a rant

Of all the things that make a science fiction film go bad, kids are the worst. It's almost guaranteed to sabotage the film. Put a kid in the film, and it's only an excuse for the kid to do some amazingly dumb thing that requires the Hero to perform all kinds of bizarre plot deviations in order to rectify the situation. I'm not just saying this, this rant is the culmination of many many film viewing experiences gone bad. Take WATERWORLD, for example. The film had such potential, but they just about ruined everything. First the kid is totally unnecessary, but the clincher is in the climax where the kid actually falls off the hot air balloon thereby setting the scene for a 'spectacular' save. And then take PLANET OF THE APES, the remake. Same formula. Kid does dumb thing, Hero almost get killed trying to save kid. Which brings me to my conclusion, if there’s a kid in the SF movie, it's bound to be bad. Spielberg has this weird kid fixation and he's ruined countless SF movies with their presence. Starting from AI to CLOSE ENCOUNTERS to JURASSIC PARK to even MINORITY REPORT. Okay JP had kids in the book, but they were more realistic than the movie kids who are invariably seriously plot challenged. STAR WARS was good because there were no kids (if you exclude the annoying EWOKS), and so what does Lucas do- bring kids into the prequel of course. What can be worse than seeing Darth Vader as a kid, a whiny petulant kid no less. The only two movies where kids have been fairly tolerable have been ALIENS 2 and SCREAMERS. Aliens2 had at least a smart kid, considering that the kid was the only one to stay alive in the invaded colony, and the kid(s) in SCREAMERS were sentient human killing robots, which makes it eminently acceptable.