My Daughter Is Refusing To Watch Superman With Me, And I Blame DC League Of SuperPets

Superman is one of my favorite movies of the year. I really wanted to see it at least twice in theaters, but the schedule didn’t allow it, which meant I was very much looking forward to when the film would become available via my HBO Max subscription. That finally happened this past Friday, so I was all set to schedule a family movie night, as I thought it was a film that my daughter would enjoy as well.

She’s a bit younger than the movie's PG-13 rating, but the language isn’t anything she hasn’t heard, and the violence I felt was significantly “comic book-y” enough that she’d be able to handle it. If she can handle K-Pop Demon Hunters, she can do Superman, at least as long as mom and dad are there. She usually jumps at any opportunity to watch any movie, which meant I was quite surprised when my daughter refused to watch it.

My Daughter Refused To Watch Superman

My wife had previously suggested they see Superman during a mom/daughter movie date when the film was still in theaters, and the kid, I call her Cable, had declined to watch it then as well. When I suggested this time, I got the same negative reaction. At first, it was just a quiet no. When I pushed the topic a second time later, I got a very loud and very firm “NO!”

Needless to say, this is not what I expected. It’s not like my kid was a big fan of the SnyderVerse and is protesting the movie. While she certainly understands who Superman is, it's through cultural osmosis more than anything. She's never seen a Superman movie. Well, that's actually not quite true as it turns out.

DC’s League Of SuperPets Scarred My Child

If asked, I would have said that my kid had never even seen a DC superhero movie before, but it turns out that’s not actually the case. Three years ago, I was assigned the Cinemablend review for DC’s League of SuperPets, an animated film that included Dwayne Johnson as the voice of Krypto, who enlists other pets to attempt to save the Justice League. When I went to see it, I brought my daughter with me, thinking that an animated movie about superhero animals would be something she would enjoy. It was not.

The movie opens with a version of the traditional Superman origin story. We see Kal-El’s parents put him aboard the spaceship, this time with a pet dog, as mom and dad stay behind, and the planet is destroyed. Once Cable brought it up, I remembered that yes, this sequence absolutely destroyed her. The idea that the baby had lost her parents absolutely killed her. I thought we were going to have to leave the theater. She eventually recovered, and I thought she enjoyed the rest of the movie, but she did not forget it.

Rewatching the film myself this past weekend, after the kids had gone to bed. I realized it was probably all for the best that I didn’t talk her into watching Superman. If the death of Superman’s parents was too much, I can’t imagine how much Superman’s parents being dead, and also assholes, would have hurt.