Natalie Portman Won't Show Her Kid The 'Star Wars' Prequels (But Not Because They're Bad)

Since starring in the Star Wars prequels, Natalie Portman has given birth to a son who's now really into Star Wars. You might think that'd make her kid the one Star Wars fan who really digs the prequels — at least he's pre-disposed to like one of the main characters, which is more than a lot of fans can say – but according to Portman that's not the case. In fact, she said, she hasn't allowed her son to even watch them. Find out why below. 

Portman told Jimmy Kimmel that although her son knows about the Star Wars prequels, he hasn't seen them. "It's kind of a shame..." Portman begins, and you might wonder if she's talking about how the prequels themselves turned out. But it's not that.

You know, when I made it, I was like, 'This is going to be the coolest thing, one day when I have kids, I can show them.' And boys, of course, are obsessed with it and know all about it before they've seen it. Then I realized, I die in the movies. I feel like it's kind of a scary thing to show your kid.

That's probably for the best. At five, a kid probably isn't emotionally equipped to watch his mom die onscreen, even if she's sitting right there to reassure him it's all make-believe. And I can't imagine it's especially fun for a parent, either, to show her kid what it might look like if she'd died giving birth. Portman will still get the opportunity to share the films with her son someday, just not right this second.

Plus, this means that unlike a lot of kids born after the prequels came out, Portman's son will enjoy them in something closer to the old-school order that we grew up with, starting with the original trilogy before moving into the prequels. The "correct" order to show them in continues to be something of a debate among Star Wars fans, but Portman's decision is a point for the original-trilogy-first team. Even if it is for a pretty unusual reason.