Fun for all ages?

When is a children's property no longer for children?
A couple weeks ago I finally caught the "Power Rangers" movie that came out earlier this year.
It was fine. Not great. Not terrible. I would watch another one if another one gets made, but who knows if that will happen. The movie didn't tank, but it definitely underperformed. Last week, in an interview with Screenrant, director Dean Israelite said that the movie probably would have brought in a bigger-box office with a PG rating as opposed to a PG-13 rating.
I don't disagree.
Tonally, the film doesn't seem to be sure who it wants to appeal to. For the most part the movie faithfully updated the core concept of super-powered teenagers fighting a space witch with a giant robot. Still, this movie's incarnation of the "teenagers with attitude" skewed a little too real.
As somebody that grew up with the original "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers," I appreciate the efforts that went into adapting the franchise into something more palatable to my tastes today than my tastes when I was seven, but occasionally those efforts missed the mark. At one point in the movie, our heroes gear up to launch a pre-emptive attack on the evil Rita Repulsa, with the clear intent of murdering her before she can enact her villainous plot.
It's a perfectly reasonable course of action, given the situation, but it's not something that should be in Power Rangers movie.
I've had the same qualms with the Transformers franchise over the years.
In the 80s cartoon, Optimus Prime famously says, "One shall stand, one shall fall." The implication is there, but it's still a line suitable for children.
In Michael Bay's movies, Optimus is more explicit in his death threats and less hesitant to carry them out, to an uncomfortable degree. Just because the backdrop of the Transformers franchise involves a never ending war doesn't mean I ever needed or wanted to see the leader of the heroic Autobots execute a defeated enemy with a shotgun.
Sometimes characters created for children can pull off growing up with their audience. One of the top grossing movies of this year is "Logan," the R-rated adaptation of a superhero best known for fighting aliens, robots, ninjas, and monsters while wearing yellow spandex.
Batman is another character that has proven to be incredibly versatile when it comes to targeted demographics. Some Batman adaptations are a little too light to appeal to anybody but children, others are a little too dark to be appropriate for children at all.
But properties that can successfully transition completely out of their original intended age group are few and far between. You can make a Batman adaptation primarily for adults, but do it with Superman and you end up with "Man of Steel."
Instead, the adaptations that find the most success are the ones that manage to find that balance between being serious enough for adults to enjoy, but not so dark that they become inappropriate for kids. Much of the success of Marvel Studio's has been their expertise in striking that balance. The adult content is there, but it's presented in such a way that you might not even realize it.
Would you take your kids to see a movie where one of the primary character arcs revolves around a guy that facilitated the deaths of countless children? If you took your kids to see "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2," you already have.
It's shocking how much you can get away with when you present it in the right way.
It's a lesson Warner Bros. seems to have finally learned as well. Even though "Wonder Woman" touches on the horrors of war and is set directly in the middle of World War I, it's still somehow a more kid-friendly movie than "Man of Steel."
As for "Power Rangers," Lionsgate Studios would probably do well to look at the comic-book adaptation from Boom! Studios, which does a much better job of toning down the goofiness of the original show while still staying true to the source.
One way or the other, Hollywood seems bound and determined to turn everything we ever watched as children into a major motion picture. Hopefully they figure out who they're making these movies for.
Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and can't wait for the gritty reboot of "He-Man."