In an increasingly perplexing world, let kids’ movies be kids’ movies

Superman, played by David Corenswet, with Krypto in “Superman.”

We grew up on the movies. But are they obligated to grow up with us?

I was corresponding recently with a superhero fan who had just taken his kids to see “Superman.” He didn’t like the movie. He thought it was silly. Childish, in fact.

Did your kids like it? I asked.

Yes, he wrote.

Well, I replied, maybe that’s because it was really meant for them.

He didn’t like that. Movies shouldn’t just pander to the youngest, easiest audience, he replied. They should aspire to more than that.

From left, Dash, Violet, Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl in “The Incredibles.”

I don’t completely disagree: My favorite “kids movies” — “The Incredibles,” “Up,” most of the “Toy Story” franchise — resonate with adults, too. But do they have to?

Sometimes, I think, we need to accept that lots of the things we liked as children — Tom and Jerry cartoons, Donald Duck comic books, Sno Balls cupcakes — we partly liked because we were children. And just because we have gotten more sophisticated — one hopes! — doesn’t mean that they have to, too.

Although the movies form us as much as anything, almost as important as what we see is when we see it. Movies aren’t about logic, they’re about emotion. And the younger we are when we fall in love with something, the firmer its lock on our hearts. Is any passion ever as strong as a first crush?

What kind of stories did you love when you were 12? They probably remain, at the very least, your guilty pleasures today.

Like everyone, my pop-culture preferences were formed by the era I grew up in, before superheroes ruled the box office. So, from grade school on, I was all about spy thrillers and monster movies and “Star Trek.”

I still love those things, and I always will.

For folks who are older or younger … well, a different set of childhood icons may loom large. For example, I was a film-school student when the first “Star Wars” came out. I saw it — opening day, in fact — but it didn’t make an enormous impression. It was fun, but I was a cinema snob, and there was always a new Scorsese, a new Kubrick, a new Coppola to run to. Had I seen the first “Star Wars” at 8, instead of at 18, it might have been a very different experience.

Although I haven’t lost my childhood love of spy thrillers and gothic horrors, and am always happy to see filmmakers push those genres further — boy, “Sinners” was terrific, wasn’t it? — I am also satisfied watching new movies that still deliver as simply as films did when I was a kid. A woman with a sputtering candle wandering through an old dark house? A bored Bond getting his latest gadgets from Q? I am so there. In fact, the familiarity — the clichés, even – is a big part of the nostalgia, and the pleasure.

But I think the generation after mine — encouraged by modern fandom, hyper-powered by the web — latched onto their own childhood favorites in a stronger way. So much so, in fact, that they refused to let go of them, even as they grew up. It was no longer about nostalgically saluting the past. It was about dragging the past with them, turning adolescent pleasures into adult pastimes.

Pedro Pascal in “The Fantastic Four: First Steps.”

And so, just as their sneakers now cost a few hundred dollars, and their chocolate-chip cookies are “gourmet,” their superhero movies have to be grown-up, too — more complicated, more cynical. And that’s what leads to some fans complaining that the new “Superman” and “Fantastic Four” movies are little more than kids’ stuff.

I’m not suggesting that all superhero stories need to be aimed exclusively at children (there is a lot of smart meta-fiction going on in Alan Moore’s “Watchmen”). Or that some superhero films, like “The Dark Knight” and “Logan,” can’t acknowledge the comics’ more adult ideas, and successfully bring them to the screen.

But not every superhero needs to be dark and brooding. Fun and slightly comically self-aware is fine, too. Which is what, I think, “Superman” and “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” try to deliver — something a little simpler, a little lighter, a little younger than we have been seeing. They aren’t ashamed to be retro. They are happy to remember who they really, originally, had been created for.

It’s not a new idea. For the first “Star Wars” movies, George Lucas ambitiously drew on everything from samurai classics to Golden Age swashbucklers — with just enough Joseph Campbell to fuel future cinema-studies papers. But they weren’t meant to be hard, cold, grown-up sci-fi. (For that, check out Lucas’ first movie, “THX 1138.”) They were meant to be kid-friendly fantasies. Many of the sequels were, too.

And that is something that some people can’t accept.

“The older people that see the movie get very upset with this sort of younger — you know, I won’t say we’re on the ‘Barney’ level, but on the younger aspects of the movies,” Lucas said before “Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones” premiered. “They hated 3PO. They said that that jabbering — if that robot talked anymore, it’s so irritating. And then I did the next film, which had Ewoks in it, and these older fans, and the older adults, all went berserk. And then in ‘Phantom’ it was about Jar Jar.”

Sorry, George. They were right to hate Jar Jar.

Harrison Ford in “Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope.”

But Lucas’ point is pertinent. It’s great that you saw the first “Star Wars” or “Superman” when you were 10, and have loved them ever since. But they are still, at heart, kids’ movies. And shouldn’t a new generation of 10-year-olds get the chance to have that same innocent delight, without you furious that a film included another cute robot ready-made for merchandizing? Or insisting it end on a down, defeatist note because that’s what life is really like?

We don’t retain exclusive rights to the stories we loved when we were kids. A new generation of kids deserves a chance at them, too.

Maybe the new “Superman” isn’t terribly complicated and character-driven and cynical. Maybe it isn’t supposed to be. This is, after all, a movie with a flying dog, and a character called Mr. Terrific. And while it does make a few nods towards topicality — evil billionaires, border wars, immigration — this is not a movie that is trying to be hip, or snarky, or edgy. It is just trying to provide some uncomplicated — even occasionally childish — fun.

Which is maybe as it should be. Does every superhero now need to come with his own set of neuroses? Can’t our heroes just be uncomplicated and brave? Can’t our villains just be simply and irredeemably evil? In a world so full of angst and ambiguity, can’t the movies that today’s kids go to be like the ones we went to — when moral issues were clear, and endings were happy?

If we demand more from our old childhood favorites now, if we have become too “sophisticated” to appreciate their simplest, time-tested pleasures, that is not their fault — nor necessarily a reason for them to change. It’s fine if you still find enjoyment in the simple things you loved as a child. It’s also fine to admit you have outgrown them.

Besides, there is a new generation just waiting to discover them for themselves.

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