We’ve discussed whether or not the movie had a conservative or Objectivist agenda before.Nobody said he’s pulling it from nowhere - they said it’s mistaken.
This one won’t win the thread, since it wasn’t even a “children’s” movie but a “family” movie:
Ring of Bright Water
Stunningly boring, slow-paced movie that starts off in the most dismal city streets with our hero, a computer programmer. Perhaps the whole point was to bore the children to sleep before the somnolent romance begins. Anyhow, there’s an adorable river otter that plays a large part, frolicking and cavorting and being wonderful.
There is no “coming of age” aspect to what happens to the otter at the end. I think grownups are supposed to buck up and understand that that’s what happens to wild animals. And the kids are supposed to be asleep by then.
I loved ****All Dogs Go to Heaven ****as a kid, *because *it was so bizarre & creepy & disturbing. That, The Secret of Nimh, Watership Down & the animated **The Hobbit **were some of my favorite movies as a child. I haven’t seen it in years though, so I’m curious what I’d think of it now.
I had the same reaction, and I wasn’t even a child.
And neither was John Galt.
Agreed about Bridge to Terabithia, but only because it started out as a fantasy movie and suddenly turned into a ‘child coping with death’ movie. Nothing wrong that movies about death - kids are curious about that and movies are a good way for them to get some perspective on it - but it bloody well switched genres.
I can’t say that Syndrome is anything but evil. He murdered hundreds and hundreds of superheroes, usually torturing them first, purely because he wanted to be the most powerful person left. That’s, well, pretty damn evil.
How is that a genre switch? Can’t fantasy books also be dark in tone? I didn’t read a lot of those books, but I’ve read other posters’ reactions to books like the Narnia books or Tolkien (many of whom read said books at a young age), and I don’t think they were expecting everything to be nice and fun just because it’s fantasy.
And isn’t it a testament to what a good writer Katherine Paterson (or whoever the writer is) that they can write such a great book that it makes you care so much about the character’s death? I always enjoyed a book that made me feel something. Most books/films don’t make me do that–I like when I find something that actually makes me experience…something.
The Incredibles also saved people free of charge. In fact, their selfless altrusim would have made John Galt sick to the stomach.
Because it started out seeming like a fantasy movie, but wasn’t actually a fantasy movie at all. There was no real Terabithia.
TBH, it’s really not that hard to make viewers feel sad about a kid dying, but the character who died was engaging. It was a decent movie about coping with a friend’s death, but it just wasn’t obvious at first that that was the type of movie it was.
I just realised that this post and the one before have TON of spoilers, and it’s too late to change the previous one. Same goes for a lot of other posts in this thread. I’ll report my post to get a mod’s attention because there should probably be ‘spoilers probable’ in the thread title. Yeah, I assumed there’d be spoilers, but it seems not everyone does.
I think the impression that BTT was fantasy was more a result of how the movie was promoted than the actual story. The ads for the movie were very misleading. The fantasy themes were nowhere near as central as the ads made it look. The book, especially, was much more concerned about the real themes of childhood alienation, escapism and tragedy.
Agreed about the ads, but the first half (roughly) of the film made it seem likely that they were about to cross over the bridge into some fantasy world. I haven’t read the book.
Gremlins may have been set at Christmas time, but the movie was actually a summer release, and it wasn’t marketed as Christmasy. Lots of kids did go see it that summer (myself included) and it did spark controversy which partially caused PG-13 to come into existence, so maybe it fits the thread, but the picture you’re painting is off.
My friends and I all LOVED Gremlins and didn’t find it scary in the slightest. Even my wimpiest friend liked the film. Kids can take a lot of scary stuff - hell, they read fairy tales and watch Tom and Jerry and their imaginations provide them with much scarier stuff most of the time. ‘Scary’ does not equal ‘unsuitable for children.’
‘Too mind-blowingly surreal,’ ‘dealing with too many adult issues (such as politics - with references that kids won’t get),’ or ‘too much sex’ makes a film potentially unsuitable for children, and even then it varies (except with onscreen sex - I do think that’s always unsuitable for pre-teens. This is, hopefully, one of the most uncontroversial statements even made on this board).
Very true. I think a lot of times adults are a lot more skeeved because when you think about a lot of these things, they seem scarier.
For the record, I never saw Gremlins as a kid. Or at least not the whole way through. Now I really like it for some reason. But even as a child, E.T. bothered me. It was…dreck. Manipulative, disgusting dreck. And the alien wasn’t even cute.
I’d rather have had something that seemed cute but was evil than something as “benign” and dull as E.T., Darwin’s Answer to the Aliens.
You’re right, I retract my earlier remarks.
A movie that I think had a bad message for kids was The Polar Express, in which the protagonist is mocked and berated for not being a “believer.” The message was that it’s not ok to ask questions or be skeptical about obvious baloney. It was subliminally anti-atheist and anti-intellectual.
I don’t think “subliminally” is the word you’re looking for there. 
I don’t think it’s the “most” screwed-up movie aimed at children, but I do remember my nephews (aged about 7 and 8 at the time) being terrified by parts of Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. Apparently, the Child Catcher and the kids being held prisoner under the castle did it. It didn’t bother me when I was their age, though.
Someone else mentioned that earlier. I can’t remeber anything specific about how bad the film was, because the whole of it was just awful. We only saw it because it had a partially 3D version at Imax - the Science Museum Imax, believe it or not. My daughter hated it. Well, she didn’t come out saying ‘I hated that,’ but it’s the only movie ever where she didn’t chat about it or play out scenes from it or hold onto it in any way.
Even the animation was awful. The main boy looked like a waxwork model, which is, frankly, a little freaky.
Oh, loads of kids were scared by the child-catcher. Being scared is not necessarily a bad thing. Often, it’s just externalising fears from real life. Not that your nephews were actually at risk from being caught by a child catcher, but that something about him segued with their real life fears.
A movie about a hood drive by shooting?
Disney was just way ahead of the times 