A shocking disclosure! A plea for help! Restore freedom to the galaxy!

I am a married guy with three little boys.

Maybe that’s not such a shocking disclosure, but it’s something I haven’t mentioned here on Burbanked before. For the first year or so of having this site, I had it in mind to retain a certain amount of anonymity, but as time stretched on, I’ve slowly whittled away at that concept and have decided that a more personal approach is what I’m seeking here.

You, of course, are free to prefer it one way or the other. Until you suggest otherwise, I’ll forge ahead with my own nefarious plans.

I don’t mean for this site to ever become a treatise on my boys or my family, but it occurs to me that dragging their involvement into it may, on occasion, help me make a point or explore a given issue. So much of my moviegoing experiences anymore are directly tied to my family, after all, so it’s kind of natural that I’d mention them. Long gone are the days when I was able to zip out to three or four movies every week, devil-may-care California-livin’ bachelor that I was, and see everything good or bad that I chose. If anything, going to the movies these days is far more precious and extraordinary to me - so I take it very seriously and get way more upset when I’ve spent the time and money to go and return home disappointed.

Anyway, my boys. In the interest of holding onto some smidgen of anonymity for them, at least until that point that they’re old enough to blog for themselves become physicists or world-class surgeons or something, I will refer to them in these pages as per the following:

In ascending age order: Michael, Sonny and Tom Hagen.

Now this is not to say that my oldest - Tom Hagen - is an orphan who I took in and made my consigliere. Tom Hagen is simply my eldest, every bit my natural son as Michael and Sonny. I’ve chosen his pseudonym simply because 1) he’s the oldest, 2) he’s responsible and dependable and because 3) even in jest, I can’t bring myself to refer to one of my boys as “Fredo”. I’m sure I’ll do enough psychological damage to these tots over the course of decades without associating one of them as a cowardly betrayer.

Not that the fictional characters of Michael and Sonny and Tom Hagen are necessarily paragons of virtue and morality either, but hopefully you’re seeing my point.

Ah, yes, my point. Allow me to get to it.

With all of the recent brouhaha over the 30th anniversary of Star Wars, it’s been on my mind quite a bit. We’ve seen copious mentions of the new making-of-Star Wars book that has come out; Star Wars at the Post Office; the recent Star Wars screening in L.A. and more.

I’m really, really ready to share Star Wars with Tom Hagen for the first time.

He’s seen bits and pieces, of course, and it’s pretty impossible to escape exposure to SW on many levels - from the toys he sees in the stores to the costumes at Halloween to the fact that I’ve got an original Empire one-sheet on the den wall with a rather menacing and (possibly) nightmare-inducing Darth Vader looking like he’s ready to kick some Jedi tail.

But it’s different to sit down with him and watch the whole movie together. He’s old enough to get it, I think, and I don’t believe that it could be upsetting or scary to him - but I want him to enjoy it. I want to be able to share that sense of magic and wonder that we all felt when we experienced it, and I was nearly twice his age in 1977 when I saw it with my friends for the first time.

So here’s the big question that I’ll pose to you:

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I’ve pretty much decided that Tom Hagen and I will indeed watch Star Wars together soon; I’m just curious to hear what people think about this. Are we living in an age now where kids are savvy and media-saturated enough to not be scared or shocked by anything? Do we need to be overly sensitive to kids being frightened or confused by non-Pixar, “real” movies?

In the end, I just want to be a good movie dad and hopefully someday avoid this kind of thing: