We don’t get to the theatre all that much anymore like, well, like most parents of younger kids these days. For one, it’s too damn expensive to go with any regularity. For two, there just aren’t that many movies to take them to nowadays as they’re a bit old for most of the “kid’s movies” that come out. For three, there are only so many of those type of movies I can take.
So this weekend, we watched Blue Rays of Man of Steel, Ironman 3 and How to Train Your Dragon, in that order. The short of it is all three are very watchable and entertaining. Man of Steel, particularly, is now the best Superman movie since the original with Christopher Reeve. Overall, How to Train Your Dragon is the best of the bunch. First, because anyone can watch it. I don’t think that can be said of the other two movies. Second, it’s just a good story.
I’d love to summarize the movies (and in fact started to) but then realized this had been done elsewhere and I’d be writing a very long post with duplicate info. So I think I’ll go with a more simple parental approach.
Man of Steel is on the border line of acceptable for a younger (sub 10) audience. While any adult would most certainly enjoy watching it (it’s very well done), there is a lot of bloodless violence- destroying buildings, Kryptonians getting hit with large heavy objects, some intimate death scenes (including a surprise one), large Terraforming machines tearing up the Earth. You know, the usual stuff. Some of these scenes are quite intense and could easily be viewed as a bit much for a young one. That said, if your kids saw The Avengers then they could probably watch this one as well. The very first scene in the movie is a birthing scene, which some out there might not want their kids viewing. You’ve been informed. Other than that, no swearing (at least that was memorable), lots of cool Superman stuff and a good story that ends well.
As for Ironman 3, I’d say the violence is stepped up a notch. When Gwyneth Paltro’s character turns around at the end of the climactic battle sequence and says “WOW! That was really violent!”, that’s a pretty good indicator. Overall, it’s not quite as good as Man of Steel, but it’s still very entertaining and well done enough to be worth the couple hours to sit and watch it. Tony Stark is as entertaining as ever.
As for HtTYD, well, I don’t need to say anything more about that other than, if it’s sitting in your cabinet and you haven’t watched it in awhile, you should really think about changing that status.