WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS. AND SARCASM.
After much humming, and indeed hawing, a wet Wednesday afternoon in half term left me with no option. I took my two Star Wars-obsessed children to see Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.
Problem is, said Sith film is certificate 12A and the boys are 5 and 2.
Anyway, William, 2, had already seen it in circumstances I’d rather not think about, and I really had run out of things to do. They wanted to watch Finding Nemo and our DVD kept getting stuck at the Australian copyright warning. How many oil rigs are there in Australia, I wonder? Anyway, I digress.
Is the film too scary for children? Well, scary probably isn’t the word. It is dark, and bleak but you probably have to be at least 9 or 10 to appreciate that. I can see why the BBFC made it a 12A – Anakin slaughters the children who are training to be Jedi knights. In a neat touch (or censor’s knife?) you don’t see him do it, he just walks into their room with his light sabre out and you know – well, the adults know – exactly what he’s going to do. Cuts to another scene. Clever George, I thought. But then he ruins it by going back to it later – Obi Wan looks at CCTV footage and sees it happen. I was thinking “NO!!!! MY CHILDREN WILL FIGURE THIS OUT NOW!” and then I started wondering if he shouldn’t have gone the whole hog, shown the slaughter of the innocents in full gory detail and got a 15 or even 18 certificate…
Is the film any good? Bogdan said it was even worse than Episodes I and II, which is a bit harsh. Yes, it all hangs on the effects. Yes, the script is not as good as Episodes IV or V. But Jar Jar Binks only appears very briefly and doesn’t – praise the Lord Vader! – open his mouth.
I’m still not utterly convinced by it though. Anakin’s move to the dark side happens too quickly and he just seems to accept it during a mild bout of constipation. He does not look convinced either. I half expected him to say “mmm, I hear what you say about the Dark Side, Senator Palpatine, but I dunno. Have you got a leaflet or something?”
At least it explained one thing to sad old dad, who couldn’t figure out in the snippets of episodes I and II I’ve seen – why Senator Palpatine and the Emperor and Darth Sidious seem to be the same person.
They are, actually, the same person.
Doh!
I did leave the cinema with a tear in my eye – not because the film was great or moving, but because it ends with Darth Vader, suited up and asthmatic, and the Emperor looking out on the initial construction phase of the original Death Star, surrounded by 1970s-style spaceship chic, attended by a man who looks almost, but not entirely, unlike Peter Cushing. And suddenly, there I am, aged 10, walking out of the Odeon Broadmead in Bristol, having just seen a film called Star Wars, gazing up at a night sky that will never be the same again…
