Having three boys means we see a lot of action movies. OK, we see certain types of action movies, and high in that list has been most of the Marvel and DC movies. Because they do not necessarily understand complex characters, we’ve shied away from anti-heroes and those with ambiguous motives (Deadpool, Suicide Squad, Punisher, etc).
We’ve liked the MCU with the first round of heroes as they are typically fairly clean, and while violent, they tend to be more of the “clean” violent, not with blood spattering, etc. and clearly defined good guys and bad guys, which they can better understand.
Captain America has been one of our favorites and we were saddened to see him leave, although turning his shield over to Falcon seemed right to us.
With the Falcon and Winter Soldier we knew it was going to be at least partially about how Falcon handled his new responsibilities, however, some early reviews made us decide to screen it first, and we’re glad that we did.
The government has chosen who they want to be the next Captain America, and unfortunately, he’s also a bit unhinged, and tends to fight violently. Way more violently, I thought, than you saw in the movies.
The conversations around what and why someone behaving like that as Captain America we thought might confuse our sons. They don’t understand PTSD (Although I think its unfortunate to say a lot of adults also don’t), and how even our heroes don’t always make the right decisions. We didn’t want them acting like what they saw “the good guy” on TV doing, which might hurt themselves, or their classmates.
While it might be more “real” we thought it was not the appropriate thing to expose them to. So we opted to not show them. If it is needed to be explained, we’ll just tell them, _____ (I ain’t going to spoil it) is the new Captain America and let it go at that. Hopefully that will satisfy them.
