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| Don't drive angry. |
Dear Lady Who Brought Your Toddler to See Edge of Tomorrow,
Hello. I was the guy who was sitting in front of you for a good portion of the movie. I did eventually move when you daughter kept kicking the back of the seat an I politely asked you to stop. I know, silly me, I was sitting there prior to you arriving five minutes after the actual movie started and using your cell phone as a flashlight, which made me feel like I was the one who got to sit “where I wanted”. But you insisted on allowing your daughter to kick the back of a stranger’s seat. So I guess that’s it.
To be completely honest with you, I don’t behoove the fact that you brought a toddler to the movies. My new schedule of working afternoons and nights makes it easier for me to attend the movies at different times of the day. In this particular case, I was able to go pretty early in the morning, thus allowing me to be able to get a pretty kickin’ discount. I also realize that as a mother, you may wish to attend a movie and you may not always want to get a babysitter… I totally get bringing her to the movies, and being somewhat respectful enough to bring her to an early showing, when most respectable people are probably at work, and not watching the many ways Tom Cruise can die in one movie. (His best death: Watch Collateral where he plays a hit man and squares off against Jamie Foxx who’s a cabbie. Great movie. Very underrated. You may or may not want your kid to watch that one. It’s just as violent as Edge of Tomorrow, but has more swearing, so I’m not sure which part is your particular hang up with your kid.)
And you know, I think in this day and age of Tom Cruise marrying women that are 20 years younger than him, it’s probably important to each them about Tom Cruise at a young age. Maybe that’s why you felt a need to bring your child into a movie where aliens jumped out of the ground, or a mostly naked man gets smashed to death with a falling airplane a few times. Between the violence, CGI aliens, and the nudity, there is the underlying message: Tom Cruise exists. And he’s going to go after Emily Blunt, despite the fact that we’d be perfect together.
Are you a fan of classic cinema? Because, and I know we all know the joke by now, but Edge of Tomorrow shares some similar plot points with a classic Bill Murray romantic romp called Groundhog Day. And while it doesn’t feature, say, a shot of a man being burned alive by a bomb as alien blood oozes over him, it does feature some wacky moments from America’s Wacky Uncle, Bill Murray. Your child may not scream in terror when an alien jumps out from the sand suddenly to kill a random soldier that wasn’t lucky enough to be Tom Cruise, but she may get a kick out of seeing Bill Murray let a groundhog drive a car before plummeting to one of his deaths in that particular movie. I’m just saying.
Of course, by watching at home you may not get the chance to give the evil eye to any one of the 10 of us in the theater that day, and the brave few who let out the ill advised “shhh…” noise any number of times your daughter was afraid of one of those growling, CGI Aliens.
Edge of Tomorrow can’t be that bad… I mean, it was rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America, which as everyone knows is completely in touch with what’s best for us. It’s not run by a secret cabal of old white dudes that seem to randomly slap ratings on movies, nor are they at all motivated by money and marketability of a movie. Say a movie is a documentary about teenagers. They wouldn’t rate it so that teenagers couldn’t see it due to the “unsavory language” contained within, because think of the children. (Not the ones saying it, mind you, but the ones who might see it and then say it?)
But hey, I don’ t have kids, yet, so I guess I don’t know when they’re ready for comedically violent deaths accompanied by a ton of violence, and aliens that scare them to the point that hey cry. (Kudos to taking your eyes of the screen for a moment to hug her during this scene.) I’m just saying that when I eventually have kids, I probably might wait until they can form full sentences before I expose them to aliens blowing up. Or people getting shot in the head as a form of comedy.
And this isn’t against all kids in theaters, as you tried to make it when I politely requested that my seat stop moving. I wasn’t one of the those shushing your during your child’s freakout during one of the more violent battle scenes, no I started to ignore you long before that, right when I moved. No, as an avid movie watcher, I think building a generation of movie goers when quite frankly, going to the movies is being replaced with big screen TV’s, shrinking dates between a movie being on the big screen and being available at home (like Veronica Mars, which I was able to watch at the movies, then at home the next day), and more options in general, is extremely important. But can you understand my point of view that perhaps, at this point, you may be part of the problem? Maybe?
Of course, this probably won’t change your mind. In that case, maybe I’ll see you during the Purge sequel? Or will be be skipping that one in favor of Sin City? You know what, we’ll just keep the date open.
Sincerely,
The guy that doesn't like getting his seat kicked.
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