My parents come from different social circles, ranging from late 60s to early 80s formation, both middle class, but one more on the lower, working-class side, and the other more on the upper, artistic side. In both circles, when I was still a child, I learned the same thing about what was supposed to be good movies. The likes of Indiana Jones, Ghostbusters, Star Wars, RoboCop, Mad Max, Terminator, and whatever, are just silly action and adventure flicks to watch while eating popcorn with the kids. Now, stuff from directors like Bergman, Godard, Fellini, Tarkovsky, Kurosawa, Kubrick, Scorsese, Coppola, Bertolucci, etc., those were the movies for an adult night.
And that's true. As a kid, I loved the former and couldn't care less about the latter. That was always my perception of the difference between movies for kids and for adults. One you can turn your brain off and enjoy, whereas the other requires a bit of emotional maturity, life experience, and general knowledge to fully enjoy.
It seems I still shock people online when I say movies like RoboCop, Mad Max, and Terminator are for kids. No, I cannot conceive of these as mature movies at all. Yes, they have underlying social commentary and even raise philosophical questions, but the same could be said about a bunch of children's cartoons. They are still just popcorn movies that don't require much attention. The rich background is what makes them good action flicks, but it doesn't make them "mature".
And as the culture shock goes both ways, I also get shocked when I see comments like, "Oh, there is so much violence in Indiana Jones, it should be an 18+ movie."... Like, what the fuck!?
I'm really convinced that this mindset is what created this bunch of infantilized adults we have today. They are so sheltered that they are simply not ready to deal with society... not because they didn't see enough violence in Indiana Jones, but because the bar for maturity is set stupidly low.
What prompted this rant is that I had just watched the 2019 Argentinian movie Scavenger and posted on a Classic Fallout community saying "What if Mad Max wasn't kid-friendly?", and called it a "bizarre B horror trash movie". Besides being massively downvoted, I also received a very upvoted comment saying "This isn't Mad Max for adults; it's Mad Max for people who think making half of your movie be just rape scenes is mature and gritty." ... Hell, when did I call it a mature Mad Max? I called it a "bizarre B horror trash" Mad Max. While I do think Mad Max is kid-friendly (and discussion followed), I don't think a movie full of blood and gore, where everyone is a cannibal, and has violent rape scenes, is very kid-friendly - I mean, you should be at least 12 to watch this alone.
As I said in a previous rant, I'm glad I watched Kids in fifth grade with a teacher talking about sex, consent, protection, alcohol and drugs. Next we'd watch sixth graders doing a play on Christiane F., which our local translation includes "Drug Addicted and Prostituted" in the title. Next year was our time to do the play... if I find those movies about sex, AIDS, alcohol, drugs and prostitution appropriate to children, as they are about children, then yes, Mad Max, RoboCop and Terminator are just silly popcorn movies.
The rape scene in Scavenger seems to be what really triggered the negative reaction in the Classic Fallout community. In all those popcorn action flicks, deemed mature by people raised on MPAA ratings, there is always a woman about to be raped by some evildoer, but the hero always shows up to save the day. It's crazy how this is seen as realistic, while the opposite is considered edgy - Ironically, being drugged and raped is something that can happen to you when playing Fallout 2 as a female character.
As is the usual reaction I see to The Boys comics, it really seems to be a problem of being sheltered, of reaching adulthood with so little world knowledge that anything raw and real seems edgy. Mad Max is a fantasy taking place in a world where those who have more guns make the laws, and we don't have to imagine this world, it already exists. I'm glad I was watching movies like Johnny Mad Dog, Angels of the Sun, Lord of War, City of God, The Last King of Scotland, Blood Diamonds, and so on, in my adolescence, so that I got to see a bit of the real world. So when I see rape and cannibalism in a fantasy movie like Scavenger, I'm really not impressed - nor think it's being over-the-top.
Hell, all those movies I listed in the previous paragraph, all are 18+ in the USA as well. I don't just find them suitable for adolescents, I find them essential for adolescents, as they need to know the world outside their bubbles, so really fuck Indiana Jones being considered mature. Americans really put a lot of effort into treating kids like they are stupid and raising stupid adults. No wonder we see so many having mental breakdowns and throwing tantrums when faced with adversity and opposition. They wasted all the mental plasticity of young age and have grown up to be moral infants.