I guess I’m pissed about this because it seems to be a broad cultural trend. Like casting Chris O’Donnell in Batman and Robin. :dubious: Robin is not The Young-Adult Wonder. Robin is not The Teenage Wonder. Robin is The Boy Wonder. When he first hooks up with Batman, he should be no older than twelve. Just like it was in the comic books. (He’s fit to be a superhero at that age because his parents were circus acrobats and raised and trained him in that discipline.)
But that would be unacceptable nowadays, because it involves placing a mere child in actual physical danger.
Just like the drummer boys of the Civil War.
Master and Commander, with its 12-year-old midshipman who loses an arm to a cannonball in the very opening of the film, is a better reflection of historical reality.
When did we get so tender about putting small children in harm’s way, anyhow?
I’m sorry, but the idea of Robin as The Boy Wonder always seemed patentedly stupid to me. How is a 12 year old going to stop any criminal? Especially some of the supervillains of pure evil that populate Gotham City.
As is often the case, Batman: The Animated Series gets it right. Dick Grayson is orphened at 12, but doesn’t become Robin until he’s 18, when it’s reasonable he’d be able to stand up to Gotham’s criminal element.
Yeah, and when did women start thinking they could work outside the home? Not to mention all those Negros and Jews thinking they were just as good as regular folk.
Don’t you know? Children are a strange and exotic separate species to the rest of us, and we can’t possibly fathom what it must be like to ever be a child, and therefore our only assumption must be that they are fragile and delicate and should never be allowed to suffer the smallest harm, for fear that they will perish.
Douglas Gresham is OK with it, so it’s good by me. Far as I’m concerned, his approval is the closest we’ll get to an endorsement from St. Jack himself.
Tho they’re both wrong on re-ordering the Chronicles!
It’s because of putting them in harm’s way? That’s weird. I figured it was, like most instances of casting over-18’s, a way to get around child labor laws or a way to sell more movie tickets. Where did you find out it was an “in harm’s way” thing?
Oh, come on. The reason Robin was a 12-year-old boy was that comic books were targeted at 12-year-old boys, and DC wanted their readers to have someone to identify with. They never imagined that actual grownups would be reading their funnybooks, let alone take them seriously.
