NECROPOST..... ;D
When Star Wars came out in cinemas I was 7 and my brother was 5. We were both SW fanatics after that... ;)
I had twins in November 06 and have been waiting until they were at least 5 to show them the OT. At this stage I have decided to show them the entire saga in the following order:
Episode 4
Episode 5
Episode 1
Episode 2
Clone Wars Vol1 & 2 (Genndy Tartofsky)
Close Wars TV series
Episode 3
Episode 6
I always wanted to introduce them to the trilogy with ANH, given that it's the least complicated story-wise and lends itself well to easy comprehension by a child of 5. So I showed them Episode 4 when they were a tad over 5, they absolutely LOVED it and it was their favourite for a very long time.
I chose this order of viewing because I wanted to up the ante for them a little and try to maintain the mystery of who Darth Vader is. They've only seen Episode 5 once, some of the thematic elements went over their heads a little but they were a bit concerned with the intensity of the Vader/Luke battle at the end. We talked about it together and they each came to a different conclusion about Vader's bombshell:
Twin no2 thought that Darth Vader was telling the truth.
Twin no1 reasoned that becuase Vader is a bad guy, he could be intentionally lying in order to confuse Luke. (Impressive reasoning for a 5 year old, IMHO.)
So with that in mind, and knowing that Luke's father was mentioned in ANH and was a great Jedi, we decided to go back and watch the story of Luke's father... so they could get more involved in the overarching plot elements. Development wise it's actually a good thing as a parent, because we get to sit down after watching each Star Wars movie and talk about motivations, making good choices vs bad decisions, selfish vs selfless, helping other people etc etc. I would much rather use something like Star Wars as a tool for personal growth now that they're old enough to understand some of the themes.
So then we watched TPM and it has become their favourite of the entire saga. Being that it's more squarely aimed at children anyway (child protagonist for a start... and say what you will about Jar Jar but my 5 yo kids dig him) it's not surprising. They've only watched AOTC twice because twin 1 gets a bit scared when Anakin gets his arm cut off. We stopped the movie at this point and also after the Tusken Raider slaughter to talk about Anakin's thought processes and why he does the things he's doing and how he appears to be beginning to make some questionable decisions.
After this we have rolled into the Clone Wars cartoons as well as the TV series. Currently if given a choice they will watch either of the Genndy Tartofsky cartoons... they love watching Yoda, Obi Wan... and are particularly into the scene where Mace Windu destroys a whole army of super battle droids virtually singlehandedly.
They each got given a Hasbro UFX lightsaber around Feb this year, got some Star Wars lego for Xmas and they are little Star Wars nuts. I mean, padawans. ;)
Ideally I'm going to wait until they're a couple of years older before I show them Episode 3, I watched it again recently and Twin No1 won't handle the immolation scene at all. Everything apart from that would be ok... they've actually watched the space battle at the beginning of ROTS and were fine with Dooku's decapitation. ;) They have started noticing in various other bits of unavoidable promotional material that in Ep3 Anakin is fighting Obi-Wan (!!!) and have begun asking questions about it. I'm going to try to maintain the mystery for a while longer... as long as I can I guess. ;D
Anyways, that's my story... I take my responsibilities as a parent seriously and am enjoying introducing them to some more adult concepts over time, whether through Star Wars or other medium. From that standpoint, between 4 - 6 seems like an ideal time to immerse them in something that can both help them grow as people...
...plus there are robots and spaceships and lightsabers!!! :D
And if you got this far, thanks for reading. ;)