A few days ago Jungle Boy decided to watch Star Wars again. The original. So he put on the DVD and I watched it with him while I sewed.
"What a great movie! It's so old but the special effects and everything are so great!"
"You're kidding, right?"
And then it hit me. This is the only version of Star Wars he knows. The doctored up, edited, "enhanced" messed up current version. Not the beloved version I saw in theaters a dozen times when I was a teenager.
"You know, Han shot Greedo first actually. This version is just wrong." I explained the whole thing carefully, but Jungle Boy didn't see what difference it made. I felt like a complete failure as a parent. Why oh WHY did I get rid of my old VHS version?
So today I stopped by the thrift store, where they had numerous VHS versions. It was an interesting game trying to figure out which one was probably the oldest. I spent all of $2.50 for this trilogy. Tonight I'm looking forward to a bowl of popcorn and the original, grainy, shoddy blue screen version without all the extra cgi characters and effects.
Lest you think I'm completely lax as a parent, be comforted that I did get Jungle Boy this little hard-to-find gem for Christmas:
The original Return of the Jedi soundtrack. With the original Ewok celebration song at the end. Because before there was a sullen teenage Anakin Skywalker pasted into the scene, before the snooze-inducing prequels, there was a glorious victory song. Sung by an Ewok chorus. This scene should just never have been messed with.
I may have made some mistakes as a parent, but letting my children have the wrong ideas about Star Wars isn't going to be one of them.
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2 people stopped folding laundry to write:
I learned something new, I didn't realize they changed it. I saw it in the theaters as a teen & my dd15 is a HUGE star wars fan. I guess I should look for the old version. I wonder when they changed it?
Good Mom...glad to know I am not the only one who found the prequals dull. After the first time seeing Episode I, I fell asleep every time that stinking pod race came on the movie screen (I watched it six times with my husband while he tried to duplicate his childhood of watching the movies in the theater - he did not succeed).
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