&lt;div class=&quot;track&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; src=&quot;http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.2/66535?ns=guardian&amp;pageName=Daddy+issues%3A+why+movies+such+as+Real+Steel+need+to+man+up+and+ditch+the%3AArticle%3A1647080&amp;ch=Film&amp;c3=GU.co.uk&amp;c4=Family+%28Film+genre%29%2CAction+and+adventure+%28Film+genre%29%2CHugh+Jackman+%28Film%29%2CSylvester+Stallone%2CFilm%2CCulture%2CParents+and+parenting%2CFamily+%28Life+and+style%29%2CLife+and+style&amp;c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CFilm+Reviews%2CFamily+and+Relationships&amp;c6=Phelim+O%27Neill&amp;c7=11-Oct-13&amp;c8=1647080&amp;c9=Article&amp;c10=Blogpost&amp;c11=Film&amp;c13=&amp;c25=Film+blog&amp;c30=content&amp;h2=GU%2FFilm%2Fblog%2FFilm+blog&quot; width=&quot;1&quot; height=&quot;1&quot; /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p class=&quot;standfirst&quot;&gt;I was expecting Rocky with robots. I got Hugh Jackman hugging a kid. Enough of the cheap emotional manipulation, Hollywood&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the preface to his essential &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventures_in_the_screen_trade&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Adventures in the Screen Trade&lt;/a&gt; book, William Goldman describes a childhood trip to the cinema to see 1939&#039;s &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031493/&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Invitation to Happiness&lt;/a&gt;. He excitedly sat down to view what he was led to believe was a movie about prizefighters &ndash; only to look on with increasing horror as the pugilism was sidelined for a more enjoyable contact sport: &quot;It wasn&#039;t a prizefight movie. It was a kissing movie.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Last week at Waterloo&#039;s Imax cinema, I had a similarly unwanted epiphany while watching &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0433035/&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Real Steel&lt;/a&gt;, because what I had been led to believe was a robot boxing movie turned out to be a movie about dads. There is a fair amount of robo-boxing, but I soon realised it isn&#039;t the central theme &ndash; Hugh Jackman&#039;s character spends most of the film arguing then hugging and learning with his newly discovered son. What looked like Rocky with robots turned into another Sylvester Stallone movie, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB5iDUnx0iY&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Over the Top&lt;/a&gt;, but without the arm-wrestling. (Let&#039;s pause for a moment to digest the fact we live in a time where you can make a hit movie by stitching two old Stallone movies together and sprinkling it with robots.) Jackman even compliments Evangeline Lilly with the immortal line &quot;You sound just like a dad&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Although the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei5l3r1dV4I&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;trailers for the film&lt;/a&gt; don&#039;t even feature the kid &ndash; apart from a couple of shots in which he&#039;s lost among a crowd &ndash; I really shouldn&#039;t have been surprised. Most movies coming out of Hollywood these days are dad movies. Daddy issues are the new shorthand for emotional depth. Now I&#039;ve nothing against films that do this in a smart way, such as ET where the &lt;a href=&quot;http://internationalpsychoanalysis.net/2008/05/22/e-t-the-extra-terrestrial-advent-of-the-absent-father/&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;absence of the father is acutely felt throughout&lt;/a&gt;, or The Empire Strikes Back where the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6sj89xgnl4&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;revelation of Darth Vader&#039;s identity&lt;/a&gt; gives the story more impact. There are plenty of films that make daddy issues the entire point, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0319061/&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Tim Burton&#039;s Big Fish&lt;/a&gt;. Again, no problem with those. What does rankle is how father-child relationships are used to finangle a film unearned emotional impact.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;For example, take &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/apr/21/star-trek&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;JJ Abrams&#039;s 2009 film Star Trek&lt;/a&gt;: Captain Kirk has a massive chip on his shoulder thanks to the shadow his father&#039;s selfless death. But that&#039;s only true for the Abrams version; while &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/tvandradioblog/2009/may/22/television-television1&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;William Shatner&#039;s Kirk&lt;/a&gt; was a second-generation starship captain, barely a word about his pa was uttered in all the episodes and movies that followed. Yet there they are in the flashy new Star Trek &ndash; daddy issues &ndash; showing us the film isn&#039;t all empty calories. Or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/movie/123770/iron.man&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Iron Man&lt;/a&gt; &ndash; that&#039;s the drunk arms dealer who flies around in a metal suit, right? Yes, but he&#039;s also a guy who feels pressure to live up to his dad&#039;s legacy of being a slightly nicer arms dealer, something Iron Man 2 placed front and centre. It&#039;s rife in the superhero genre. Most of these films are origins stories, where the lead spends most of the time either not being superhero enough or being it badly only to get the hang of it for the climactic battle. You&#039;re going to need some padding for that, and daddy issues more than fit the bill.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;While fatherhood crops up in several superhero stories, it&#039;s only really explored in later issues of the comics where writers are trying something new, or bored. It&#039;s in Superman, Batman, Green Hornet/Lantern, Spider-Man (with Uncle Ben as dad substitute), Hulk, etc &ndash; but they&#039;re certainly not what the early adventures are all about. Look at Thor, son of Odin. Sure, having a god as a dad is worth exploring, but he&#039;s in the movie a lot more than he was ever in the comics. Also, in the comics he&#039;s been dead for a decade or so, meaning that younger fans will have no idea why there&#039;s some old Welsh guy ruining their movie. With the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0800320/&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Clash of the Titans remake&lt;/a&gt; we endure plenty of scenes of Sam Worthington shouting at the sky, bemoaning his godly bloodline &ndash; where, again, in the original movie it&#039;s mentioned a few times then moved on from.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But what&#039;s even worse is when daddy issues appear in films where they have no place at all. Take &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/jul/15/inception-review&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Inception&lt;/a&gt;, a film inexplicably regarded by many as original and thought-provoking: it, too, sticks a hoary old dad into the mix, making the plot depend on a billionaire believing that his dad loved him. Or how about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/movie/142809/rise-of-the-planet-of-the-apes&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Rise of the Planet of the Apes&lt;/a&gt;? There&#039;s no troubled father-son dynamic in the other films or the original novel, but again fatherhood takes centre stage as we are asked to believe James Franco is a caring and cultured professor and not the gormless stoner our eyes tell us he is. Then there&#039;s Tim Burton&#039;s videogamey remake of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/movie/131099/alice-in-wonderland&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Alice in Wonderland&lt;/a&gt;, bookended with Alice at first mourning her recently deceased father then finding a substitute in Lord Ascot. What does any of this have to do with anything?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is this proliferation of daddy issues in Hollywood a result of too much focus-group feedback? Is it a statistician&#039;s idea of what gives a movie instant heart? Or was the entire district simply not hugged enough during childhood?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;related&quot; style=&quot;float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;&quot;&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/family&quot;&gt;Family&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/actionandadventure&quot;&gt;Action and adventure&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/hugh-jackman&quot;&gt;Hugh Jackman&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/sylvester-stallone&quot;&gt;Sylvester Stallone&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/parents-and-parenting&quot;&gt;Parents and parenting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/family&quot;&gt;Family&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;author&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/phelimoneill&quot;&gt;Phelim O&#039;Neill&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;terms&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk&quot;&gt;guardian.co.uk&lt;/a&gt; &amp;copy; 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. 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