Though I'm in no rush for my 8 year old son to grow older (I already miss some of his younger chubby faced days as a toddler), I must admit I can't wait to start watching some slightly more adult movies with him. He's mostly a Pixar/Dreamworks animation kind of guy, but we have run a couple of "live action" films by him ("The Princess Bride", "The Adventures Of Robin Hood", "Back To The Future"). And of course he loves "Star Wars"...Sigh, all 6 of the damn things...
A year or so ago I wondered if perhaps he would like "Raiders Of The Lost Ark". It's fun, exciting and (I thought from memory) not very scary. I re-watched it myself to double check and realized there certainly were spots that would likely scare him. Did he really need to see a more realistic death by gunshot? Time enough later...He tends to focus on stuff like that and can get nightmares.
But recently, he's been intrigued about good old Indiana since he's been playing a new Lego video game with characters from the movies (the video game is actually pretty darn fun). He absolutely doesn't want to watch those spirits coming out of the Ark (which I agree he would find scary), but was wondering about the scenes taken from the different levels of the game - in particular the chase scene on the trucks (when Indy crawls under the moving truck, etc.). So I cued it up and we watched it. He thought it was great and so we explored a bit more. We tried the scene in Marion's Nepalese bar where Indiana goes to get the medallion. It's the introduction to both Marion as well as the creepy Major Toht.
So the scene continues and we're all enjoying it when I suddenly remember during the big blaze, that there's about to be a relatively gruesome scene where one of the thugs gets shot in the head. I figure I should kinda fast forward over it, but since I was caught offguard a bit, I pressed Pause instead. Freeze framed right at the exact moment where the blood spurts out his head from the bullet wound..."Rats", I thought. So I tried to FF again. Of course, when in Pause mode FF actually starts slow motion. So now, we have a nice slow motion close up of the bloody face. "Damn". I figured I would just hit Play and then FF again. As I hit Play the body falls forward into the camera and Marion screams.
"Son-of-a-...". I looked at my wife who just had a "Oh, for God's sake" look on her face. Then I looked at my son and he says:
"Well, that was harsh. Daddy, can we watch the big boulder chase him out of the cave now?"
I guess he'll be OK.
7 comments:
Awww, sounds like he bounced back a-ok.
You'd be freaked out at the things I saw at his age. Or, maybe not...
I figure we follow his lead with this stuff...I had pretty much figured Raiders wouldn't be on the agenda until another few years from now, but when his interest was peaked by the game, I saw an opportunity to gauge his reaction to it.
Man, you just never know if you're totally screwing them up or if it's just another experience that they build on. I'm betting on the latter (if I explain that these are just actors and no one gets hurt, he usually comes back with "Daddy, of course no one gets hurt - it's only a movie!").
Great comeback line! hehe.
I remember being around nine years old and sitting down to watch "First Blood" with my father. I think we were ten minutes or so into the movie before he jumped up and ejected it out of the VCR. I remember it like it was yesterday, the scene where Brian Dennehy whacks Sylvester Stallone with the billy club in jail.
It wasn't the violence for my father, it was the F-word that followed after the hit. The irony is great, because while helping my father with home-improvement projects afterwards, I was introduced to a whole new world of profanity.
Haha, I remember being taken along to see The Godfather at the age of seven (!!!). What I found amusing is that during the wedding scene at the beginning, my parents covered my eyes so I wouldn't see the sex scene, while the rest of the film, with all the bloody gore and killings, was just fine for a child to see. No lasting harm done, at least I think so!
I remember when my Dad would show off his home theatre system to friends, and Raiders was almost always the laserdisc (that's right, laserdisc) that went in. I remember being so transfixed with the glimpses of the opening scene that I would catch. Then he eventually showed me the entire trilogy, and a new Indy fanatic was born...
Although it's kind-of sad to hear that your son likes all 6 Star Wars movies. *Sigh* I guess it's going to become a generation gap thing...original trilogy fans vs. those young, naive prequel lovers...
"First Blood"? "The Godfather"? Holy cow, your parents were hard core! B-)
Marc, yeah I could do without those prequels, but it's been interesting to see how my son seems to like all 6 of the films equally (though he finds some of Sith to be a bit scary). He hasn't yet learned cynicism...I happy not to teach him that yet. B-)
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