[I, Brian]

True, there was no blood with the beheading - but it's not so much the presence of blood, as much as the act itself. But you're quite right about the Empire Strikes Back hand amputation - I did actually wonder about that when I was posting the above. There's also the cutting in half of Darth Maul in Phantom Menace - but even though I wasn't keen on my daughter seeing that, it's over in a moment and that's it. With the Jango beheading it's one violent act in a see of general violence.

It's not so much that I'm against violence in film - after all, the Star Wars films inherently involve conflict and some degree of violence in the first place. And the battles aside, in the first Star Wars film - a U rating - we have smouldering skeletal remains and Walrus's dismembered arm.

With Attack of the Clones, I guess the objection was that the fighting between the clones, robots, and insect creatures, just seemed very gratuitous - a fireworks display centered on the theme of death - and little else. It wasn't an issue of blood, as much as the feeling that the battle seemed simply set up as eye-candy. The Jango incident was really just a part of that overall context.