6. Radio Flyer
Completely insane might be an extreme term for the narrator of Radio Flyer, a grown man telling his kids about an adventure he had with his little brother growing up. Still, there's something fishy going on here. The story proper follows young Mike and Bobby, who hatch a plan to send Bobby away in a flying machine built from their Radio Flyer wagon. Why does the younger brother have to leave? Their stepdad, a recent a-hole acquisition of their mother, has been abusing Bobby pretty hard, and instead of telling her (they don't want to disrupt her happiness) or the police, they both decide sending the boy out of the brute's clutches is the only way. The reason this movie makes the list is the way it ends, a confused muddle that renders it an abhorrent concoction as far as films about child abuse go. After meeting the last kid who tried to make the leap off their chosen departure point--an adult with a broken body--the two boys do launch Bobby on his flight, and what happens? He sails off into the night, safe and sound, never to be seen by the narrator again. We see postcards from various destinations all over the world, supposedly sent from Bobby, who went on to become a pilot. There's even a scene where Mike shows one of the postcards to his mother, and she cries. For a film that has largely been realistic, what gives? Did Bobby really just fly away from abuse through the power of sheer childlike will? Is it that he died in the crash, and Mike's been spinning this BS story all these years to assuage the guilt? How, exactly, is one supposed to interpret the story in a way that makes sense? Director Richard Donner has long said there's nothing cryptic about the film, that it's meant for face value, but screenwriter David M. Adams says that Donner scrapped the original script's ending so that it might be a "Rorschach Test" for the audience. That finale featured the Radio Flyer machine sitting inside the Smithsonian National Aerospace Museum next too the Wright Flyer, just floating there, not held up by any visible suspension and Bobby is there in the flesh, as a pilot. While it can be agreed that this ending wouldn't have improved anything in regards to that idea of "suicide/wishful thinking" being an escape from abuse, it's absence leaves a different impression. After looking it over, another possibility comes to mind. Is there a Bobby at all? The narrator talks about the seven laws that kid's believe, and over the course of the film every last one minus the flight is proven wrong. If Bobby tried to fly and died, why isn't there some attempt by the mother or others to correct Mike's delusion through grief counseling? Why does one seemingly look for Bobby? Are mom's tears at the postcard because she sees it as a method of Mike dealing with his brother's death, or is it some inner acknowledgement that this process is how Mike has come to deal with abuse committed against him, not an imaginary brother figure? Was Bobby, in fact, some innocent part of Mike's psyche who he sent away in order to preserve it from dying at the hands of the King's abuse?