Planning on watching Star Wars with your kids? In what order?
For years, as a Star Wars fan, I’ve thought about the question “when do I introduce my kids to Star Wars”. You know they’re not going to understand it when they’re too young, but there becomes a moment when you know that you want to enjoy Star Wars with your kids.
Just how ready they are will obviously differ by kids – I don’t want to watch it when it’s still far above them, but I also don’t want to wait until they’re past it.
At the moment my eldest is 7. Typically, he’s in to computer games, superheros, loves everything space and sci-fi and we’ve done most of the Marvel films (after watching and checking them on the kid-friendly scale). And, to top it off, he’s been asking about them, so clearly there’s others at school who are watching it.
Then there comes the choice. How do you watch Star Wars with your kids?
I don’t mean, popcorn, lazy-saturday or structured evening film night type of “how” – I mean, in what order?
What order should I show my kid Star Wars?
I started searching around – which actually made me think more about my own experience of Star Wars. Namely, whether you believe this is Anakins story, or Lukes, which can be affected by the order in which you watch them
Do you watch them 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3…? The order of release? Is it then confusing for a kid that the end of 6 shows Anakin at the end as fully grown, only to then track back to his childhood?
Do you start at 1 and go through? The chronological order?
Do you include the ‘side films’ – Solo, Rogue One etc.
Do you go for the machete order (yes, seriously this is a thing – and it cuts out the Phantom Menace – and it is worth reading).
Applying our social media advice to the problem
Turns out I had analysis paralysis. I talk about this a lot day to day with clients, especially new ones. Are you thinking about this just a little too much? I get asked, should we Facebook, should we Instagram, what about LinkedIn? “Do I, a respected dentist, need a Tik Tok dance?”.
In the end, many end up doing nothing for fear of it being wrong – and that’s probably about the worst option available.
We work with companies and brands to develop a story – or at least an ongoing theme. We’ve had to kill off the hopes of an accountancy practice who though they should just pump out the same sales message everyday – same image, same text, and it never occurred to them that they had zero views on it – but at least they posted and done it consistently.
I’m overthinking Star Wars. There’s so much out there, so many ways to access information that he’s likely going to find out that *spoiler alert* Darth and Luke are related. I don’t think I’m going to get the same awe-struck moment that parents in the 90’s got so I’m going to take me own advice, I’m just going to start watching the ‘good ones’ first.
If I revert to what we tell brands, “Get them engaged enough to want to watch another” then I’ll be doing ok
And at the end of the day, isn’t that what we all want?