While Star Wars is certainly the most popular and exciting theme, it has become my least favourite. The way I see kids playing with the LEGO seems quite limiting. AND that’s ok, it’s just s party! See lets do it.
And… ultimately, there seems to be something fundamental about boys wanting to play ‘good guys verses bad guys’, and I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. The kinds of thinking that kids do while playing these games is likely part of developing their sense of morality.
The trouble with Star Wars is that the story has already been told. Kids playing Star Wars don’t seem to put much thought into who is good or bad, or if there are “good and bad” people in the first place. When playing with more generic LEGO, like City, I see kids working to define those rolls themselves, and that seems much more valuable to me than playing out someone else’s story.
In defense of SW, I think there is good stuff there. Darth Vader’s story takes us through a journey that most heroes don’t travel. And ultimately, he chooses to defeat evil, after becoming evil. Kilo Ren follows a similar arc.
Harry Potter comes with some similar problems, but the story is not ultimately a war movie, and doesn’t have as much violence in the plot (at least not the first 4 books/films). Harry Potter explores a large diversity of plot points. Star Wars is mainly the same plot in each movie. Blow up the super weapon before it blows everyone up. SW does have the Pod-Race, but kids never played with the Pod-Race when I brought it to parties, and when they did it was only to attached guns and use the racers as extra ships with which to do battle.
Having said all that, I am no child psychologist, and this is just a party, a one time event. I can’t imagine that kids playing Star Wars for one more afternoon will make a huge difference. I just get tired of the “lets blow up the bad guys” scenario, which accounts for half of the average Star Wars party dialogue. I also see my parties inspiring kids to do more building, often on a bigger scale than they are used to building. I would much rather inspire them to build a Fire Station than to build a Death Star. 🙂