Polled some kids on what they thought of all SW movies

I was out for dinner with some friends and thier kids which range in age from 5 to 12 and there were about 6 of them. I decided to ask them if they like the new SW movies and the old ones too.

They all enthusatically said they love them, when I asked them there favorite parts, they said the whole movie, all of them.

This made me think as adults we are so super ultra critical, always nit picking everthing in the new movies. But to a 10 year he doesn't see any of that just fun movies with cool special effects. Yes Star Wars is still adored by the younger generation, that hasn't become ultra-critical yet. As Lucas always said these movies were made for 8 year olds. I agree, and I still enjoy them more then any other cinimatic experience out there. If you saw ANH in the theatre and were under 15 at the time when it was released in 1977 you probably felt the same way as these kids. Were older now and much more jaded as to good and bad movies and view then with a different attitude. I still think that E3 will do very very well this is the movie the older fans have really been waiting for. And the kids will like too, but it will be a little sad for them.

 

I have to agree with you.
I find it almost funny that my 9 year old seems to have the things figured out that are being rampantly discussed on these boards, namley the Palpy=Sideous thing. These movies are made for kids as well as adults, and that's something some people tend to forget. Perhaps we should ask the kids some of the more discussed questions. I bet we'd have a better idea on some of the answers Mr. Lucas will (hopefully) provide in Epi 3.

 

I agree. We all forget that GL doesn't make these films for the average JCer. He makes them for the average 10 year old.

 

They are the target audience, after all.
If any other age groups love it, that's great, but the kids are the main group.

I remember Ahmed Best saying how much fan mail he got from little kids about Jar Jar.

 

Also (for the most part) that same audience is the one that will buy the merchandise (toys). Of course some of the people in this forum are not from that audience and probably spent more than a few dollars on SW toys last year.



Eeerrrr, I mean collectibles

 

"Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is."

 

I've made a few observations myself:

#1 alot of kids I know (especially boys) cannot accept Anakin going bad. In fact, several of them skip the Tusken scene altogether! My one nephew vehemently denies that Anakin becomes Vader and thinks that the Tusken scene will be explained away in EIII. I think when they grow up and talk about watching movies as children we'll see that the fall of Anakin was a helluva lot more intense for them than 'I am your father!' was for us.

#2 all of the little girls I know who dig SW are really into the AOTC love story. This is Romeo&Juliet to them! All the boys hate it

#3 at the Magic of Myth exhibit they had a place where kids could put masks on and look at themselves in a mirror. The longest line? Jar Jar: kids were getting Back in line to put it on again and they took turns making each other laugh with their Jar Jar impressions. The 2nd longest line? Darth Vader! Some things change - some don't.

#4 kids know the new names just like we knew the old ones. 'Amidala' and 'Dooku' trip off their tongues. Strange but true...

 

All the boys hate it
... I was like that as a little kid... "Ewww! kissing!"


This gusher just thought of something just wonderful right now.

TWENTY YEARS LATER
BASHER: How was your day, Junior?
BASHER'S KID: Good! Mommy and I went to the park... then we came home and I watched some Star Wars!
BASHER: Awww. Which Star Wars movie is your favorite?
BASHER'S KID: That's easy! The Phantom Menace!
BASHER: No! That's not true! That's IMPOSSIBLE!
BASHER'S KID: 'course it's true!
BASHER: NOOOOOOOO!
BASHER'S KID: Hee hee! You're silly, Daddy!
BASHER (weeping): Where did I go wrong?
(Looks at son. Looks at Star Wars box set sitting atop television set. Back at son. Back at Star Wars movies. Runs and throws Star Wars movies down the garbage disposal.)



Rick McCallum loves you!

 

Interesting that the romance is shallow, but it works for the kids, the girls especially.

LOL the boys eewwwwww kissing, just wait till the old hormones start flowing.

 

Yes, yes, we all know how the Star Wars movies are made with the children's enjoyment in mind.



What a wonderful saga for children, what with the impalement and dismemberment and decapitations and child endangerment and cursing and shooting fatalities and plane crashes and choking and explosions and swordplay and electrocutions and funerals and horrible paternal revelations and imprisonment and torture and bludgeoning and parental death and death by ingestion and scantily clad women and killing of animals by way of skull crushing and global homicide and all.




Truly a timeless tale aimed directly at our young ones.











You can take that "just for kids" attitude and shove it.

 

Extra helping of self-righteous, there?

I like your first point in particular, First_Stage_Lensman. The surprise of the PT is what happens to the little kid from Tatooine. You'd expect the young hero to go through trials and tribulations, and then in Ep3 save the Jedi or something.

Of course, it doesn't turn out that way...

 

1Bat: you've obviously never read any traditional fairy tales (meant for a family audience) or books like 'The Wizard of Oz' or 'The Hobbit' or anything by Roald Dahl or watched any Tom & Jerry cartoons or. . .you get the picture.

It depends on the context. SW allows kids to face these things in an environment which isn't explicit (tho GL does push it a bit). There's a difference between SW and the Alien movies, between the b&w Universal monster movies and Bram Stoker's Dracula etc...

SW is good entertainment for a well adjusted, well supervised child IMO. It did no harm to me and it hasn't harmed the kids I know.

 

Yes, yes, we all know how the Star Wars movies are made with the children's enjoyment in mind...

Hmmm...ever read the fairy tales that have been passed down for generations? The various nursery rhymes and songs that we tell small children? There's some very gruesome stuff there...and it was meant for children.

Hansel and Grettel...getting lost in the woods; being encaptured; one stuck in a cage and forced to eat to get plumped up to be eaten; the other force to work like a slave and feed her own brother so he can be eaten (depending on version); burning the witch alive by pushing her in and closing the oven door.

Another one, as punishment a person is put in a barrel filled with nails poking through and rolled.

A wolf that when he finds out where the little girl is going, beats her to her destination and eats her grandmother (and in certain versions, her too). Afterward, a huntsman comes along and slaughters the wolf with his ax, cutting out those that had been eaten.

And those are just the tip of the fairy tale iceburg.

Using violence, death, unfair situations and consequences are nothing new in childrens' stories, especially ones that are in some way trying to get across a moral of some sort. Now, obviously, a parent should know their child well enough to know what they can handle and act on that knowledge.

 

Despite the limited sample of your polling group, I must admit that I'm not surprised in the least.

 

I have no problem with debates. Two sides of an issue is one of the things that makes the world go round.

I just don't understand why people have to get so mean spirited?

Here we have a thread that started very cute and lighthearted about the world's greatest treasure: children, and how they love all the Star Wars films. And within two pages it has become a mean spirited debate. It is very sad.

If only we all could see things more like
children do.

 

Hardly mean spirited on my part. More amused actually. Only pointing out that such themes are not exactly new.

Basically, why does it appeal to the kids and certain adults? It plays on the imagination and sence of adventure.

The PT is to the youngsters today what the OT was for the older posters here. They get to grow up with this as we grew up with the OT. Of course they'll enjoy it.

 

Nursery rhymes and tales are nearly all violent in some way. Or taken from an older, more violent story.

Know the original version of Cinderella? Where the ugly sisters chop off a toe each to try to get their feet to fit in the shoe?

Sorry, I'm getting off-topic here a bit...

 

Geeez,

I grew up reading Jules Verne, Tolkien and Hans Christian Anderson and such storytellers, not to mention Looney-Tunes (beep-beep).

Most of this stuff is fill with violence, decapitations, death, misery.

HAve someone else read the Little Mermaid (original) or The Red Shoe or any Anderson story. Man those are darn scary and troubling, and most of them don't have a happy ending. The little mermaid dies and turns to foam, in the one with the legless lead soldier it melts in the end and the ballerina is burned as well. I could go on an on, but I don't recall all the names in English.

At any rate SW is as good a story for kids as any have been.

Anything in excess is bad for you. The same goes for too much SW, or too much D&D, or too much beer...

[Homer]Beeeeer!, MMMMMMMMMHHHHHH [/Homer]

 

Don't get me wrong, I love Star Wars, contrary to popular belief. I just hate to hear that same arguement that it was "for the kiddos to enjoy." It certain places within the saga, I can agree, but it is a standpoint weakened by the swiss cheese-esque holes shot through it in regards to the saga as a complete story.



If, in order, we see two innocents blasted into oblivion, followed by gunplay, swordplay, battle, parental separation, organized crime, death(s) by explosion, more swordplay, child endangerment, combat en masse, death by impalement, death by bisection, funeral pyre, death by explosion, attempted murder, more gunplay, car wrecks, dismemberment, poisoning, bondage, parental death, multiple homicide, more dismemberment, more combat, more dismemberment, more gunplay, capture, torture, murder, more funeral pyre, more dismemberment, more organized crime, again gunplay, death in space, death by lightsaber, global homicide, homicide on a lunar scale (Death Star), more battle, plane crashes, more dismemberment, horrible revelations, 2 counts of death by rancor, scantily-clad women, death by ingestion, more dismemberment, death by falling, massive ewokicide (not in all ways a bad thing), gunshot wounds, paternal death, and again a funeral pyre.



Now, I'm not saying kids can't and shouldn't enjoy Star Wars. I was 6 when I saw it for the first time, and I've been hooked ever since. But the things I found enjoyable then, such as the creepy dianoga, wookiees, lightsabers, and ewoks, gave way to the nuances of film craftsmanship within the OT, which I came to enjoy much more than watching Luke levitate rocks and fighting giant monsters.

Star Wars can be immensely enjoyable to a child, but I don't believe for one second that any child payed attention to the subtle puppetry of Palpatine in TPM; they just laughed as Jar Jar stepped in bantha crap. Do you think children appreciated the complex political agendas of Dooku, or were they more interested in seeing Jedi swashbuckle? Did children care for the longing in Luke's eyes at a Tatooine sunset, or was the Trench Run what they remembered? Character arcs of Lando and Han, or the Battle of Hoth? The duality faced by Luke in the Throne Room, or Ewoks on Speeder Bikes?


C'mon, people! Yes, Star Wars is enjoyable to kids. None of us would be here on these boards if it weren't. But use common sense in your thought. If it was "aimed" at kids, however, we'd have 6 movies featuring spear-chucking teddy bears, clumsy idiots stepping in excrement, fart jokes, unfunny one-liners, dance numbers out the ying-yang, and god knows what else.



Just because something appeals to some people at an early age doesn't mean it's age approprite. You can like something for all the wrong reasons, seeing the cheap thrills and missing the subtle beauty.



It's like going to the Louvre to see gratuitous nudity. Yeah, it's going to be there, but is that what is important?

 

I think the point is to make something that can be enjoyed as one grows up. I can imagine a sixteen or eighteen year olf 'kid' still getting new things out of SW.

 

BLUEJEDI, I've noticed this too. Imagine how George Lucas must feel. We are truly forgeting what these movies are about.

 

IBAT4U

Well your comments are exactly what I'm talking about, the critical nature that we adults develop.

And when was the last time you saw human blood in a SW movie, tell me the scene please. Interesting lightsabre cuts seal the wound so there is very little. So as far a violence and gore, we get the violence but not the gore of movies like Saving Private Ryan which was based on true history, I would not let my kids watch that movie.

This fantasy SW is much more mildly shown than the our own worlds history of conflict.

This thread was made to show that most people who visit the JCF no longer have the perspective that they had when they saw SW ANH for the first time, like kids who saw TPM in 1999 for the first time, thats all.

And cause of that they turn into bitter bashers, and that is so sad.

 

I agree. We all forget that GL doesn't make these films for the average JCer. He makes them for the average 10 year old.

Amen to that. Of course, when I watch a SW film, its the 10 year old in me watching. That's just the way it's supposed to work. When people whine endlessly about how crap this is or how crap that is, they should be reminded that they are whining about something primarily meant for kids, and thus something that is sappy, corny and naive on purpose. And without that cornyness and naivety, Star Wars would probably have next to no appeal for me whatsoever.

-JDR.

 

Or put in other ways why do you think a lot of people find it a bit odd that a grown up is STILL a SW fan.

Because these are saturday morning movies. It's OK to like SW when you're ten, it's also OK to play with toys at that age.

But when you're a 34 something looking for the Padme figure at Toys'r'us, then it's a bit ODD.

 

Well, the story of Blue Beard absolutly terrified me when I was little!!!!!!

Star Wars is essentially a mythic fairytale, that can be enjoyed on a whole host of levels, by a vast number of ages. This is the reason Star Wars continues to last, more than any other film series (with the probable exception of LOTR)

My Nephew is nearly 18 months, when he's about 4 or 5, I'm going to start him off with TPM. Of course he won't care about the ploitical aspect of the movie. Of course he will LOVE Jar Jar and Darth Maul, and the Pod Race. The same will be true of all the movies (with perhaps the excpetion of Episode III) Then when he's about 12 or 13, and the political theme's start to resoante more, when he begins to understand the darkness of the saga, he will be able to sit down and watch it all again, and take new meanings out the films. That's a WONDERFUL thing to be able to say, thats what makes Star Wars so timeless.

And as I have said before, when todays generation of kids grow up and become tomorrows adults, the PT will rise in standing.