Hardcore Attack on Titan

What's better than a combination of two super violent things that you're too young to see?

After stumbling across the trailer for "Hardcore Henry," our younger son was utterly convinced that he has to see the movie. He is nine and the movie is rated R, so I afraid that I will unable to help him satisfy this need in the near future.

The preview definitely looks like a frenetic first person shooter style video game brought to life. And brought to video with significant difficulty, apparently, as the camera had to be mounted on actors' faces while they performed a remarkable number of extreme stunts.

R rated movies are a touchy area for us lately as the younger brother was furious when he found out that his brother had seen the R rated "Deadpool" movie courtesy of a friend's parents. While my husband and I immediately regretted authorizing this outing when we saw the movie ourselves, the 13 year old has at least been mature enough to restrain himself from quoting choice bits of dialogue from the movie at the dinner table.

I am not optimistic that the 9 year old would be so reserved. In principle, he does not accept the idea that the four year age difference between him and his brother should matter when it comes to such things.  And in practice, unfortunately, it often does not: If the 13 year old is playing a video game in the living room, then his 9 year old brother might as well be playing it also.

But this does not mean that I am taking a 3rd grader to see "Deadpool."

There is more than one "Attack on Titan" movie out there, and those movies may be age-inappropriate as well. As these films are still difficult to see in the United States, it is unlikely that our kids will have an opportunity to see them in the near future even if they are not rated PG..

Age-inappropriate violence aside, I am afraid that the main problem with a first-person-shooter-style portrayal of the Survey Corps fighting in "Attack on Titan" would be the intense motion sickness brought on by all the physics-defying flying around with "3-d maneuver gear."

At least that would be the case for me. Maybe I am just too old to watch that sort of thing.