I'll be imagining that General Grievous is actually George Lucas

I just finished the novelization of the new Star Wars movie, Revenge of the Sith. It was an entertaining read full of excitement and surprises. Who could have guessed that the final epic battle between good and evil would come down to Cliegg Lars and Watto? If you’re looking forward to discovering the identity of Anakin’s father like I was, though, you may want to lower your expectations. Now that I’ve read the book, I have a serious beef with George Lucas; a beef that has nothing to do with Gungans; a beef that, believe it or not, actually relates a little bit to Abbie.

Lucas has described his new film as darker than its predecessors. It snagged a PG-13 rating, so it has the rating to back up the talk. If the novelization accurately describes the violent visuals from the movie, this will be nothing young children should see. It contains many scenes of graphic, even gory violence, especially just about every scene with General Grievous. Lots of limbs, heads, and other various appendages are dismembered. Innards splatter. Children die. And I don’t even want to know what Anakin looks like just before being fitted with the Darth Vader suit. Like I said, this sounds like nothing young children should see. Lucas, to his credit, has mentioned in interviews that parents will want to leave young children at home. Good for him. So why is this violent movie being marketed so aggressively to young children? To be fair, I have a problem with all advertising to young children, but more so if the product is something said children shouldn’t consume in the first place.

Go to the supermarket, and you’ll see Star Wars characters on all sorts of creatively spelled kid-friendly sweet and/or salty snacks. M&M’s. Cheez-Its. Unkle Rhobb’s Sweeeet Nukular Tchunks. Stroll down a toy aisle and you’ll see acres of Star Wars toys, though to be fair it’s debatable for which age group these toys are aimed (somewhere between ages 3 and 50). What really annoyed me was a commercial I saw on Nickelodeon during SpongeBob SquarePants for the Star Wars toys now available with Burger King kid’s meals. These toys appeared to be cutely deformed Star Wars characters with some lifelike action, such as the bigheaded Yoda with realistic back flipping action. Not pictured was a Neimoidian with realistic brain-splattering action.

Thanks to a superhuman ability to release versions of his movies that are just different enough from the previous release to make them desirable, Lucas already has more money than God. Would it hurt that much to ease up on the juvenile oriented marketing for one film? Even though Abbie is too young to want to see it, I’m dreading the day when someone, possibly Britney Spears, targets something inappropriate directly to Abbie’s demographic. Sorry, I’m getting off my soapbox now. I can’t wait to see the hilarious scene where Jar Jar is promoted to padawan.