This weekend we went to see the latest superhero blockbuster ‘Man of Steel’.  Of course my kids, ages 10 and 8, were the most excited to go despite the PG-13 rating.  So my husband and I had to do a little research and watch as many trailers as possible to make the appropriate parental call.  In the end, we did take them since they are big Superman fans and they have seen quite a few other action flicks.

I definitely thought this was a darker and more violent version of the Superman stories but I didn’t come out of there feeling like an irresponsible parent for taking the kids.  There was a great deal of action and buildings blowing up when Superman is fighting Zod but it was reminiscent of ‘Transformers’.  My kids had seen those movies and didn’t seem too disturbed since there weren’t really any humans getting hurt, it was mainly robots and this time it was an alien superhero and alien villain.  I don’t want to expose my kids to so much violence that they either start being violent, or that they become numb to it.  However, I don’t think that is happening with these types of movies since they don’t personally relate to these super-beings or super-robots.  They have a much more disturbed reaction when they see a regular person physically hurt or emotionally upset.

So beside the violence, there are some scenes that might disturb a child. (Small spoiler alert- nothing major) There is a birthing scene (not that you see anything) which may bring up some questions and then some creepy skeletal images when Clark gets X-ray vision.  Though, as a mom who loves to lecture my kids on things, I did find some good teaching points in the story.  I was able to alert my kids to Clark Kent’s strength of character, his willpower to do good even when it is hard, and also mention how he dealt with bullies!  So I think the inherent goodness of the character helped balance out all the fighting and exploding.  Oh….and I almost forgot to mention that the eye-candy is great for the moms too!