This was the big Star Wars day, when Tabbatha's son Paul and I had our first together time without his mom (or my girlfriend, depending on how you view it...and as Obi-Wan says, many of the truths we cling to depend on our own point of view). Paul is seven, and really too young to have had a prime Star Wars experience. He's too young even to know the prequels. But he knows the basics because everyone knows the basics, and after hearing me repeatedly quote from the damn things (which I apparently do even more often than I realize), he wanted to know more, and has been peppering me with questions for quite some time.
So today we got down to it. Tabbatha and I agreed three movies might be a bit much, so we settled for the '77 original (which I will continue to call Star Wars, thank you very much; yeah, I know, Episode IV: A New Hope and all that, but the movie I fell in love with back then was called Star Wars, and always will be in my world) and its follow-up, The Empire Strikes Back.
Paul seemed distracted and frankly bored during Star Wars. I was heartbroken, but not surprised. It's a product of the seventies, when even flashy, fast-paced entertainment was slower-paced and more cerebral, and at seven, he might be too young anyway. I was twelve when it came out, and that might be the perfect age: Old enough to appreciate its roundabout way of telling the story (it really does take forever before we even meet Luke), but too young to realize how simplistic the story really is. Still, Paul had lots of questions ("Why does Obi-Wan tell Luke that Darth Vader murdered his dad? Darth Vader is his dad!") that I tried to answer vaguely, to see if he could make connections later on.
Moving on to Empire, I had a bit of trepidation: It's easily the best movie of the bunch, but aside from a handful of killer action sequences, it is extremely talky. How interesting would Yoda's Zen koans be to a seven year old?
As it turns out, very. From the very start, he was clearly more interested in this than the previous film, and laughed out loud several times at Han's mock-tough dialogue. He needed clarification on a few plot points, but what he really loved was Yoda.
At first he was confused--"Everyone knows what Yoda looks like, so why doesn't Luke recognize him when they first meet?" Oh, I pointed out, but when this movie came out, we didn't know Yoda. Nobody'd seen him before. And besides, in the story, Luke's never seen him.
He thought about that. "Is that why Yoda doesn't tell him who he is? He keeps saying he'll take him to meet Yoda." Sure, but why would he say that? "Well, he's just messing with Luke." But why? "Well...Oh! Like Obi-Wan telling Luke that Darth Vader killed his dad! Luke thinks he knows stuff that isn't true!" Which means--"Luke thinks he knows everything, and they want to show him he doesn't."
Ah! Congratulations, my young apprentice. Your training is complete.
From that point on, the scenes with Luke were what held Paul. He seemed restless during the action scenes, the stuff you'd expect a kid his age to respond to the most, and he kept screaming at Luke not to do stupid things, to listen to Yoda and the glowing spirit of Obi-Wan. ("Wait, isn't Obi-Wan dead?" he asked, and I lamely responded that it had something to do with The Force.) The words "Luke's kind of dumb" were uttered a lot, by both of us.
When Tabbatha showed up to take him home, she asked how things went. I told her he might have been disappointed, he might have been expecting more light saber battles, but he seemed to like them okay. Oh, she said, but this is the first time he's seen them. It always takes him awhile to put things together. He'll get home and think about it and call you with a bunch of questions.
They left a few hours ago. So far, no phone calls, although I know they had plans for the evening. So maybe tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm wondering if seven is too young to start enjoying James Bond...
