The 7th Star Wars film was released today and my super keen 11 and 13 year old boys were hyped to see it to say the least …
They are big fans of all the movies and have seen them far more times than I have. In fact i am a relative new comer to the whole series being mostly uninterested until my sons asked me to watch with them. We did a movie a day for 6 days last Christmas holidays to get me up to speed 🙂
The movie was only rated last week and its classified as M. The advisory board says M is an “advisory category” and children under 15 can see it. It says M classified films and computer games may include content such as depictions of violence, supernatural or horror elements that “may be unsuitable for children under 15”.
All of the previous Star Wars films except one were rated PG so here is what they said about it.
I didn’t feel any uneasy moments during the film with my boys however there was one time I offered the youngest that if he felt worried he could come sit closer to me. He didn’t. The scenes that I assume the board were worried about were probably 3-4 times when people were being interrogated and I admit to hating those scenes in any movie … but these were pretty mild since the ‘method’ was imaginary (using the force) and they didn’t seem as impacting. There is a little blood but you don’t see what causes it.
The other themes that are slightly distressing involve betrayal and emotional scenes and I admit they probably bothered me more than the children. Apart from that you have the run of the mill action scenes, chases and implied deaths from alien creatures etc.
Its true I may have forgotten something and as with all M-rated movies you should probably try to see it too so that you can help young ones debrief anything they need to.
Overall we all loved the movie. I honestly didn’t want it to end and in my opinion its up there with the best Star Wars movies in the series. There was just enough action and humour, heart and dialogue/story to make it an entertaining adventure without becoming crazy like I think Lord of the Rings and particularly the Hobbit tend to do. I liken those movies to an episode of the Road Runner .. .a never ending series of near misses and challenges which gets boring quickly.
In short I would give it 4+ stars and I would take kids from 8 or 9 as long as I could go with them … everyone’s different but that is my take on it.
Trailer
What did you think? Leave comments below 🙂
