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Sunday, November 20, 2011

Revisiting Star Wars

Reading a Chuck review by Alan Sepinwall lead me to his colleague's (Drew McWeeny) posts on showing the Star Wars series to his kids for the first time.  They were pretty young, and found the movies incredibly enthralling and disturbing.  I found most interesting a key choice Drew made: showing the movies in the following order: Star Wars, Empire, Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, and concluding with Return of the Jedi.

I really enjoyed reading the posts because it was fun to see the movies through the eyes of young kids.  I did show the first five movies to my daughter, but she (and Mrs. Spew) never got around to seeing Revenge.  My wife finds the idea most problematic because of the changes George Lucas made in the mythology (in Return, Leia remembers her mother).

For me, well, I found the last three movies frustrating because they could have been better--neither Anakin was really right to carry that role and the writing was bad and Natalie Portman was so weak here compared to how she portrayed falling in love with Thor so quickly.  But the movies still could enthrall--with big amazing battles and some fun, fun applications of political science (diversionary theories of war).

Anyhow, if you are a Star Wars fan (somewhat required for my blog readers) and have small children who have yet to discover the movies (not so required for my blog readers), check out Drew McW's page.  Do.  There is no try.

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