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I must admit that after walking out of the movie I was having second thoughts about bringing my 7yo daughter to this movie. I felt that it was really dark and in some cases distiurbing for a young child to watch. There is very little comic relief in the movie and as dark as ESB was it is eclipsed by ROTS.

I've taken my daughter to all three LOTR movies and the previous prequels but something made me pause about this one.

Anyone - parents in particular - have any thoughts on this?

It depends entirely upon the specific child. If they've already been exposed to this type of material, or they have a mindset that allows them to easily contextualize what's going on, there wouldn't be any problem. However, if they have less experience or are prone to take too seriously, as many small children are, it might not be so good.

Took my 12 yo nephew the other day. Though I will say, being raised around me seems to have desensitized him a bit. Also, kids 5-7 range were present at the two showings I went too. One was the midnight.

It depends on the kid. The movie was no more violent than the LotR series, and it wasn't as scary. It was just a darker movie. When I saw it this morning, there were a lot of kids in the theater that seemed to take it okay.

Ossus is right about it depending on the child. I recall that occasionally some (nowadays) pretty mundane stuff used to bother, scare, or freak me out before I was about thirteen (afterwards becoming a big, soft-hearted puss). So I'd personally think twice about taking a kid younger than ten years old to it, keeping in mind how they've reacted to similar stuff in the past.

Of course- just remind them that daddy loves them and would do anything for them after the film.

No. I would not take a child under 13 to RotS, unless his parents gave me permission, and even then, I would think twice about it.

If he were my child, I certainly would not allow him to see RotS under any circumstances.

I would not take a child under the age of 10 or 11 to this movie.
I just saw it this morning at the Union City 25 and there were some very young children there. Too young to handle the darker scenes. Several kids had to be taken out of the theatre.

I was talking to a friend online who was going with their in-laws, who were bringing their 10-month-old ..... why, why do idiots do this?

GET A BABYSITTER!

Oh Jesus, babies and toddlers are the worst. I would personally not take a child under the age of five or six to a cinema at all.

Short answer: it depends on the kid.

Stravo wrote:I must admit that after walking out of the movie I was having second thoughts about bringing my 7yo daughter to this movie. I felt that it was really dark and in some cases distiurbing for a young child to watch. There is very little comic relief in the movie and as dark as ESB was it is eclipsed by ROTS.

I've taken my daughter to all three LOTR movies and the previous prequels but something made me pause about this one.

That's because of the theme of Anakin turning to evil. LOTR has nothing so disturbing in it; it's really just like a videogame where there's a "trick" that you need to use in order to beat the end-level boss, so thematically, there's nothing in there that a kid hasn't seen before. The closest LOTR comes to this kind of disturbing theme is when Frodo turns around and says he's going to keep the ring, and even that's not really disturbing because it's written off as the Ring mind-controlling him rather than him suffering from a fatal personality flaw.

The idea that a seemingly good person can turn into a horrible person is quite disturbing. My kids have watched films like "Predator" and "Aliens" without being disturbed at all, but neither of them contain such a theme. Matthew wasn't bothered at all by the movie; I asked him what he thought of Anakin's fall to the dark side and he shrugged. He pointed out that he knew all along that it was going to happen anyway. But David found it much more disturbing; he cried when Anakin knelt before Palpatine to become his apprentice. The gore and the violence were not the issue; it was the moment that the kindly old Senator became a monster, and Anakin became his slave. Unlike Matthew, I don't know if he was expecting it or knew how to handle it.

Having said that, I had no real choice but to take him. Everyone else was going, and he would have been incensed if I told him he couldn't come. And he does say that he likes the first half of the movie, and even demanded toys of General Grievous and his Magnaguards when we were at the mall today. He also wants a toy of the Boga creature, and later today the boys were playing with the Obi-Wan action figure and the General Grievous action figure, re-enacting their battle. I'm sure if you asked him if he wishes he had not seen the film, he would say that he's glad he saw it. And it should be pointed out that he also burst into tears at the end of Dragonheart too, but he has a great time watching "Troy". He perceives emotional tragedy and sorrow more deeply than physical pain and suffering.

Every kid, as I said, is different.

Personally, No I would not take a seven year old child to see ROTS. but that is just me and the way I was raised.

PS. they did not rate the movie PG-13 for nothing.

No, because even as an adult I found the Jedi purge scenes to be disturbing and difficult to watch.

Back when TPM came out, a kid, maybe 5 or 6, was sitting right in front of me. He got really upset when Qui-Gon was killed. He jumped into his fathers arms and had to be hugged for the rest of the movie. TPM is really tame when compared to RotS. I cant imagine how that kid would have reacted if we were watching RotS instead.

I saw plenty of kids at the showings I attended, and the vast majority of them handled it OK. Just how mature do you think a typical kid is? What do you think he's capable of understanding?

I think it's actually very good for a kid to know that someone who seems like a kindly old man might actually be a monster, and someone who seems like nothing more than a whiny teenager might do the same. There have been more than enough news stories in real-life about this sort of thing happening, and kids have all too often been victimized for their failure to recognize the possibility. Kids should know that not all monsters look like snarling orcs or hissing aliens.

Darth Wong wrote:I think it's actually very good for a kid to know that someone who seems like a kindly old man might actually be a monster, and someone who seems like nothing more than a whiny teenager might do the same. There have been more than enough news stories in real-life about this sort of thing happening, and kids have all too often been victimized for their failure to recognize the possibility. Kids should know that not all monsters look like snarling orcs or hissing aliens.

I would definately agree with that. I don't recall on what programme I saw it on, but I recall child experts reporting that when asked about what a "stranger" looks like, a lot of kids described things more along the lines of like Batman or the Shadow in appearence: more or less an obviously identifiable bad guy.

Hearing that one of your kids cried in RotS makes me pine for when I was that young- I can't even remember what my reaction to the big reveal in TESB was, the movie having been part of my life for so long (an incredibly bad copy for most of my child hood, with advertisements edited out badly so the pause button during record was pushed too lated and then turned off too late, so I didn't even know where Ozzell went until I got a proper copy etc).

I did cry when Vader died in RotJ though (on the Death Star II)- the "sad" version of Imperial March still tugs my heart strings to this day.

I took my five-year-old son to it. I warned him in advance that it would be scary, and he put in earplugs to reduce the sound volume. He was appropriately horrified at the right places, but no more so than I or his mother. Mostly, he had his "this is reallly cool" grin in place.

It really depends on the child and if there used to seeing this. A 10 or 11 year old probably could handle it but a 5 or 6 year old I doubt it. Then again I remember seeing several kids around that age seeing the movie without any problems with maybe the occasional covering of eyes by their parents, such as during anakin's fall into the ash or when being reconstructed.

Currald wrote:I took my five-year-old son to it. I warned him in advance that it would be scary, and he put in earplugs to reduce the sound volume. He was appropriately horrified at the right places, but no more so than I or his mother. Mostly, he had his "this is reallly cool" grin in place.

So did I! I was like "Holy shit, I'm watching Star Wars!" I must have had this stupid grin on my face.

Am finally going to see it on Wednesday or Thursday, and will see it again with my sister when I go home. My sister is 12, so I'm sure she'll be able to handle it, but given that a few of my friends came back shocked at how bad the lava scene was, I'll certainly be making sure the old man comes along as well so she's got someone to cling on to if she finds it too gross/scary.

If your kid can handle stuff like LOTR's, I don't see a problem. There are some deep issues in ROTS, but likely a 7 year old would gloss over them. I took my 11, 9, and 7 year olds. My two older boys would have mutinied if I didn't take em and my daughter would have cried like a...well like a little girl if we'd left her behind.

The older precieved some of the deeper theme's while the 9 year old just absorbed the lightsabers and space ships. The daughter, well she liked the SFX's and mostly sat there and ate pop corn for two hours.

I'd say ten and up, no problem, below ten, case by case. If she's particularly sensitive, maybe not. But then, all her school friends are going to see it, so you're probably not going to end up with much of a choice in the matter.

A covert signal system would work best if you do take her... give her a couple of hand squeezes to signal 'Scary part coming up'.

No, I don't think I would. This wasn't a movie for small children (under 10). Not only for the things that already has been mentioned, but also because I believe that some of the plot elements could be confusing for them and would lessen their experience.

I took my nephews (ages 6 and 9) to see ROTS Sunday morning and they handled it fine. The only things that even mildly upset them were:

The younglings hiding behind the chairs. The 6-year-old said "Run you dummies!" out loud in the theatre.

The 9-year-old wondered why Obi-Wan didn't Force push Vader into the lava and finish him once and for all. He also thought Mace Windu should have stabbed Palpatine instead of talking about him being under arrest.

Both wondered why Bail Organa didn't shoot the stormtroopers who shot that Jedi kid or (if he didn't have a gun) crash his speeder on top of them.

Elfdart wrote:The 9-year-old wondered why Obi-Wan didn't Force push Vader into the lava and finish him once and for all. He also thought Mace Windu should have stabbed Palpatine instead of talking about him being under arrest.

Heh. I wondered that too.

Both wondered why Bail Organa didn't shoot the stormtroopers who shot that Jedi kid or (if he didn't have a gun) crash his speeder on top of them.

Tell them he ran away, and built a secret army that did much the same thing.