"It's never too early......"

November 18, 2010 5:04 AM

A Public Service Announcement. Here are some sobering facts about the world today: Every day, millions of kids go to sleep having never been introduced to Chewbacca, and, worse, countless more think Greedo shot first. We here at Asylum want to make sure you and your child have an open and healthy conversation about Jar Jar and the differences between a "good trilogy" and an "uh-oh trilogy." So we've provided you with this, a PSA on talking to your child about Star Wars.
posted by Fizz (38 comments total)

My word, the baby girl with the "yoda ears" knit hat is adorable.
posted by King Bee at 5:14 AM on November 18, 2010

"Binks hates puppies." I'm using that.
posted by Shohn at 5:19 AM on November 18, 2010

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things. That said, you touch my Boba Fett figurine in the original packaging, and bitch, there's gonna be trouble.
posted by spoobnooble at 5:28 AM on November 18, 2010 [5 favorites]

If ever there was a justification for every wedgie, wet willy and any other act of aggression visited on nerds over the years it is advance payback for all of the whining, bitching and moaning about a bunch of fucking films.

'It wasn't like this when I was a kid'. No it wasn't. It was different. Luckily, smart kids rebel and don't suck up every dribble of shit their dorky parents try to lay all over them.

Seriously, the best thing George Lucas ever did wasn't anything to do with SW apart from doing a fantastic job of totally winding up a hilariously tedious section of society. I'm glad he has ruined peoples lives. I celebrate the fact that childhoods have been wrecked. Ha!

I think it is Legomancer who has a theory that nerds are more interested in being fans of stuff than actual stuff. A corollary could be that they are more interested in going on and on and on and on and on and on about stuff that has, in their eyes, been denigrated rather than celebrating other stuff.

I was watching LotR recently (test driving the new plasma TV with all 3 extended versions) and realised that despite the brilliance and cultural impact, they've fallen away from view, in part, because dullards are still banging on about how Star Wars isn't like what it was when they were children and raping childhood and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Two things I am looking forward to regarding all this:

1. All six films in 3D. *Especially* I-III. Good god I am going to love these.
2. Getting into the habit of punching all the SW whiners full in the face, one by one, starting with Simon Pegg and working my way down into the fetid basements around the world. I wonder if there is some sort of grant I can apply for?
posted by i_cola at 5:32 AM on November 18, 2010 [2 favorites]

My kids and I have already had this talk, but it turned out we didn't even need to. They had already noticed by themselves that Star Trek was vastly superior.
posted by DU at 5:37 AM on November 18, 2010 [6 favorites]

Someone didn't get sugar in their coffee this morning.
posted by oddman at 5:38 AM on November 18, 2010

They had already noticed by themselves that Star Trek was vastly superior.

+1
posted by King Bee at 5:39 AM on November 18, 2010

Actually, I think it was Jon Stewart who put this into perspective when he interviewed THE MOST EVUL MAN WHO HAS EVAR LIVED George Lucas. 'My son's favourite Star Wars film is Phantom Menace but I keep telling him it's A New Hope.' Heh.
posted by i_cola at 5:42 AM on November 18, 2010

I like the thing about what to tell kids if they ask who Luke's father is. Particularly because that was one of the most exciting things for me when, as a kid, I introduced my cousins to Star Wars.

When I was about thirteen, and my cousins were ten or eleven, I discovered that somehow, they'd never seen Star Wars. We were all pretty scifi/fantasy-friendly kids, too, so I was totally taken aback by this discovery. Naturally, it was my mission to introduce the movies to them while we were all on vacation together one summer. We rented the VHS tapes, one after the other, and watched them over the course of a couple of weeks.

After A New Hope, they were completely nuts over Star Wars, too. And one of my cousins, who had absorbed a small amount of half-formed knowledge via cultural osmosis, was like, "Wait, is there something secret going on with Vader? Like, something big gets revealed?"

"Yeah!" I said excitedly. "So we know that Vader killed Luke's father, but you never see Anakin Skywalker at all in the first movie, right? But in the second movie, you find out exactly who Luke's father was, and Vader explains HOW HE KILLED HIM, and it's TOTALLY AMAZING."

"Oh, cool!" said my cousin, and the next week was spent chatting excitedly about A New Hope while I refrained from spoiling anything, just reiterating that Empire was my favorite out of the trilogy because Vader talking about how he killed Luke's father is completely great.

So then we saw Empire, and they saw the big reveal at the end, completely unspoiled. I have never since then gotten to witness someone's mind blown so completely and thoroughly. It basically led to a post-movie ten minutes of:

"OH MY GOD"
"I KNOW, RIGHT!"
"OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD"
"YEAAAAAAAAAHHHH"
"WHHHAAAAAAAAAAT"
posted by Greg Nog at 5:43 AM on November 18, 2010 [18 favorites]

I don't care what anyone says. My kids (when they actually, you know, exist) are starting with Episode I. Partly because I can start them younger that way.
posted by theichibun at 5:51 AM on November 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

(Frankie Boyle reference, just in case.)
posted by i_cola at 5:52 AM on November 18, 2010

They had already noticed by themselves that Star Trek was vastly superior.

Which "Star Destroyer vs Enterprise" education kit did you use? There are so many on the market today that it's hard to pick just the right one. While I like the look of the Sweet Pickles set, I don't like how they sign you up for a subscription to all those expansion sets (Battlestar, ID-4 Mothership, etc). I think they would just confuse the issue.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 5:57 AM on November 18, 2010

I celebrate the fact that childhoods have been wrecked.

Lucas didn't ruin the original movies, or my childhood. They're still there. The new trilogy did suck 10 different ways, though.

Did that guy ever do the review of Revenge of the Sith?
posted by empath at 6:16 AM on November 18, 2010

In the world of PSAs, know what's way cooler than "Star Wars?"

This is a public service announcement-- WITH GUITARS!"
posted by Mayor Curley at 6:16 AM on November 18, 2010 [2 favorites]

If ever there was a justification for every wedgie, wet willy and any other act of aggression visited on nerds over the years it is advance payback for all of the whining, bitching and moaning about a bunch of fucking films.

Whoah, seriously, dude? I don't know, I kind of like how het-up people get about "a bunch of fucking films". It's nice to see people excited about creative endeavors of any kind, be they music, painting or music. "Nerds" raging about what they see as a wrong direction taken by the creator of the series is just a portion of this. And it's inevitable in anything an artist does. People are always going to rage and argue about decisions made by an artist in the creative process. Some will take cues from this and go in different directions, others will ignore it altogether. But I think it's a part of how art evolves.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 6:17 AM on November 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

I celebrate the fact that childhoods have been wrecked.

This is not the Faze I was looking for.
posted by octobersurprise at 6:17 AM on November 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

i think that if you have conveyed to your child that the the relative merits amongst different productions within a family of saturday-afternoon sci-fi entertainment are worth more than, say, 30 seconds for someone who is not, say, studying film, then you have already failed as a parent.
posted by fallacy of the beard at 6:18 AM on November 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

Whenever I have kids, Im showing them the first trilogy that I own on VHS. Like hell if I'm going to be conned again into buying all 6 re-re-re-re-remastered editions on 3dHDXHolocube for the low price of only $99000 hyper-Ameros. If the VHS copies are dead by then or every last VCR in the world has been recycled into a internet-aware toaster alarm clock twitter-linked to my iPhone 12, well then maybe it's time just let them go. I hope that by then, someone in Hollywood on on the web will have created new content that they can enjoy on their own and make thier own childhood, I'm not going to be the guy forcing them to watch 50 year old movies and tell them how great everythign was back in my day (which was actually 10 years before I was born).
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:19 AM on November 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

Early exposure to Star Wars is clearly extremely vital.

I recently introduced my wife to Star Wars. Somehow she had managed to get through twenty plus years of life having never watched it. Afterwards, her response was a deflating, "Meh."

Yet she had been watching Star Trek: Next Gen episodes since childhood. (!)

I blame this imbalance for her inability to understand the very obvious and clear distinction between good (people with blue or green or purple lightsabers) and evil (people with scary masks and red lightsabers / lightning fingertips, also robots and clones.)
posted by hpb2earnest at 6:20 AM on November 18, 2010

If ever there was a justification for every wedgie, wet willy and any other act of aggression visited on nerds over the years it is advance payback for all of the whining, bitching and moaning about a bunch of fucking films.

I bet there's something you're interested in that I don't care about.
posted by MrMoonPie at 6:32 AM on November 18, 2010 [5 favorites]

I've had various Star Wars talks with my son including reminders that we don't use the force at the dinner table and he doesn't use the force on his sister.
posted by plinth at 6:34 AM on November 18, 2010 [3 favorites]

i think that if you have conveyed to your child that the the relative merits amongst different productions within a family of saturday-afternoon sci-fi entertainment are worth more than, say, 30 seconds for someone who is not, say, studying film, then you have already failed as a parent.
posted by fallacy of the beard at 9:18 AM on November 18 [+] [!]

This is eponysterial in a way I can't quite articulate.
posted by aught at 6:48 AM on November 18, 2010

I see they totally glossed over the wrongness of those insipid fucking Ewoks. That's just wrong.
posted by Ber at 6:49 AM on November 18, 2010

It's been 11 years. Haven't they declared a winner for the I HATE PHANTOM MENACE THE MOST contest yet?

I guess not, since the I HATE THE EWOKS THE MOST contest is still running...
posted by Legomancer at 6:52 AM on November 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

which was actually 10 years before I was born

I was 12 when I saw Star Wars in the theater in 1977, young enough to enjoy the movie without cynicism, old enough to know that it was a movie and to enjoy nerding out to all the movie-making gossip published in Starlog, etc. Though I'd encountered death for the first time that summer at my grandfather's funeral, in my memory it's idyllic, a perfect American summer of bike riding and Star Wars.

I do think that Lucas' obsessive meddling ruined something that, if it wasn't perfect, was a charming product of its time. He turned a bubblegum pop hit into a tiresome soap opera. Lucas wants to live in that perfect summer forever. And that's a little sad. But at the end of the day they're his movies so, so what? I have my own memories and I can take those with me.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:03 AM on November 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

Did that guy ever do the review of Revenge of the Sith?

Not yet, but there's a trailer for it on the RedLetterMedia web site. It was posted to YouTube on October 4, so maybe it'll be out soon.
posted by kirkaracha at 7:04 AM on November 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

I bet there's something you're interested in that I don't care about.

And guess what? I don't go on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on about it. Which is why you don't know what it is ;-)
posted by i_cola at 7:35 AM on November 18, 2010

That's funny, because that screed you posted upthread gave me a very good idea what you don't care about.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 7:46 AM on November 18, 2010

What? Like yo' momma?
posted by i_cola at 8:15 AM on November 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

When I was a kid we didn't call it A New Hope. We called it Star Wars. It worked for us and it should work for these whippersnappers as well.

Also, we didn't need episode numbers. That was one of the coolest things about the whole Star Wars trilogy. Sure we knew they were numbered IV, V & VI, but we didn't need numbers. We just called them Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi.

And we liked it!

Kids these days.
posted by Rarebit Fiend at 8:48 AM on November 18, 2010 [3 favorites]

f the VHS copies are dead by then or every last VCR in the world has been recycled into a internet-aware toaster alarm clock twitter-linked to my iPhone 12, well then maybe it's time just let them go.

Eh, they'll be on TPB* within hours of release just like everything else.

* Which will, by that point, have become an independent nation with a permanent seat on the Security Council.
posted by madajb at 9:11 AM on November 18, 2010

I am so fucking tired of Star Wars.

and I like Star Wars.
posted by Ratio at 9:32 AM on November 18, 2010 [2 favorites]

a theory that nerds are more interested in being fans of stuff than actual stuff...I'm glad he has ruined peoples lives.

And then there are the kneejerk haters with an irrational dislike of things that have no effect on them (like, for example, people who post semi-coherent anti-nerd rants on sites like MeFi).

Really i_cola, did a nerd fuck your wife, or something?
posted by coolguymichael at 9:57 AM on November 18, 2010

Does it have Captain Kirk in it? Watch the even numbered movies.
Indiana Jones? Odd.

The more you know...
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 10:31 AM on November 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

You know what's most awesome about episodes IV - VI?

...

12 years or so from now, when they'll be given the remake treatment, from scratch. Just think about THAT for a second.

::runs far far away::
posted by FatherDagon at 12:26 PM on November 18, 2010

I was watching LotR recently. . . and realised that despite the brilliance and cultural impact, they've fallen away from view, in part, because dullards are still banging on about how Star Wars isn't like what it was when they were children and raping childhood and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. they are the single dullest thing ever committed to film.

FTFY*

*I didn't want to have to go there, but you fuck with Star Wars and you're fucking with my emotions.
posted by ND¢ at 1:24 PM on November 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

they are the single dullest thing ever committed to film.

I don't often cite Clerks 2, but they made a salient point about those movies.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 1:33 PM on November 18, 2010

"There's only one Return, and that's Of The Jedi."
posted by whuppy at 7:51 AM on November 19, 2010