Marvel Killed the Live-Action Kids Movie Genre
(This guest essay was brought to you by your Patreon contributions!)
Third grade was looming, but I couldn’t even begin to think about my first day of school ensemble, because at eight years old, I had better things to do. After spending hours pouring over the lives of a group of Stoneybrook adolescent entrepreneurs, I was finally going to see them come to life. Yeah, Disney Channel had a Baby-Sitters Club show, but it was mediocre at best compared to the big screen adaptation because, hello? Rachael Leigh Cook was Mary Anne Spier!
The excitement that movie brought into my prepubescent existence was next level, but what saddens me almost 25 years later is how kids today don’t have those simple live-action movies to grasp onto as much anymore—movies that lacked in budget and fantastical special effects but made up for it with heart. Why? Superheroes flew in, swung by, and landed on Earth thanks to Marvel, and those straightforward tales of babysitters, down on their luck teams, and anything with a young power hitter like ’90s icon Jonathan Taylor Thomas have become null and void at the box office — with the exception of a boy wizard, of course. But even then, Harry Potter was a massive blockbuster with a budget that could’ve made about a hundred or more Caspers. In the grand scheme, Potter was the start of it all as it set the bar high for a new generation of kids and the movies they expected from their theater experiences.
See, Marvel didn’t start churning out those blockbusters until the tail end of Potter’s reign over the box office. With only a few years of overlap, Marvel was able to shift not only nerds’ attentions to their flashy powerful beings who rocked badass suits, went to space, and said “Wakanda Forever” (even though that could’ve totally been a Hogwarts’ spell), but also the attention of the entire world. While some people could skip a Harry Potter movie (I didn’t watch until recently), everyone and their mother was going to, seeing, and talking about each and every Marvel release. They had unleashed the beast with Iron Man and continued to do so with each passing year. Soon Robert Downey Jr. was joined by his avenging team, a dude who could shrink to the size of an ant, and a tree voiced by Vin Diesel.
And this is not to say Marvel is creating bad movies for kids. Every kid deserves a superhero to idolize and look up to and Marvel has done a fine job (in the latter years) of reaching their female fans and non-white men. What sucks though is that kids only have these movie characters to attach themselves to, whereas — let me sound like my late grandma for a second — back in my day, we had variety.
Not only did we find girl power in the story Ann M. Martin brought to life in The Baby-Sitters Club, but also in the likes of The Little Giants’ Icebox, and the G-rated Carrie otherwise known as Matilda. Brie Larson is fine as Captain Marvel, but there’s something about watching a person your age doing grand things that doesn’t compare to watching a bunch of grown people do basically the same thing time and time again. We get it—there’s a giant bad guy and the hero will persevere. Which leads us back to variety.
Live-action kids movies used to come in so many packages. We had ones based on books, sports movies, random stories of kids writing blank checks, talking animals that didn’t look like horrifying nature documentaries (looking at you, 2019 Lion King) — and they all did quite well at the box office. Were they taking home big bucks? Not at all, with the exception of Home Alone, which many would argue is a Family Movie and not particularly kid-based. But they were giving kids of yesteryear beautiful, varied pieces of pop culture to hold onto.
Let’s take The Sandlot, for example. It only raked in $33.8 million at the box office in 1993, but in the 20-plus years since, it’s become one of the most beloved and revered movies of all time. Try and say “forever” without repeatedly slowing it down. You can’t. Can you do that with any line from Marvel? “I am Groot” does not count. A few years ago they played The Sandlot after a Dodgers’ game and invited attendees to watch on the field. I absolutely loathe baseball but I bought a ticket because that movie holds so many of my childhood memories. A Squints Funko POP! is displayed right near my desk, a beautiful caricature of the cast is framed nearby, and a baseball tee with my favorite bespeckled player hangs in my closet.
In the grand scheme, The Sandlot isn’t much different from a Marvel movie — like Guardians of the Galaxy, for example. Each has a group of misfits fighting something bigger than them (although Beast wound up a total sweetheart). But somehow studios have done away with simplistic storytelling of kids just being kids and traded it for high-action, special effects and larger than life budgets — with the exception of a few recent live-action kids’ movies.
With only $15 million in their budget, 2010’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid banked over $75 million at the box office. It didn’t do quite as well as Toy Story 3 or Alice in Wonderland’s billion dollars (really, y’all loved that Alice movie that much?), but it did decently enough to spawn a few sequels. All of which were good, until Zachary Gordon got too old for the role and they had to switch him out for a second-rate version. Fast-forward to 2015 and the release of Goosebumps, a movie that was a long time coming as it never got a full-fledged movie back when the books were flying off Scholastic Book Fair shelves, only a TV series that lasted four seasons. Thankfully, writer Darren Lemke and director Rob Letterman saw the potential it may still have and took a chance on it for a new generation.
With the help of Jack Black, Goosebumps earned $158 million during its time in theaters. While I can’t say how much of the audience were people my age who loved the books growing up, I can say I know one kid who was absolutely obsessed: my then-five-year-old nephew. It was the first thing we bonded over and continues to be something we talk about to this day (that and how the sequel was just okay). Then there was the almost billion-dollar powerhouse that was the also-Jack Black-starring Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. Which again, was that just people my age seeing how well they respected Robin Williams, or kids?
In the end, though, the success of those Jack Black hits and the moderate success of that kid who was a wimp proves kids still like to watch people their age (or The Rock and Kevin Hart acting as such) living life and having wild adventures. I just wish more studios would take notice and take us back to a simpler time when kids’ movies were nonsensical stories that didn’t guarantee box office success, but rather a lasting genuine connection.
With Marvel Studios, Disney, and Lucasfilm with Star Wars continuously cranking out movies and sequels, it’s getting harder for kids to grasp what they truly love because as soon as they see one thing, studios are already onto the next — and so are they. Groot today, Baby Yoda tomorrow. Marvel and co. have diluted the kids’ market so much that it seems they care less about creating memories for kids to look back on and more about increasing their own bank accounts. Sad, I know. Because at the end of the day, it’s the kids who suffer.
Granted we don’t all die of global warming or a Trump 2020 win, in 20 or 30 years the kids of today will be adults with very little to look back on in terms of pop culture. They’ll say “Oh yeah, that Marvel movie was cool but so were the other 47 others released when I was growing up.” And while some may look back on Doctor Strange the same way people my age do 3 Ninjas Kick Back, Good Burger, and of course, The Baby-Sitters Club, there will be no variety in their conversations and who they are as people.
As much as our friends and family influence who we become, so does the pop culture we take in. When it comes to the myriad of kids’ movies my VCR was kind enough to rewind, they each played a pivotal part in who I am today. Matilda showed me I wasn’t alone in feeling like an outsider in my own family, House Arrest gave me the courage to speak up to adults when they were in the wrong, and Rachael Leigh Cook’s Mary Anne Spier continues to be my shy girl muse to this day. The best part is that each of those movies varied so much from the last.
And while Marvel movies can dish out lessons and are entertaining, they’re ultimately shaping kids into having the most basic childhoods that are all the same, with Disney notes and Star Wars hues. So if anyone in a major studio is listening: while you can’t take everything from the ’90s and put Jack Black in it, look at the success of Goosebumps and Jumanji and realize kids deserve more adventures and stories in addition to the cascade of Marvelous superheroes.
