My boys are 6 and 4 and haven't watched any of them. Both still refuse to watch Finding Nemo as it is too scary so there is no chance of them watching anything else. I still refuse to let them watch Ben 10 and the likes as they are too violent. Both have also said they are not interested in watching Spiderman, Wolverine etc, even the cartoons. They like the figurines and make their own stories up.
That said, their favourite show is Cops. I have spoken to them about it and in their eyes, the good guys always catch the bad guys and the world is a safer place. I have stressed that the show was filmed before they were born as many episodes are from the nineties and what happens in America when people are arrested is not acceptable in Australia. Thankfully, this has not skewed their trust in the police. This was probably helped by using knowing a police member and having regular visits to daycare from the police.
Mine have seen none of those movies and won't anytime soon. As others have said it really depends on the child. My oldest cried in dumbo and 4 year old refused to be in the same room when it was on! They are both pretty sensitive so I am a bit more careful.
Thanks for your answers, everyone, it has been quite enlightening.
The question came up re DD1 watching The Matrix. DD is 15, and tbh hasn't watched a lot of M-rated movies. My recall of the movie is that there are some extremely violent scenes (eg entry into the building using automatic weapons in the foyer shootout) plus some really quite disturbing themes. DH on the other hand considers that she is now 15 (ie as of a month or so ago) and viewing M-ratings at the cinema (in theory) starts at age 15 so all okey dokey there. Interestingly we had an extended conversation last year over DD watching The Hunger Games. Even though the violence is depicted in sanitised ways (eg, blows being suggested not shown, no blood sprays, etc) the actual reality of it being children who are chopping at each other was in itself quite disturbing.
For us, this is because I've always limited viewing movies which use violence to resolve the plot lines, usually because those movies contain extended depictions of violent action and are more likely to include more graphic or detailed violence. In the case of the Hunger Games, we eventually decided she could see it, but only because she had read the book and could, in discussion, identify the point of the depicted violence in what the author was trying to convey. I think the child needs to have a certain level of maturity before they can make these sorts of context-distinctions, and therefore why we have restricted viewing of these types of films.
I suspect we are well out of line with popular opinion on this one! LOL
Nothing wrong with being out of line with popular opinion. Just because an opinion is popular doesn't mean it's right.
The more people out of line with popular opinion the better, because then I feel more normal lol.
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