12 Reasons Movies Were Better When You Were Younger

2. Sex Still Sells, But It Goes Over Your Head

If there's one undeniable fact of filmmaking, it's that sex sells: fill the screen with attractive men and women and, more often than not, the money will follow. If a movie sells itself on sex, however, more enlightened adult audiences will often find themselves groaning (see: the current Fifty Shades of Grey mockery, even if the movie's sure to be a hit), but kids? Kids have no clue. Kids are wonderfully naive and innocent and so, if a sexually suggestive character appears on screen, short of some R-rated nudity, they're merely likely to think, "There goes a pretty lady" and keep their attention focused on the plot rather than anything else. It simply doesn't enter their mind that the woman or man is a wider commercial calculation, and as such, the casual sexism in movies like Transformers doesn't at all hamper their enjoyment of the movie as it does many adults. And in actual fact, this argument extends to any perceived unpleasant element of a movie: for the most part, the subtext is lost on kids. Casual racism in Transformers movies? Overt product placement? Not a problem for young Timmy.