Who else misses the way kids films/entertainment used to be?

[Kyle]

The other major thing seems to be factoring in made for TV and direct to DVD movies, which has increased.

Why aren't kids in kids' films any more?
GUARDIAN Film Blog, August 2015

Children used to like watching naughtier or braver versions of themselves at the cinema. But today’s film-makers appear to have gone off child protagonists – even cartoon ones.

An inflatable Minion on a highway in Ireland doesn’t get there on its own. Childrens’ movies – or movies aimed at kids and young teens – have never been bigger, and neither have the promotional budgets. Animated films especially are dominating the box office. Ten of the top 20 highest-grossing U- and PG-rated movies of all time are animated, including six of the top 10. And, apart from Beauty and the Beast (1994), they’ve all been released since the turn of the century.

Yet, something’s missing. Beyond all the changes in technology, marketing, sales totals, or even demographic target audiences, what’s notable about modern kids’ movies is that there are very few kids in them.

The total number of films aimed at children released each year.
[KYLE NOTE: This doesn't include direct to DVD or made for television films.]

We can see this by consulting Wikipedia’s long list of children’s films released since 1980.

After cutting this list down to eliminate straight-to-DVD or made-for-TV movies, as well as some small foreign films, we get a list of approximately 745 movies. It confirms a rise in kids’ movies, overall. Our imperfect list shows there were 106 films released during the 1980s, 224 released during the 1990s. More still were released in the first decade of the new century – 261 by my count. And by the end of 2015, we’ll be on pace to pass 300 a decade by 2020. 154 children’s films have come out in the past five years.

But where are the kids in all these movies? Though there’s been a rise in children’s films overall each decade, the same can’t be said for those with a child protagonist, or in which a child drives the narrative. Here’s how it breaks down by year:

The number of films with a child protagonist or with a child driving the narrative released each year.

The main reason for the disappearance of child protagonists appears to be the overall drop in live-action kids’ movies. When live-action kids’ movies are made, as they were in abundance in the mid-1990s (perhaps the real golden age of kids’ films), they’re more likely to feature a child as the main character than their animated counterparts.

The number of live-action children’s films featuring a child protagonist released each year.

The absence of live-action children’s movies featuring child actors in central roles is even more confusing when two other factors are considered: live-action movies tend to be cheaper (Toy Story 3 cost $200m to produce, whereas Home Alone only cost $18m), and child actors are not only everywhere, especially on TV, but are also arguably better than ever.

But does it matter? Does it make a difference to kids whether they watch a real live child as opposed to an animated one, or a real kid versus a cartoon monster? How much do kids need to see other kids on screen? Will a film’s message – or morality lesson – be absorbed either way?

The number of animated children’s films with a child protagonist released each year.

There doesn’t appear to be a lot of research into these questions, but we might still wonder whether constant, or continued, immersion in synthetic worlds might eventually leave kids uninterested in interacting with the real one.

When the website io9 discussed the recent dearth of movies like The Goonies, one commenter noted that “Movies like The Goonies … are no longer possible because movies like that rely on the exploration of the world of children that is separate from the world of adults, and that world no longer exists.” That is, movies like The Goonies promoted not only independence, but also independent thought.

Yet, these days, it’s not so much that child exploration no longer occurs. There remains a world that exists for children to explore that’s separate from the world of adults. The difference is that now that exploration is done on phones or tablets, where an imaginary world requires no imagination at all. And, where cinema once reinforced the idea of the explorer child existing in a wider, tactile world, it now reinforces the non-reality of a pre-packaged computer simulation where children rarely exist at all.

But at least the marketing department can sell giant balloons.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2015/aug/07/minions-kids-in-kids-films-animations

[KYLE NOTE: For a longer in-depth look at how this research was conducted:]

What we’re looking for in this list are those mass-market films aimed at young audiences, like the ones we talked about above. A lot of those will be G-rated, the bulk will probably be PG, and a few will be PG-13. That means we can hold on to most animated features, from Aladdin to Inside Out, as well as most superhero movies like Iron Man or X-Men. It also means we keep adventure films like the Indiana Jones, Back to the Future and Star Wars series. And, of course, flicks like The Goonies or Stand By Me.

But we have to cull the crap. So, we can drop the straight-to-video or DVD movies, along with the made-for-TV stuff, despite how popular some of it was. Nobody will really claim that a Disney Channel or Nickelodeon movie is a serious classic. It also means that for the most part, international releases are gone, too. Some were good enough, or developed enough of a following, to keep, but the bulk of it can go.

[KYLE NOTE: Some will agree with this, others will argue with those methods - one thing of obvious note is when we're talking films that are easily right in front of most of our eyes, this is what it looks like. Thus, it could all just still be there perhaps - just released in a way that you need to search outside of what is hitting theaters.

For a further in-depth look at the research compiled:]

http://www.colinfhorgan.com/colin-horgan/2015/7/17/golden-age-kids-movies-no-kids

[KYLE NOTE: And a quote from that for Darth:]

This is where defining a ‘golden age’ of any kind gets a bit difficult. How do we truly define it? If you’re content to say that it was when kids were in kids’ movies, then not only was there certainly a golden age, but you can practically pinpoint exactly when it was: somewhere between about 1993 and 1997. And yet, if we’re talking sheer volume of films, or even successful, box-office hits, you’d have to conclude the golden age is the one we’re currently experiencing.

[KYLE NOTE: Basically what one looks for is in the eye of the beholder, depending on what they're looking for.]

Personally, I loved reading this blog post from THE GUARDIAN. It also clearly showed me another thing we see above very easily. What is the golden age to one is not the golden age to another. I grew up in a golden age, but today can be defined as a golden age as well.

It also more than explains my skewed view of the 90s... I mean - look at it 1994-1997 lol (the years I remember the most from growing up are only just a small cluster of the reality and not indicative of the 90s at all), taking a look at that graph I see my view was easily skewed by a small and rare cluster (very akin to the YA fiction film cluster of today). It also shows why I thought there was a large drop off (1998 and beyond) - but really, it was just a cluster of many followed a noticeable decline before shooting back up again before the 00s mid-way through):

Then this one shows why my view of child protagonists is more than skewed, same years - not indicative of the 90s at all, just a small cluster followed by a similar and in no way indicative drop before shooting back up, 1994-1997.

So it's less I miss 1990s - it's I miss 1994-1997 in terms of live action and hugely 1995 in terms of the vast number there were that year. This all clearly shows why my view on the 90s is weirdly slanted and incorrect, while still why I miss it... I just miss 4 years of the 90s, less than half. Adding further to this skew and incorrect view of the 90s and focusing on these 4 years to anyone else born in 1988 wondering what the TV atmosphere was like - 1994-1997 were the years Goosebumps came out, Are You Afraid Of The Dark started spreading around more (started in 1990 in Canada and took a couple of years to gel with US audiences) and Eerie Indiana returned to television. Plus, 1997 was the year the Simpsons introduced a lot of kids who weren't already in the know, and furthered those perhaps just starting to watch it, to 'The X-Files.'

I'm also guessing these four years (despite being only 40% of it) is mostly how a lot remember the 90s because in this period of 1994-1997 we have: Goldeneye (movie, 1995 - next Bond film after 1989), Independence Day, Jurassic Park '93 with Lost World in this time, Space Jam, Lion King, Dumb and Dumber, Santa Clause, Toy Story, Jumanji, Power Rangers Movie, Mortal Kombat, Titanic, Men In Black, Austin Powers... or basically the key content one remembers the most about the 90s were all squeezed into 4 years.