Sam is three, and is the inheritor of a fascination with all things Star Wars that now stretches back three generations. My dad took me to see The Empire Strikes Back in 1982 (I think), at the age of about seven, and I’ve had the bug ever since.

I first screened the original Star Wars trilogy for Sam when he was still a baby. He has seen all three of George Lucas’s films at least four or five times – he has never seen the awful prequels – and they are second only to Marvel’s superhero brigade and DC’s Batman in his heart. He’s already worked out that Star Wars stories are much more exciting than Julia Donaldson tales, which often leads to Battle of Yavin-level conflict at bedtime.

It doesn’t help that daddy is currently wading through loads of Star Wars reading material for work. And last weekend, after Sam’s generous auntie took him out and foolishly passed a Disney store, he came home dressed in a full Captain Phasma outfit. The game is up: Sam knows there is a new Star Wars movie coming out.

Usually this would not be a problem. We took Sam to see Cinderella at the cinema six months ago, and he happily sat through the whole thing with only the occasional attempt to crawl over the seat in front of him and deposit himself on some poor unsuspecting soul’s lap. And he likes Star Wars a lot more than Cinderella. In any case, I had planned to take him to an early daytime screening of The Force Awakens, where most of the attendees would be families.

Then the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) rated JJ Abrams’s movie 12A. (It received a PG-13 in the US.) This is fairly unexpected, because the three original Star Wars movies were all rated U in the UK (they were PG in the US). But Disney is clearly pitching its new episode closer to this summer’s action blockbusters, such as Avengers: Age of Ultron and Jurassic World, which both received PG-13 in the US, while the latter got a 12 rather than a 12A in the UK.

Which leaves me with a number of questions: 1) Can I legally take Sam to see the movie? 2) Even if I can, will The Force Awakens simply be too scary for a younger child? And 3) If I attempt to wing it, will I get funny looks from cinema staff and other filmgoers?

So what does the BBFC have to say? On “violence”, the advice is: “There are frequent scenes of moderate violence, including use of blasters and lightsabers, and dogfights between spaceships” but “sight of blood and injury detail is limited and brief”.

Which doesn’t sound so bad. On “threat”, the ratings body says Abrams’s film features “occasional scenes of moderate threat including characters being interrogated using ‘the Force’, which it is implied causes them pain, and characters being held at lightsaber-point”. Finally, “there is infrequent use of very mild bad language [such as] ‘hell’, ‘damn’.”

So far, I’m confident that none of the above is likely to upset Sam, who has his own lightsaber, regularly attempts to use the Force on our cat and his baby brother, and has heard much worse from dad when Liverpool are losing in the football. But what of the all-important “funny look” factor?

“Although 12A means any child accompanied by an adult can attend, there is an expectation that a parent or guardian will exercise a degree of judgement in deciding whether a film is suitable, particularly for very young children,” says Phil Clapp, chief executive of the UK Cinema Association, which represents 90% of UK cinemas. “What may or may not be appropriate often depends on the child, and parents or guardians are best-placed to make that judgment. The BBFC insight information, available for every film on their website, provides detailed advice to allow such a judgment to be made.”

All of this invites parents to work it out for themselves. It doesn’t get much scarier than Luke Skywalker’s scene with Vader in Yoda’s dream cave in The Empire Strikes Back. But I’m forced to admit that Abrams’s movie does look slightly darker than 1977’s Star Wars.

On the other hand, Sam has already seen the bit where Oscar Isaac’s Poe Cameron gets the full effect of Kylo Ren’s evil Force powers in multiple trailers, and the inevitable deaths of major characters are unlikely to damage a kid who’s sat through the demises of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. I’ll be making my final decision after Tuesday, when I’ll see the movie (without Sam) myself. If there’s just too much dark-side horror on show, The Force Awakens might have to wait until he’s older.

To satisfy my son’s appetite for new Star Wars movies, there are always the prequels. He’s going to be very surprised to find out that Captain Phasma is a bumbling gungan outcast under all that fancy chrome stormtrooper gear.