What's with all these dead parents in this summer's kids movies?

The parents of Lilo in Lilo & Stitch are dead. The parents of Calvin in Like Mike are dead. The parents of Arnold in Hey Arnold! The Movie are nonexistent. The Powerpuff Girls have no parents in The Powerpuff Girls Movie – just a scientist who invented them in a laboratory. And Stuart Little 2 revolves around Stuart, a happily adopted former orphan, and his friendship with an orphaned bird named Margalo.

Sara Greiner, 11, of Dallas says she's not crazy about the trend.

"It kind of bugs me that every film is about an orphan. I don't feel comfortable with the idea of little kids losing their parents. Sometimes I get scared, too."

Martha Satz, a professor of English at Southern Methodist University, says the orphan theme is a time-honored literary tradition.

"It's a children's fantasy," she says. "When parents say no to them, they can say, 'These are not my real parents because they don't recognize how wonderful I am, that I am potentially heroic and I can save the world.' "

The Harry Potter books fit this paradigm, she says. She says they are a healthy outlet for a child's natural megalomaniac visions.

Without any parent to help him, Harry Potter must save the world from Voldemort, just as the Powerpuff Girls must thwart evil monkeys and Lilo must rescue Earth from aliens. Calvin must save a pro basketball team from defeat (and his orphanage from a mean orphanage director), and Arnold must free his neighborhood from developers.

Stuart in Stuart Little 2 must save Margalo from a nefarious falcon.

In an interview with Plugged In, an online magazine from the nonprofit Christian organization Focus on the Family, Disney producer Don Hahn explained his studio's predilection for stories involving orphans and the death of a parent, from Bambi to The Lion King .

"By not having a complete family, it represents a catalyst or a dramatic turning point that forces the character to grow up. ... And the thing that gets that going in many of our stories is the absence of a parent or the death of a parent," he says.

But Sara and her fellow students at the Makin' Movies class at Dallas Children's Theater don't seem sold on those themes. They also question the violence and threatening situations that bumped this summer's crop of kids films to PG ratings.

Joel Fontenot, 10, of Dallas says he doesn't understand why filmmakers felt the need to add explosions to the big-screen version of Hey Arnold!, which is a pretty gentle show on TV.

"They should only add violence when it's necessary," he says. "This wasn't necessary."

A little too real

Their responses may be partly in response to children's changing perception of the world in the wake of Sept. 11, says Dr. David Walsh, founder and executive director of the Minneapolis-based National Institute on Media and the Family.

"One of the functions of fairy tales and children's stories is that they provide opportunities for kids to explore feelings within relative security," says Dr. Walsh.

"Now we have a situation where kids are not as secure as they were prior to 9-11. There's a difference between a story that is going to help a kid vicariously deal with feelings to one that will open up a wound. I hear about kids who don't want their parents to travel because they hear all the stories about the children in New York who lost their parents."

Karl Schaeffer, a teacher at Dallas Children's Theater, says he's noticed a difference in the themes that his students have wanted to explore in their scriptwriting since the terrorist attacks.

"Usually kids will say they want to put in a bomb threat or assassination, and I have to channel it and show how we can make it creative – like having a gun that shoots marshmallows.

"But I don't remember anyone in this group wanting to do something violent."

That's not to say that the kids didn't like many aspects of the summer's films.

Most of the kids found Lilo & Stitch pretty funny and enjoyed seeing a kid turn into a basketball star in Like Mike.

Stuart Little 2 got high marks from Daniel Gillette, 10, of Dallas for promoting sibling togetherness.

"The two boys like to do stuff together," he says, referring to Stuart and his older brother, played by Jonathan Lipnicki.

He says he is looking forward to Spy Kids 2 for the same reason.

"The kids have to work together to get the parents."

Thumbs up

There actually has been an increasing emphasis on family values in kids movies, according to Bob Waliszewski, a youth-culture analyst for Focus on the Family.

"I think Stuart Little 2 was the best family film this year," he says. "It has wholesome themes and avoids profanity. Like Mike was a pretty good story. I really liked that it was very family- and friendship-oriented. I think it sent a great message that he wanted to be part of a family more than being a pro basketball player."

He's not crazy about the absent-parent theme, which he says sends a message that parents don't play a significant role in a child's life. But he also sees these movies as a big step up from Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) and DreamWorks' The Road to El Dorado (2000), both of which took children's animated movies to new levels of violence and sexual suggestiveness.

"In the '90s, Hollywood put profanity and sexual innuendo into family films thinking the parents would like it and it would go over the heads of the kids," he says. "Then we were reading stories about how the family audience isn't there and the kids demand a deeper level of violence and gritty stuff."

Now, he says, the box-office successes of Stuart Little 2 and Lilo & Stitch prove a pent-up demand for more wholesome fare.

He'd like it even better if filmmakers would return to the G rating for kids films. After all, it worked well for Monsters, Inc. and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.

As for the kids, they say they would like to see more movies based on books they like. They are jazzed about Holes, a film adaptation of the Newbery Medal-winning book by Austin writer Louis Sachar. The movie is in development.

Joel would love a new adaptation of C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia. Emily Rosenfeld, 12, of Dallas wants to see a contemporary version of Cheaper by the Dozen. What they all want to see are better movies. And one day, they say, they want to make them themselves.

"I think movies really affect kids," says Jenny McCartney, 12, of Dallas. "In hard times, movies make kids smile."

E-mail nchurnin@dallasnews.com