Jacob meets Darth Vader

Over the last week, I have introduced Jacob to the original Star Wars trilogy. And he loves it. But, it was a learning experience for me as well. For one, Star Wars can lead to some interesting moral dilemmas in the mind of a five year old.

Let's just say I failed to "foresee" certain things.

He has been asking about Star Wars since he got his Clone Wars Tag book. The problem was that he knew of Anakin as a good guy and the Clone Troops as good guys as well. That spin off takes place during the time when Anakin is a Jedi Knight and the Clone troops fought for the Republic.

So, I had my work cut out for me. My negligence allowed him to be corrupted by the new stuff early, which is like giving up a TD on the opening kickoff.

I decided to show him the movies in their original order so that he would not be too crushed by Anakin's turn to the Dark Side. He could know Vader as evil at first, see him redeemed, then learn the back story.

I was afraid he would be bored by New Hope, but he loved it. He was scared by the trash compactor scene a little, but not bad. On second viewing he said he didn't like that part.

He LOVES everything dealing with "Light Swords" (a term he picked up from the new Clone Wars book... which should not infuriate me quite as much as it does, yet... here we are).

He asked a lot of questions like "Does disappearing mean he died?" (he almost cried when Obi Wan died) and "why did the Storm Troopers kill them?" I wasn't ready for those questions.

Empire Strikes Back is my favorite of the bunch. I remember being terrified in the theater when the Wampa came at Luke. I figured Hoth would win him over, and it seemed to. But, the Middle of Empire just isn't real kid friendly. Jacob loved the light-saber duel (that's better) between Luke and Vader (although he didn't catch the lost hand).

But, it's clearly the most adult-themed of the movies and THIS movie led to a whole bunch of tough questions. Such as:

"I want Anakin to get out of Darth Vader's heart" (Not a question, but how do you respond to that?)

"He's his father? Why is his father dressed like Darth Vader?" (OK, that one was funny).

"Why was that a dream?" (This was when Luke "kills" Vader on Dagoba... we all wonder that one, kiddo. There is no answer).

Finally... "Is he really his father?" Yes, yes he is.

Jacob was clearly unnerved by the end of Empire, so I had to accelerate his viewing of Return of the Jedi to the next day so he would have some context. We explained that Luke was going to try to make his father good again.

Jacob loved Jedi. He loved the green light saber and really liked when Vader turned back to good. I think that was necessary for him, but I'm no longer certain it will make Episode III any easier.

Jacob is really excited to see Episode I because it will have Anakin as a kid. I have that one, but I'll need to borrow Episodes II and III. My effort to show Vader's redemption may have been for naught because he will definitely relate to young Anakin.

I guess there isn't a real easy way to do this. Either you let him start with Episode I and watch him struggle watching the good guy go bad... or you try to redeem Vader first, and... well, we'll see how this goes.

Now, if I can just get him to stop saying "light swords." My current tactic is to say "when you say that you hurt daddy." He seems unfazed. Yeah, making Vader sympathetic was probably a mistake.