Cartoon Violence – Whatcha Think?

I saw The Incredibles last Sunday.

Wow! I loved it! My wife on the other hand wasn’t so enthusiastic.

I felt like Pixar was trying to stretch here a bit – something a little more mature, while still full of stuff for the kids.

She felt misled by the trailers she’d seen that promised the Pixar-style family comedy we’ve grown accustomed to. She also thought the movie was intensely violent for something aimed so directly at children.

Newsweek’s Jeff Giles had similar misgivings about the gunplay specifically in his November review.

The more we discussed it the more I got to wondering: Are we more concerned about violence and/or gunplay in a cartoon than in a comparable live-action film?

Were you to cast this same script with actors instead of animation would we balk less? What if the characters involved weren’t children?

Is it because we’ve used to more of a warm fuzzy from Pixar that my wife and Giles don’t understand the need for more violent action?

What if we replaced the bullets with laser blasts? Would separating it more from reality help?

Whatcha think?