My eldest daughter, who is eight-years old this year, loves listening to podcasts on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. The kid-friendly topics vary from podcast to podcast, covering things like story-telling, music, general knowledge, history and STEM.
One unifying theme among all these different podcasts (other than being produced in America) would be they are totally steeped in pop culture. So after countless podcast episodes, my daughter had A LOT of questions about a subject matter close to heart, Star Wars.
I found myself presenting the Star Wars Prequel and Original trilogies in condensed, oral form to my daughter (and her younger sister, who is three) over several car trips to and fro her grandparents place, and one night in the living room. There were three important things that I noted after that exercise.
Firstly, it turns out that my daughter is some sort of Star Wars fangirl despite her being too young to remember watching Revenge of the Sith with me. Secondly, I had a very easy time breezing through the Original Trilogy.
It’s the classic hero’s quest; most fairy tales are along the that straightforward. I think thought that at the end of it, my daughter realized that Vader is a really horrible father (“Daddy, doesn’t he know that they are his CHILDREN?!“), but it did spark another inquisitive follow up query on how he ended up that way.
Third and most importantly, retelling the Prequel Trilogy made me realize that it was actually quite awesome, and in the mind of an eight-year old, totally fantastical, so much more than the Original Trilogy.
Describing Anakin Skywalker and his pod-racing hijinks and piloting of the Naboo fighter at the tail end of Episode 1 elicited WOWs from my daughter. Ditto the Trade Federation and its army of droids. Her curiosity was piqued at the description of Gungans (and object of derision for the prequels, Jar Jar Binks). She went “ooh, so that’s how they met” when I mentioned about Anakin meeting Padme for the first time.
Being a space enthusiast, she had questions on Tatooine, Naboo, and Coruscant, and I had fun describing these places to her as the prequels did such a good job to flesh these places out (particularly Coruscant). Anakin’s training even came up, and my daughter had questions like when (and what) did Obiwan Kenobi train Anakin, and what was Yoda’s role in his education.
On the matter of Episode 2, my daughter had a lot of questions about the Clone Troopers (or rather the Grand Army of the Republic), like why were they needed (to battle the droid army from Ep. 1), who was the template for the clone army (Jango Fett) and finally, how many were there (I’m not sure of the figure myself).
Episode 3 was the darkest episode by far in the prequels, and she was really excited to hear the betrayal of the Clone Troopers, and the revelation that Palpatine was the big baddie pulling the strings behind the scenes. She had burning questions (lol) on how Anakin turned up into Darth Vader, what were his injuries at the hands of his old master. She basically put two and two together to summarize that his suit/armor is both prothesis and mobile life-support.
She ended the night by asking what were my favorite movies from both the Original and Prequel Trilogies. I answered Episodes III and V. She followed up with a question on whether Darth Vader is my favorite character, since both movies had pivotal Vader scenes. She was delighted to know that my answer is yes, and I’m happy to know that my eldest is ever so inquisitive.
