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- Aug 11, 2020
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Kids and awareness is interesting. When grandson was 3-4 he just loved Jurassic Park, no fear of ravenous dinos, then older he loved playing Left For Dead a great Xbox zombie shooter, so about 7, I’m thinking Shaun of the Dead, a comedy no problem, but when a character got pulled out a window into a group of zombies to be eaten, with some guts being removed, he had enough and left the room. We laugh about that now, he’s 19.I've got a tweener grandson who just watched "Suicide Squad" (the original) with me a few weeks back. He asked me if I'd let him watch this one. That was a hard no. Not just because his parents (however open-minded) would kill me. I just think it's way too violent.
The sex is limited to one brief boob shot and, yeah, childish penis jokes. But the gore level is off the charts. Seriously, it revels in it. Think "Hellraiser", only more of it. A work colleague of mine saw it at the theater, and he said some people were walking out...though he couldn't swear whether it was the violence or the whole movie that caused them to do so.
I'd think a six year old would get nightmares watching the top of someone's head get sliced off. For the sake of comparison, when this same grandson of mine was about nine I tried to watch "Batman" (1989) with him, and when we got to the scene where Jack Napier shoots Carl Grissom to death, he covered his face and asked me to turn it off.
It's funny screening movies for kids. I let my grandson see "Suicide Squad", but I won't let him watch Gotham with me, as much as I'd like to. Why? Well, prostitutes figure into one of the very early episodes, and while I'm sure kids his age talk about sex at school, their conversations are probably uninformed. They've not yet had the sex ed class. So barring that, I, as a grandpa, am not about to explain to him what prostitutes do for a living and why. That's not the place to start a kid's sex education.
Another factor you may want to consider: when we watched "Suicide Squad", I'd judged that he was old enough and smart enough to understand what a black ops site is, why governments justify doing evil things in the name of righteousness, etc. I explained to him about 9/11 and Gitmo and waterboarding just so I was sure he understood why some people justify the existence of black sites and being just as evil as the bad guys. I felt he needed to understand the basic concept underlying the whole movie.
He got that, but it's too heavy for younger kids. You could argue it would go over their heads, but it might leave them confused about what's going on.
Oh...and while I didn't notice it myself, I'm told Weasel's penis appears in two separate shots.
As you know standards have drastically changed in the last 60 years. I think there are things in movies now that would make a 1950s crowd lose their collective minds, but I was not in movie going mode until the 60s. As a 10 year old I was terrified of titles like The Thing From Outer Space, Caltiki the immortal monster, The Crawling Eye, but sometimes compensated with a piece of clothing over my head so I could peek if I thought it was safe to do so.
As far as the 6 year old today, I would push that she not watch Suicide Squad, but honestly, I don’t know what she watches at home as a matter of routine.
, about 4 old fogeys robbed of their space missions in the late 50’s, 40 years later are tasked with a mission to rescue a Russian communication satellite that’s not what it appears to be. Clint Eastwood was 70 when he directed and starred in this.
