Our kid had us read to him every part of the Star Wars story multiple times before we just let him watch #4 a week ago. It accomplished the main objective laid

Our kid had us read to him every part of the Star Wars story multiple times before we just let him watch #4 a week ago. It accomplished the main objective laid out in this nice article: Timing it so they're able to "discuss and analyze the themes appropriately." I too feel movie #1 is one to skip, but for a different, simpler reason: It's about political maneuvering, which is very difficult to explain to kids. My 7 year old son still doesn't fully get it after reading the book several times and me attempting to explain in several different ways why Palpatine's strategy was so effective (cause wars in order to steadily increase his power). He needs a foundation of more basic political concepts before he can get these subtleties. My wife even had trouble understanding the movie when she first saw it. Without understanding what the story is about, it has the feel of random mayhem. Back to the main point: There's indeed a lot of violence and our family was one of the last holdouts among peers. We knew many kids who had seen Star Wars before the age of 5, and we also know a lot of kids who think of killing and violence as trivial everyday things. Like the author of this post, we didn't want our kid to be brought up like that so we went through he effort of reading and thoroughly discussing the books. edit: minor cleanup