My son was five when The Phantom Menace came out. I made sure he had the opportunity to see the OOT before that and he loved it. I had no reason to keep the prequels from him as we watched them together in the cinema, not knowing how good or bad they would be.

Despite being a prequel generation kid, he is now 17 and knows which Star Wars movies are good and which are not. I think the "no prequels in my house" stance is going too far with it. It's fair that you don't want to buy the prequels for your own collection, but you wouldn't say no if they specifically asked for a prequel movie for their birthday or something would you? :(

The only time they will enjoy JarJar Binks, robots who say "Roger, Roger" and possibly identify with crappy child actors is when they are children. You can't give it back later.

As someone who grew up with the prequels, I can tell you they're something you grow out of when you begin to see just how terrible they are, while the OT still stands up to scrutiny.

I honestly think there's nothing to fear for future generations.

Like them lil Ewoks taught us, power is meaningless if you're on the Dark Side. Lucasfilm cannot rewrite history or force us to adopt whatever warped perspective allows Lucas to view the prequels as good.

Tyrphanax said:

TheoOdo said:

As someone who grew up with the prequels, I can tell you they're something you grow out of when you begin to see just how terrible they are, while the OT still stands up to scrutiny.

I honestly think there's nothing to fear for future generations.

Like them lil Ewoks taught us, power is meaningless if you're on the Dark Side. Lucasfilm cannot rewrite history or force us to adopt whatever warped perspective allows Lucas to view the prequels as good.

I agree with this completely; having also grown up with, and at one time enjoying, the prequels as well, I can safely say that I recognize today that they're more or less piles of tripe that do the title "Star Wars" injustice, and I think most kids will see that as they grow up as well.

^These.

You raped my childhood. ;(

You're tearing me apart, Lisa!

(and on that note I'm going to bed)

I dunno. I guess its not different then believing in Santa all your child hood and then one day you realized that Santa was never there in the first place and move on with life.

And the main topic thing, this is just weird. Restricting kids from the PT because it wasn't anything like the OT? Awkward...

Tyrphanax said:

TheoOdo said:

As someone who grew up with the prequels, I can tell you they're something you grow out of when you begin to see just how terrible they are, while the OT still stands up to scrutiny.

I honestly think there's nothing to fear for future generations.

Like them lil Ewoks taught us, power is meaningless if you're on the Dark Side. Lucasfilm cannot rewrite history or force us to adopt whatever warped perspective allows Lucas to view the prequels as good.

I agree with this completely; having also grown up with, and at one time enjoying, the prequels as well, I can safely say that I recognize today that they're more or less piles of tripe that do the title "Star Wars" injustice, and I think most kids will see that as they grow up as well.

As a person, you "grow into" certain things, and good cinema is one of those things. It's like hating coffee, or mushrooms on pizza, or green olives as a kid; or like loving sugary cereal, or eating frosting out of the can, or wanting to subsist off of candy. There's a number of things you hate/love as a kid that you end up loving/hating as an adult.

 Have a younger PT generation cousin that owns all 6 movies on his laptop.

He helped me get Harmy's movies, so he's cool.

he is too young to remember when he first saw the OT on video but grew up with PT.  during the theatrical run it seemed like he enjoyed them when we talked about it.  But it was interesting to hear him say things like "yeah, but those movies have a lot of computer graphics".  It gave me the impression that little kids are actually smarter than give them credit for.  and PT were never anywhere near as popular to kids his age as POTC, LOTR, Shrek or the new Batman movies. 

he is in college now and thinks the PT sucks and the OT is a lot better.  He is worried Lucas is gonna replace Yoda in ESB with a CGI yoda.  He says the movies don't work if you watch them in numerical order because it looks like the PT is more technologically advanced than the OT.

I never told him my true feelings of the PT because it was I who introduced him to star wars and told him and his sister that TPM was gonna be awesome.  pretty embarassing to be a fan of something you think is going to be cool only to have it suck ass :(

so when he said PT is bad, I asked him if he was saying that cuz he learned it from the RLM videos.  He didn't, but just last week he told me he saw them and thought they are hilarious and spot on.  especially this one for Episode III

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCTffAjsUfs  :(

anecdotal story to be sure.  hopefully many more like it.

Oy, i'm done with this subject. :0