After all, nobody can see the dead but Cole, so as far as the world is concerned, the kid is just a constantly tense, antisocial and frightened young boy who occasionally enjoys writing horrible things in crazy scribbles on paper, lying about stealing, screaming at teachers and wearing his dead father's wristwatch and reading glasses sans the lenses.

The first hipster.

So it only makes sense when psychiatrist Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) comes lurking around to try to help Cole deal with whatever the hell is making him so creepy.

During the film, Malcolm finds out about Cole's problem with the dead, and helps him slowly learn to deal with it by listening to what they have to say as opposed to freaking out all the time. He even escorts Cole on a bus to a girl's funeral, where he helps the little dead girl put her mother in jail for poisoning her. In the end, Cole finally 'fesses up to his mother and starts to heal psychologically.

Oh, and Bruce Willis is really dead the whole time, which you probably already knew and if you didn't, then ... well, you don't exist. Anyway this twist that everyone loved so dearly masked a pretty important detail in this film: If Bruce Willis was dead, then as far as Cole's mother knows, he never got any help with his psychological issues.

Ah, this kid's got nothing a little Ritalin can't fix.

Lynn could not see Bruce Willis. She did not know this ghost was helping her son through his crippling emotional problems. She watched her kid this whole time screaming at birthday parties, writing weird shit, acting constantly tense and getting hospitalized and she didn't do a single goddamned thing. During Cole's stay at the hospital, she is actually told by a doctor there that the boy needs help. And still she does shit. Seriously, watch the film and mentally remove Bruce Willis, and you see that this kid is left to twist in the wind.

All those times when we see Cole walking down the street, taking the bus to the funeral and being greeted after school by Malcolm, he is actually doing those things with nobody. Nobody actually saw him perform in the school play, nobody came to see him after he got called a freak by his teacher at school, nobody escorted him on the bus to some random neighborhood to some random funeral.

To the rest of the world -- and his mom -- he was just some kid walking around and talking to himself. Lynn needs to thank her lucky stars that Cole's ghost friend happened to be real and happened to be a child psychiatrist, because otherwise, well, we know the alternative ...

Cole, 15 years later.

Russell's mother is seen only in one shot of the film -- at the very end, when (spoiler!) everything has turned out OK, Carl and Russell have become good friends and Carl is presenting the kid with a merit badge. She's briefly seen happily applauding.

Probably because her soul wasn't weighed down by the saddest montage of all time.

What's wrong with that? Let's recap the sequence of events that brought her there:

First, little Russell is going door-to-door at a construction zone, where he meets an old man who is being put in a nursing home because of an assault charge. He gets kidnapped by the old man (accidentally at first, but the old man could have landed and let the kid go home, and he chose not to) and taken to South America for about a week. There he gets chased and nearly ripped apart by a pack of dogs, almost falls to his death more times than one can count, helps hijack a zeppelin and watches a man fall to his death. He then returns home in the stolen zeppelin with the old man and the pack of dogs that had tried to kill him earlier, covered in scratches and bruises.

And this is her reaction:

Yeah. That's her clapping and smiling like a putz instead of crying and calling the police. Did she not notice her son was missing all that time? You can't even argue that this scene happens long after everything got cleared up, because Russell clearly hasn't even cleaned himself up yet.

In fact, Russell's mom doesn't seem concerned about that, either. No one has even attempted to wipe his face! Is something broken? Is he bleeding? Why is there a giant zeppelin outside? Who knows! YAY YOU GOT A BADGE!

And then, in the closing credits montage we find out that Russell is allowed to keep hanging out with the crazy old man who previously kidnapped him, and his huge-ass flying balloon. Hey, why not? The old man has shown himself to be totally trustworthy and completely unwilling to put the child in danger. Way to parent!

We have previously mentioned the way Inception conveniently forgets about the murderous corporation that's after Leo DiCaprio's character (Dom Cobb) and how at the end of the film he basically leads them right to his children's door. But his failures as a parent start long before that.

"Go play on that hill in the vague distance, kids. Daddy has to sit in the dark and think."

To recap, the entire plot of Inception is set into motion by Cobb's motivation to get back home to his children, whom he cannot see because he is wanted for the murder of his wife back in the States. It is his love for them that drives him as he does one last and most difficult job in order for his employer to work his magic and get all the charges dropped so that Cobb can finally get back through U.S. customs and see his kids. No idea why his kids can't just come to him, but we'll just let that go.

What's important is that Cobb pretty much risks his sanity, freedom and life to see these two rug rats -- and when all is said and done, he finally returns home exonerated and free of the guilt he had about his wife, who had committed suicide because of an idea he planted in her head that the real world was, in fact, not real.

To achieve the same effect in your own head, take 30 hits of acid and call us when the ceiling fan stops screaming at you.

In the end, we see Cobb reunite with his children in their home, and the famous ending with the spinning top.

But that brings us to the problem at hand: The ending shot of this film stirred up so many questions for the audience as to whether Cobb was dreaming that people forgot that this was exactly the point -- the shot symbolizes doubt. The doubt that Mal, Cobb's wife, felt that made her accuse her kids of not being real and that eventually drove her to suicide. The same doubt that made Cobb sit with a gun to his head watching a spinning top, hoping to hell that it would stop. The doubt that actually at no point ever gets resolved.

So Michael Caine's ancient ass can handle a flight to the U.S., but Cobb's kids can't stand a few hours in ultra-first class?

Remember, the confrontation with his wife in limbo was about absolving himself of guilt over her death, not fixing the dozens of other issues tormenting him day to day as a result of his work. Our point is, Cobb is still a psychological and emotional wreck.

And now imagine that you're his kid.

First of all, it must be a bit difficult to have a dad who isn't exactly 100 percent on whether the world around him is real. Hell, he wouldn't even be sure whether you were real.

"Hey. Dad. Do you know where the cerea- oh ... never mind ... I can see you're busy ..."

Then you're going to have to deal with people around town telling you that your dad murdered your mom; even though Cobb got the charges dropped through some under-the-table deal, that doesn't stop people from talking. And what about when the kids are old enough to ask Dad what happened to Mom? What is Leo going to say that doesn't sound like the ravings of a madman?

Seriously, why would anyone want to put Cobb near children? Wait a second -- why did Cobb and Mal even think that having children was a good idea? They had the kids after they spent their decades in limbo, right? While she was having all of her weird doubts about reality? And his job required him to keep a small object in his pocket to keep track of whether or not he was in a dream?

"Alright kids! We're either going to McDonald's, or huddling in the closet with a loaded gun. It all depends on whether this top tips over."

What chance did those kids have of not winding up in an institution some day?

Alfred isn't just Bruce Wayne's butler -- he was the young Bruce's legal guardian after his parents were shot and killed in an alley.

Luckily for Bruce, Alfred appears to be an extremely caring and compassionate man, and while his parents' death was quite tragic, children have recovered from much worse. Also, he is rich and thankfully can be given the best psychological care money can buy. It's pretty much the best-case scenario for such an ordeal; no doubt with Alfred's help, Mr. Wayne can grow up to become an accomplished business man and a productive member of society ...

... or, you know, a giant vengeful bat.

Let's be honest here. It's fun to watch Batman, but it's not fun to be Batman. And if the kid you raised grows up to dress like a bat and wander the night fighting the mentally insane, you failed that child.

Let's go back for a moment to his childhood, After his parents' funeral, young Bruce Wayne blames himself for their deaths, and Alfred reassures him by saying, "It was nothing you did; it was him, and him alone." Which clearly plants a pretty big seed, because we then see that about 10 years later, Bruce is still carrying his grudge. He is so hateful that he actually attempts to assassinate the guy when he is released from jail.

Also, he spends years wandering around strange, muddy foreign countries and trying to get murdered. Which probably counts as "maladaptive" behavior.

Again, cool to watch in a movie, but not a healthy way to deal with grief. Couldn't Alfred have had at least a sit-down with Bruce about this during those 10 years? Or gotten him help, if he didn't think he was capable of getting through to him himself?

Then, after this attempt, Bruce Wayne runs away for seven years. During that time he is declared dead, and Alfred inherits everything. EVERYTHING. Then, after his adventures, Bruce finally decides to return home and is picked up by Alfred in a jet while covered in bruises and mud. Upon seeing him, Alfred says, "Master Wayne, you've been gone a long time. You look very fashionable. ..."

Seriously, Alfred? Not a single fuck you give?

"Ah, Master Wayne. So you'll just be standing around in the dark, surrounded by bats tonight? Very good, sir."

Alfred doesn't care about this man's well-being -- the man he raised as his own son. When Bruce shares his plans to dress up like a bat and risk his life every night to fight crime, clearly as a result of his lingering grief over his parents, Alfred just rolls with it. He's totally cool with it.

Could it be, perhaps, that Alfred's compliances with Bruce, as opposed to any kind of guidance or resistance, have something to do with who gets even more rich if Mr. Wayne kicks it?

"Master Wayne, I think this time you should try fighting the Joker unarmed. And nude."

But the day-to-day atmosphere inside is more like that of a cruise ship. For instance, there are children on board.

You see them in the background of numerous episodes, and various plots involve them in one capacity or another. So ... why are they allowed on the ship? Anyone? Let's look at the ship's mission, which any even casual viewer knows by heart:

"Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. It's continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before!"

Bah! Nah Nah NAH! Nah Nah NAAAH!

Boldly going where no one has gone before -- meaning places full of unknown beings, diseases and environmental dangers we may not know how to deal with. And we brought our kids along.

Can you remember any time in history when human beings thought that was ever a good idea? Especially considering that this ship we are talking about is the freaking flagship of the Federation, an institution that already has way more enemies than you could shake a bat'leth at. The Enterprise gets attacked every other week.

Not to mention the space pedophiles.

And the danger to the kids isn't hypothetical; in one episode, a bunch of kids get kidnapped by aliens. In another, a tour group of kids almost gets killed when the ship malfunctions.

"Ah ... that, little Johnny, is a Romulan Bird-of-Prey. The green glow is the disruptor powering on."

There are other episodes where children get singled out and tormented by alien races, such as one where a little girl's imaginary friend turns out to be a homicidal being, or when a young boy's dead mother comes back to life as an alien, presumably studying how much you can traumatize a human child.

Give Mommy a kiss!

And it's not even like the Enterprise is just the victim of bad luck here, like it's an innocent fishing boat continually getting surprise-attacked by pirates. No, they used this ship to attack the Borg, a race of half-robots with no emotion hell-bent on taking over the entire human race. With the children on board.

Hey, it worked out pretty well for Seven of Nine.

What makes it even stranger: We can't think of an occasion where the crew has considered the safety of the children in any way when making decisions.

In the last TNG film, the new Enterprise is carrying a wedding party with it (cruise ship mode) when it is ordered to fly into enemy territory on a mission (battle ship mode). Long story short, this doesn't end well, and Captain Picard is left with a ship half blown open and finds himself face-to-face with the enemy's giant doomsday ship. His only choice is to ram the front of the Enterprise into the bad guy without any warning ... to anyone.

Now anybody (OK, maybe just nerds) can tell you what's at the front of the Enterprise -- it's a place called Ten Forward, a lounge where people go to socialize. But more importantly, according to previous episodes of the show it is also one of many emergency shelter locations in case of a deck evacuation within the ship ... something that had happened earlier in the battle. All of the men, women and children would have been huddled there.

And they use it as a goddamned battering ram.

Mazel tov!

Ahhh, Indiana Jones. Professor of archaeology at Marshall College and father of one hideous greaser.

It's tough to imagine that this character would be bad for children when he pretty much raised an entire generation into adulthood. He's smart and courageous and can improvise the most elaborate stunt on the fly. He's the ultimate male role model, right?

He does have a thing for young women -- Marion was in her teens when Indy did her, which kind of puts the "female student who has a crush on him" thing in the third film in a new light.

That's two-thirds of a lawsuit, right there.

But these are young adults -- hell, most of his students are over 18, which, while still creepy, is not illegal. So what's the big deal? It's not like Indiana just walks around endangering random little kids he finds on the street!

How did they wind up together? Indiana caught the 10-year-old picking his pocket on the street and then took him. Seriously, that's what happened in Temple of Doom -- Indy found an orphan on the street, named him like a dog and then used him as his own personal assistant instead of taking him somewhere that he could be taken care of.

Don't pretend any one of you wouldn't trade places with him in an instant to hang out with Indiana Jones all day.

One could argue that Short Round is better off being raised by Indy -- as opposed to just being put in some hole somewhere with other abandoned children -- but first, that's not Indy's legal decision to make, and second, do you recall ever seeing him after this film? Temple is a prequel -- it takes place one year before Raiders, so in the span of one year, Short Round basically disappears. Where did he go? Seriously, what the hell happened to Short Round? Did Indy forget to refill his water dish before going on vacation or something?

Actually, it's too bad he didn't have him around in Raiders; or else Indy could have used him as one of the child human shields he surrounded himself with when he was about to be killed by Belloq.

Yes, this happened.

David Bell is a freelance writer and video editor. You can see his work here.

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