of them.

I watched ROTS (for 10th or so time) this weekend, and I have to say that children can't even understand some of the creepiest parts (I am the Senate! Killing separatist leaders without trial, and organizing the Empire). But I remember that we talked of all those in school, and some other political vibes. Novelization helped much, and we could speak what it meant when Jedi took the law into their own hands when they attempted to arrest the Councellor. Oh those days. Star Wars did teach me many things about politics.

 

I don't even let my inner child see that film.

 

Like I said, I've got an eleven-year-old sister who watches it and doesn't bat an eye.

 

Yep. ^

And honestly, the emotional undercurrents of the film supposedly "for kids"-Return Of The Jedi-are pretty adult too. We get Leia in implied sexual slavery and then Luke nearly killing his father in a blind rage. Plus, of course, there's the fact that a certain daddy stands there and watches while his son is being tortured to death by the meanest-looking guy in galactic history.

Sure, neither scene really has the visual impact of Anakin burning alive, but kids are also quite sensitive to emotional subtext...and I've never heard any complaints about Jedi from parents. Or kids, for that matter.

 

Nothing is scarier than the rancor.

But Palpatine's face is damn scary too.

 

When asked, I actively talked my friend out of taking her 4.5 year old daughter to the movie. Between Mace Windu in Palpatine's office, the Sidious Face Melt, the immolation scene, the various decapitations and dismemberments and so forth, I thought it'd be too heavy for really small children.

 

I have the Star Wars edition of Trivial Pursuit from 2005, and it says SW would have gotten a G rating had it not been for the addition of Owen and Beru's skeletons. Not really sure how the MPAA missed all the stomach blaster shots and dismembered arms lying on the floor spilling out blood...

 

Kids in the 1970s were tougher.

It's partly true though, everything is relevant. Nowadays G refers only to a film without any objectionable content whatsoever, zero, whereas back before the 1980s it meant "fun for the family" in a more general way. I think Star Trek: The Motion Picture got rated G as well. PG films were stuff like Jaws and Raiders of the Lost Ark. It was really the introduction of the PG-13 in the mid-80s that re-oriented everyone's point of reference to what G, PG and R meant.

 

I saw ROTS with my sister and younger cousins and at that time they were all in the 7-9 year old range. ROTS isn't much scarier or more intense than the other films.

 

I remember seeing Jurassic Park in the theater when I was 10 years old. IMDB says JP was rated PG-13 for "intense science-fiction terror" where as ROTS's reason was "sci-fi violence and some intense images", so I think they're a good comparison.

I remember being scared out of my mind during some parts of that movie, especially the scene where Elie has to run from the raptor in the utility shed. Now that I'm older, JP is one of my favorite movies and it's not very gory at all, but as a kid, you couldn't get me to rewatch the movie on VHS when my mom rented it from Blockbuster. I think I would've had the same reaction to ROTS, especially with that whole Mustafar fight. But then again, my mom let me watch Speed when I was 10 too and I could handle that one, so I dunno. Maybe it's the film genre that amps up the terror and anxiety. It'd be a good topic for a research paper, that's for sure.

But to answer the question, my little cousin is 9 years old and he's a hardcore SW fan. His parents will not let him see ROTS until he is 13. They think they're being lenient by letting him watch TCW on Cartoon Network. But I think boys have a different reaction to that kind of stuff anyway. So, because I was a 10 year old girl watching dinosaurs run around and try to eat children in a kitchen, my reaction might've been different if I were a 10 year old boy watching a guy burned alive on a lava bank after a lightsaber duel.

 

The issue really shouldn't be whether any of the Star Wars films are too violent or graphic for a child. They're hardly Quinton Tarantino films. Rather, if/when I decide to get married and have a son, my only factor in determining when to introduce him to Star Wars is the age at which he can fully keep his attention during a two hour film and follow the plot in its entirety. Until then, I plan to shelter him from being exposed to any Star Wars related products that might pollute his first viewing. I'm still deciding which order to show them in. If I feel he is capable of comprehending non-linear storytelling, I plan to show them in the following order...

1) Star Wars

2) The Phantom Menace

3) Attack of the Clones

4) The Empire Strikes Back

5) Revenge of the Sith

6) Return of the Jedi

 

I saw Temple of Doom when I was ten and was left a full day disturbed. My dad fell asleep (as usual) before the first fifteen minutes. I just watched alone. What really freaked me out was after Indi drank the blood and was acting like he had a seizure. I still am disturbed by the heart-ripping out thing. And I have the movie. I still wonder why that was not given a PG-13 rating since Spielberg suggested the very idea of the rating.
ROTS however wasn't like that and I saw that before Temple of Doom. I'm not sure why. I think because I was used to seeing the ROTJ Emperor which looks pretty mcuh the same to the ROTS one. Besides the burning scene wasn't really graphic.

 

I thought the controversy over the movie's rating was the whole reason they started using PG-13 afterwards.

 

This.

Every child is different and has different sensibilities. Some are ready to handle movies like Temple of Doom and Batman at three or four, while others can be upwards of nine and unable to handle something as relatively tame as Ghostbusters.

One of the keys for ANY kid, though, is strongly impressing upon them the fact that movies are make-believe stories.

 

I'm sixteen and I can handle that scene, but I still consider it terrifying and horrific enough not to let little kids see it.
And that's not to mention the dead padawans, order 66, and Palpy's face melt...

 

Yes, exactly. The ratings given now are applied much more strictly than they used to be.

 

I don't think the story itself is enough to automatically ban kids from seeing it, but based upon several scenes (Mace Windu flying out the window, Anakin about to kill the younglings, the dead bodies in the Temple, and crispy well-done Anakin), if I had kids under fourteen or fifteen, they would not be seeing RotS until I decided they were ready for something like that.

Then again, I'm an overprotective sort. I'll probably raise pansies. But I do think I have a good point.