Rant and rave for Star Wars

It was really good.

Aside from my own personal minor quibbles with the established Star Wars canon, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, was a great conclusion to the whole saga. Plenty of great fights, good Yoda moments, classic bad acting and dialogue, and the big pay-off at the end of finally seeing the man in the suit – Vader himself. Yeah, it was good.

So, there’s my rave. Now for my rant.

The movie is PG-13, and with good reason. It’s violent and much darker than The Empire Strikes Back, with much more psychological issues at play. It deserved the rating, and George Lucas himself said he wouldn’t fight it because it was so much darker. In my opinion, no child younger than 9 or 10 should see this movie period, and no child should see it without their parents screening it first (a good policy for all movies PG or higher).

The Webmaster and I saw the movie (sans Munchkin, she went to play with Grandma) at the Cinerama in Seattle with his company. Free tickets for all. It was great. Except for all of his co-workers who brought their young children along. There were several children there under 10 (and it was an afternoon showing, so these kids that were school-age were obviously getting out of school early to see the movie), and one particular co-worker had his wife, 2 sons (one high-school age, one about 10), and 3 year old daughter with him. They sat right in front of us. This little girl did NOT belong in that theater. Her mother expressed doubt that she’d be able to sit through the movie, but was hoping that she’d fall asleep during it. Fat chance. She didn’t want to sit still, she wanted to run. She wasn’t paying a bit of attention to the movie, fortunately, because it probably would have scared her, but by the middle of the movie, Mom and Dad were trying to take her out. Did the 3 year old comply? No. She ran from her parents and decided to run up and down in front of the movie screen (we were a few rows from the front). Not only was she deliberately taunting them, she was now disturbing everyone in the front. It took a good five minutes for the parents to corral her and take her out. I was annoyed beyond belief. I tried not to let it spoil the rest of the afternoon for me.

So, I am just horrified by the number of parents who either are willfully ignorant or blatantly stupid when it comes to what’s best for their kids. Anyone who had read any kind of review for this movie would have gotten a clue about the PG-13 rating and the violence. But the ignorant simply think, “It’s Star Wars!” and take the kids. It boggles my mind. It also blows me away that so many parents thought a movie was more important than school. That makes me angry, because it teaches kids that if the tickets are free, or the movie is important to Mom and Dad, it’s okay to skip school. And little children do NOT BELONG AT MOVIES. I have not taken the Munchkin to a movie in the theater, and I don’t plan on it until she can behave herself. I didn’t even take her when she was an infant, because I didn’t want to disturb anyone else around me in case she started crying or fussing. I guess I’m more courteous than the average person, because I arranged for childcare. Again, it’s okay, because the tickets are free – let’s take the whole family! But it wasn’t a company-only showing, there were other people there who didn’t know who the 3 year old was, and their movie-going experience was disrupted because of irresponsible parenting.

I’m really not trying to ride a high horse here. But when you do the decent thing, it’s harder to turn a blind eye to the indecent, and I don’t suffer fools gladly. And the sad thing is, the next time the company has a movie showing, those same little kids and their irresponsible parents – they may be good co-workers, but they are stupid parents – will be there.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 23rd, 2005 at 7:48 pm and is filed under Media.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed and Both comments and pings are currently closed.