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May the Force Be With ThemWhy does Star Wars still take over the minds of small boys?

By Emily BazelonPosted Thursday, April 2, 2009, at 11:37 AM ET

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The boys swallowed their breakfast in hunks and wrapped themselves in an orange blanket on the living room sofa. Paul popped in the movie. I went out for a run. When I got back, Eli's friend Dylan came over. We entered just before the trash-compactor scene. Eli nodded hi to Dylan. Simon sat, rapt, eyes fixed to the screen. I checked to make sure he was blinking. While Luke dove into the trash, a small periscopelike creature popped up and looked around.

"Hey, it's got an eye," Paul said appreciatively.
"That's a dianoga," Dylan said.
"A what?"
"A dianoga. It turns whatever color it eats."

Eli, Dylan, and Simon, to be fair, also cared about the movie's more profound themes. Bear with me for some plot review here: At the movie's climax, Obi-Wan duels with Darth Vader, buying time for Luke, Leia, and Han Solo to make it to their getaway ship. Obi-Wan says to Vader, in that dear Alec Guinness British accent, "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."* He sees Luke, Leia, and Han appear and then holds his light saber before his forehead, namaste-like. Vader strikes. Obi-Wan disappears, leaving behind his ratty old cloak. Luke calls out in horror as he and his pals make it to the deck of their ship—which actually is pretty close to the fight.

Simon, in the heat of the moment: "Why did Obi-Wan die?"
Eli: "He could have kept on fighting. He could have gotten away."
Dylan: "He couldn't have gotten off the Death Star."
Simon: "But he could have killed Darth Vader!"
Dylan: "Then Palpatine would have killed him. Palpatine and Vader together are more powerful."

The boys had to explain to me who Palpatine is (a Vader ally). In the days since, we've returned often to this question of Obi-Wan's self-sacrifice. Paul offered a meta interpretation: In myths, old wise men have to make way for their young protégés. Gandalf leaves Bilbo for a while, I pointed out. Dumbledore leaves Harry. (Poor Simon: He knows the whole Harry Potter plot before he has turned a single page or seen any of the movies. But that's a problem for another day.)

Simon didn't entirely accept this explanation. He wanted Obi-Wan to have died because he didn't have a choice. But he definitely got the idea that Luke is an apprentice training to be a Jedi knight—he taught me the term for Luke's in-between awkward status: padawan. "Like a squire," Simon put it. I think maybe he's now a padawan, too. He's talking about Star Wars more than ever this week, but he's not losing sleep over it. So what do you think, should we brave The Empire Strikes Back?

Correction, April 7, 2009: This article originally misquoted Obi-Wan Kenobi as saying, "I will come back more powerful ..." (Return to the corrected sentence.)

This piece also appears in Double X.