Apparently, by no sane measure of logic, adding a kid to a movie franchise will liven up a tiring concept and reinvigorate a series for the millions of people who once breathlessly paid to watch the adventures but whom now shrug a collective “meh” to the whole deal. Further, the mere sight of a plucky young boy or girl boldly entering the grown-up fray will reduce audiences to a puddle of mush and insure a long life for the series. It matters not that the series was born and received without the need of a kid, and was probably successful due to not having one. It matters not that the introduction of a kid stunts the natural progression of the characters and swings the emphasis from an adult-oriented storyline to one of beleaguered parents and/or guardians risking life and limb to save said plucky kid from situations that are only necessary because the script called for the damn plucky kid to begin with. It matters not that kid is not so much plucky as he is really annoying. Apparently, all that matters is that people love plucky kids.

This, along with much of how decisions are made, is completely off-base.

Kids do not make movie sequels better. They are merely a signal that the producers have no more stories to tell and are just throwing their hands up in the air and grabbing whatever trite sitcom cliché happened to be stuck to the ceiling. Are you in the third or fourth gratuitous sequel and grosses keep going down? Congratulations are in order, because someone’s having a baby! Let us all rejoice that we can no longer swear or show nudity in the movie because someone decided to drop a precocious eight year-old onto the scene. Huzzah!

I say humbug.

Sure, there are exceptions to the rule (Shortround in Temple of Doom comes to mind), but generally speaking, adding a kid to a movie franchise equals creative death. Such is the concern many geeks across the world are having as news comes in that Steven Spielberg has cast Transformers-loving, Michael Bay explosion-runner-away-from, Shia LaBeouf, in the role of Indy’s long lost son. Regardless of the fact that no one wants to see a younger version of Indiana Jones (If we did, Sean Patrick Flannery would be on his 14th season of The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones and not threatening us with more jittery episodes of The Boondock Saints), the bearded master remains convinced that what audiences have really waited seventeen years to see is Harrison Ford and Sean Connery chasing the plucky kid from Even Stevens across the desert. And we wonder how War of the Worlds went so wrong. He should have just killed Dakota and the jackhole son and let Tom Cruise single-handedly take down the entire Martian army using only his Xenuian mind powers (though it’s not like he was ever gonna off Dakota Fanning. She would have had his hands cut off. It would have been “to the pain”.).

It’s not so much the idea of introducing a kid, as much as what the real purpose of doing so is. For example, the Alien series brought out Newt in Aliens and it was a resounding success. This is because she humanized Ripley, gave her a will and motivation to destroy the Alien Queen, and was the impetus behind the classic line “Get away from her you bitch!” It also helps that Newt had one of the most awesomely adaptable movie quotes of all time in: “They mostly come at night. Mostly.” You can use this quote in almost any situation and it will always get a laugh. If you’re at a bar and someone asks what you want to drink you can say “I mostly drink Heineken. Mostly.” If you’re talking to a date about sex, you could say “I mostly like oral. Mostly.” It always works! Other good uses for the quote:

• “I mostly deuce at night. Mostly.”
• “You’re mostly a bitch. Mostly.”
• “I mostly hate Reese Witherspoon. Mostly.”

Newt rules.

The point is that Newt had a reason to be in the movie. She advanced the Ripley character and provided crucial plot points for the movie. Now on the other hand, take the African American girl from The Lost World who showed up out of nowhere as Jeff Goldblum’s daughter. What did she bring to the movie? What was her purpose? Nothing. She was there to add a kiddy element to the picture. To put her in jeopardy so that Goldblum could be heroic in saving an oh so PC black girl. She was there for that stupid gymnastics routine. She should have been there as raptor food.

Getting back to the point, we already know that Indy can be a good father figure, as we were shown Temple of Doom. And Indy already worked out his daddy issues in The Last Crusade. So the only purpose for having an Indy prodigy in Part 4 is to align Indy with a past lover and potentially settle his personal life. But who cares? We don’t need Indy to settle down. We need Indy to crack Nazi’s in the face with his whip. We need him to ride horses in the desert and blow up tanks. We need him to make “wise choices”. We don’t need to see him playing catch and cheering on little league games. And that’s what it will be, make no mistake. The movie WILL focus on the Shia LaBeouf, and Indy will become a passerby in his own movie. It will be depressing, disgraceful and disrespectful. But most of all, it will be a bad movie.

And if Steven Spielberg and George Lucas don’t believe me, here are some other instances of kids ruining successful movie franchises.

Sage Stallone – Rocky 5

We’ll ignore for a second that Rocky’s kid aged five years in the three months Rocky was in Russia fighting Drago. We’ll ignore for a second that Sylvester Stallone made the crucial mistake of casting his own kid in the movie. We’ll even ignore for a second that Rocky 5 doesn’t actually exist (it NEVER happened, do you understand me? He beat Drago and we flash forward fifteen years to Rocky Balboa, end of story.). Let’s talk about how the lame the young Rocky gets shunned by Papa Rocky and must train on his own to defeat local bully, Eric from Entourage, really is. Do we care? Rocky didn’t even seem to care about the boy for the first two acts, so why should we? Of all the problems in that movie (the brain damage, the missing training montage, the broke and beaten down Rocky, the ungodly Adrian fight in the street culminating with Rocky clutching his head in deafening pain only to receive multiple shots to the head from a heavyweight boxer with no apparent repercussions less than fifteen movie minutes later), I’m counting the focus on young Rocky as the worst. Stallone had no intention of turning the Rocky series over to his kid, so what gives? I wanna see Rocky Balboa run through the streets and hit some beef. I do NOT want to see Rocky’s kid yelling “Go for it, he took my room!”

(Ed note: I could have theoretically chosen Milo Ventimiglia in Rocky Balboa, but I got too much love for Peter Petrelli. I can’t believe Sylar cut off Peter’s beloved Emo hair! How will Milo express his inner turmoil if he can’t lower his head and navel gaze through his panty-melting bangs?)

Both Kids – The Cutting Edge 2: Going For The Gold

Was DB Sweeney really so busy he couldn’t come back for this? Did Moira Kelly feel like her obligation to One Tree Hill superseded returning to her only hit movie? Did they ask for too much money? How much were they asking for, twenty bucks and a hot meal? Whatever it was, the producers should have paid it. I’d buy two forty year-old has been B-list actors lunkering through Olympics before I do two Ambercrombie & Fitch idiots CW-ing their way through this schlockfest. I wanted to toepick these ingrate kids in the face. Almost makes me want to not see The Cutting Edge 3. Almost.

Katherine Heigl – Under Seige 2: Dark Territory

Follow me on this one. Part of what made the first Under Siege so great was the involvement of then-blonde hottie Erika Eleniak. The action and the fighting and the Busey and the Tommy Lee Jones were great and all, but seriously, what guy watching the movie doesn’t get the most excited during the scene where Seagal walks through the deserted party and kicks the big cake, knowing full well that Eleniak is about to pop out and show her boobies? It’s the highlight of the movie. This is where Part 2 went so wrong. Heigl is a kid so you know she’s not showing any skin. And she’s playing Seagal niece, so you know she’s DEFINITELY not showing some skin, and that we’re going to have to endure an obnoxious scene where she unleashes her karate skills and dishes off someone-liner like “It runs in the family” or “I’m currently ruining Grey’s Anatomy.” Why cast a hot, young, blonde actress and NOT have her whip her boobs out at some point in the movie? That’s counter-intuitive to action movie-making.

Also, did I mention Katherine Hiegl is KILLING Grey’s Anatomy right now? Lay off George, Izzie, and go find yourself a plot that DOESN’T involve you being a shitty doctor or friend. Gah!

Kyla Pratt – Dr. Dolittle 3

I’m less upset about the decision to take the franchise down a kid-friendly Direct-To-DVD route, than I am that Eddie Murphy unleashed the franchise on us to begin with. I’m also dealing with some residual hate owing to my having watched the latter half of Eddie’s repugnant I Spy remake last night and my punching a hole in my head the size of a Sacagawea gold coin just to make the awful go away. I am so glad I picked Alan Arkin to win the Oscar. And I HATED Little Miss Sunshine.

Jake Lloyd – Star Wars: Episode One – The Phantom Menace

The Golden Child example of kids ruining a movie franchise. George Lucas’s complete inability to see that he had cast the wrong actor in the role of young Anakin Skywalker remains the most glaring error of his career (yes, more than Howard the Duck. At least that film had some kinky duck-on-Lea Thompson action). Lloyd is wooden, the opposite of plucky (in this case a bad thing), and he makes other, better actors look bad. How do you cast a kid that sets the bar so low that Hayden Christiansen looks like a step up? And let me briefly mention the problem of making an eight year old boy the center of an epic space adventure (he’s really flying a X-Wing at eight? Really?). Owing to his age, he can’t be involved in any lightsaber fight. He can’t trade witty quips with the spunky girl character. And he can’t support any heavy emotional drama, because eight year-olds don’t have heavy emotional drama in sci-fi epics. The only good thing he brought to the movie was the pod race scene, and that had nothing to do with him, as well as having nothing to do with the series as a whole. Take that entire sequence out and you can write off the young Anakin Skywalker character from the movie. I’m amazed people think that Jar Jar was the most heinous addition to the series.

Gaspard Ulliel – Hannibal Rising

Go away, non-Anthony Hopkins Hannibal Lecter. If I wanted to watch a sadistic kid butchering people in cold blood and eating their brains I’d cue up Heroes on my TiVo and watch Sylar stick some bitches to a ceiling.

Vanessa Lee Chester – The Lost World: Jurassic Park

I’ve already written at length about the stupidity of this character, but I wanted to reiterate how terrible it is to make a point. Take Vanessa out of the movie and nothing changes. If anything, it allows the movie to be more violent (and hence, more awesome). It gives more screen time to the Vince Vaughn character (and you know a bunch of his funny stuff hit the cutting room floor so that Spielberg could set up the “They cut you from the team” joke. Spielberg really needs to lock it up. Or go motorboating.). And it gives us more time to watch Pete Postlethwaite be a badass. The ironic part of her character was that she was dropped from the final act. It’s like Spielberg realized he had made the mistake partway through the movie and purposefully excised her character from the “T-Rex Godzillas through San Diego” scenes as an apology.

If he saw then that adding a kid to a beloved blockbuster was a mistake, why is he bringing in LaBeouf for Indy 4? He should really talk to Will Smith and Keanu Reeves about just how much Shia brought to I, Robot and Constantine, respectively. And by brought, I made took away. And by took away, I mean he sucked.

I mostly hate this idea. Mostly.

Wait, check that. With apologies to Newt, I hate all of this idea. All of it.

Bangarang!

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