Hot take maybe, but I feel like the phrases “This was in a kid’s movie?!” or “This movie/scene traumatized me as a kid” when talking about movies from like the 80’s/90’s/early 2000’s, has actually been really damaging about the way we think of and critique or criticize movies from those decades that many of us either grew up on watching and/or loved as kids and turned out fine.
Was Littlefoot’s mom dying sad? Yes. But I don’t think it was traumatizing. If you felt sad for Littlefoot because his mom died, then congratulations, that was the point! You were SUPPOSED to feel sad!
Sexual innuendos that would fly over a kids head in an old Disney or non-Disney animated movie are not some damning eye-widening thing we must pass judgement on today for having been done, but should be appreciated that movies were made for families- with both child and parent in mind. How many of us have gone to watch an old nostalgic fav and only now realized or understood as an adult, the jokes our parents laughed at that we were unaware of or unknowing of as children, and appreciated those jokes and scenes all the more??
So then why am I constantly watching people my age or younger than me, take those scenes now and criticize how it should actually have not been in the movie at all? Why?? Tell me why, Karen? Tell me why, Steve? Because you are so chronically online that you are allowing yourself to succumb to anti-sex/anti-adult discourse and propaganda??
Are the Skeksis freaky to look at? Yes. Did Morla scare me as a child when I watched The Neverending Story for the first time? Yes.
But they also fascinated me as well.
As a kid, every time Morla came on my screen (note the every time, as in, despite my being afraid of this creature, I would still watch this movie over and over) I would dive under our big square coffee table and either cover my eyes or watch Morla and Atreyu talk to each other in both fear and fascination. She was ugly and creepy and scary and cool.
And over time, I began to watch the scene not from under the coffee table, but out in the open, either on the floor in front of the tv or on the couch alone. I made that decision!! I came to the conclusion over time, while still very young, that she was not as scary as I believed!!
Also, it floored me later on to learn that she was a Turtle! A fact which is pretty obvious now with my Adult eyes, rather than my kid ones. And I gotta say it was BECAUSE of Morla I developed a like of Turtles.
All this to say, I think we are essentially robbing children of deciding for themselves what is too scary for them, and denying ourselves the fun and togetherness family films brought us all growing up. I think we are damning movies being made today and will be made in the future by beholding them to some current online consensus that “This Thing Bad Actually”, and robbing creatives of making work that tackle larger speaking points and ideas in their chosen mediums.
Once Upon a Forest is SUPPOSED to make you think about the environment- It’s SUPPOSED to show you the horror of environmental destruction and you’re SUPPOSED to be scared for and worry about these forest animals.
All Dogs Go To Heaven/The Rescuers is SUPPOSED to make you think and feel about how we not only treat children (orphaned or otherwise) but about animals as well.
Movies are SUPPOSED to make you think and feel and question the world around you and learn from its messages.
Movies, especially movies for children, should not just be wrung out and watered down to poopy silly haha fart jokes in bright colors and fast paced action with no breathing room or a real or cohesive plot, thought, message, or anything to say about anything!
(That said, some messages can also be very wrong to teach children, as some films in the past decade have proved to have done; The most damning one recently being the live-action Lilo & Stitch, but I digress)
I could go on and on, but I believe my point has been made.
CinemaSins, Saberspark, and other content creators like them, who do nothing to analyze or highlight a film or scene and boil it down to “This was in a kids movie?!” are perpetrators of the ongoing problem in how we think and critique films aimed at families and children, and it’s really starting to piss me off quite frankly.
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