Friday, 29 April 2016

Nathan Wants To See Civil War

Next week, the much anticipated (at least in this house), Captain America: Civil War comes out in theatres.

Nathan is a huge Marvel/Avenger fan and has been begging to go see the movie in theatres.  On the other hand, he is also only 9.  I've been avidly avoiding spoilers for Civil War, but the comic dealt with some very serious issues of group safety vs personal safety and the role of government and protection vs freedom.  Issues that are somewhat above the head of a certain enthusiastic little fan who lives in this house.

I am sure there will be plenty of action sequences but there have also been hints that this will be a darker film than Marvel typically does.  (Again!  Trying not to see spoilers!)

Obvious answer: I go see the film first, judge its appropriateness, and then decide if Nathan can see it.

Not-so-obvious problem with that: Can I set up the expectations so that I don't deal with massive disappointment if I need to say no?  Probably not.  On the other hand, no is guaranteed to be a massive disappointment regardless, so perhaps I'm overthinking that.

Some comic book movies were easy to say no to, despite Nathan's requests.  Batman vs Superman, no.  Deadpool, heck no.  Any of the Wolverine movies... come back and talk to me in a year or so, kid.

I have let him see Guardians of the Galaxy and both Avengers movies, as well as the first two Spider-man movies with Tobey MacGuire.  We tried the Incredible Hulk and Thor, but he got bored with them.  The Iron-Man trilogy has been stuck on the same shelf as the Wolverine movies, just a little too violent for me to be entirely comfortable with showing it to him.

As a proud mama geek, I want to share the stories that I love with him.  On the other hand, I only have to look to my own scarred memories of watching ET to know the problems of showing kids films before they're developmentally ready to handle them.  Sharing the comics or novelizations is one thing, seeing it live on a twenty foot tall screen makes it very hard to ignore.

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