As a parent, it is hard to know when to introduce certian things to your child. You don't want to do things too soon but you don't want to baby them too much either. As with solid foods, training wheels, and swimming, the movie Aliens needs to be perfectly timed. Too early and you may tramuatize a vulnerable mind into having nightmares, too late and you can't really introduce them to it at all because they have heard about it from friends or seen it at a sleep over or they just aren't interested. I was 9yrs old when this movie came out. I may or may not have seen the original before hand. This was one of those occasions that my family went out and rented the VCR and got the movie. I had been exposed to both horror and scifi by my babysitter, I will only giver her initials here: T.V. Yes, a latch key kid with cable sees way more than he is supposed too. So watching this movie wasn't a big deal to me until I saw how awesome it was. After all these years and many viewings later it still holds up awesome. Sure I try not to think of 3 and 4 but two is great and one is pretty good too. So I felt 9 years old was an appropriate age, that and she has really been getting interested in more complex stories. She likes Buffy and B5.
It had been a long time since I had seen it, so it was a lot of fun for me. She loved it though. She was coming up with ways of fighting the aliens herself. She wanted to know how cold sleep worked. She mimicked Hudson when he said "Game over man, game over!" Then there was Ripley. I remember thinking she was cool, but to a little girl she must be awesome. Sure Ashli grew up with Buffy, but Buffy is supernaturally gifted. Ripley was just mad. In short, my timing was perfect. She asked about the sequels and I told her they were not that good. We may get the original and give it a watch.
One odd thing. She kept saying the movie was just like Metroid Prime. I am going to have to get around to playing that. Our next movie might be Resident Evil. We borrowed Umbrella Chronicles and played two player together and she loved it.
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3 comments:
I have seen a ton of movies and it sucks sometimes that there are not many out there that I haven't experienced. My Dad was the kind fo guy who the Age of Video was made for. He could rent and show us great movies from his past.
Film studies filled in alot of the other blanks as did cable networks who needed content to fill their broadcast hours.
The original 'Alien' was the first time movie I took a girl too. It ws an awesome shared exprience. 'Aliens' was one of the best shows I saw with my buddies. It comes from a time when James Cameron was less in love with himself than the movies he was trying to make. That adventure put 'Avatar' to shame.
You will never know how a kid will react to certain movies so show them ones from all genres. Show them 'The Thing' and 'Aliens' before they are too old or cocky to call them stupid. Scare the shit out of them without exposing them to machete wielding psychos. Those good scary movies are never forgotten.
The wife can't believe that I showed it to her. She still can't watch it. She drew the line at Drag me to Hell, which wasn't nearly as scary.
I find that scary movies that get alot of hype for being scary are always worse in my mind than they ever are on screen. Both 'The Exorcist' and 'Carrie' were banned in my house when I was young. Then again so was the 'Godfather' but after I read the book I HAD to see the film. Once I saw that movie I realized that my mom was just too sensitive. Then when I worked as a projectionist at the University of Brandon as a teen I saw the original 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' and the original 'Night of the Living Dead'. Those two were also hyped as the scariest movies I could see. I wondered what the big deal was after that.
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