That seems like a good reason
I was going to say it’s wild that the adaptation was considered, but then I remembered that ‘Leon the Professional’ exist. Not to say that the quality was likely to be the same, Leon is a damn good movie, but boy have I seen people do some serious mental gymnastics saying that character isn’t a groomer.
To me, Léon feels more Don’t Stand So Close To Me than My Sharona, which is to say that in the former song, the male character recognizes his attraction is inappropriate and in the latter the guy is proclaiming, " Never gonna stop, give it up, such a dirty mind. I always get it up, for the touch of the younger kind. "
More explicitly, Léon has a moral objection to killing woman and kids. He isn’t looking to lure in children for exploitation, he just wants to get paid to murder adult men. His morals are not our morals. While he absolutely falls for Mathilda, I see no evidence that Léon has a pattern of sexualizing kids.
I can see your point of view that by teaching Mathilda how to assassinate people Léon was in fact grooming her, but he was not the one coaxing his too-young neighbor to hide in his house and learn his trade to avenge her family. She is making these demands of him and he is initially reluctant. That is not to say his attraction to her is appropriate. He is a villainous ‘hero’, and like so my of the archetype, must pay for his years of immorality with his life.
TL;DR: I think you stretch the definition of ‘Grooming’ when the adult is trying to keep distance and the child makes the demands.
Fair. I didn’t really mean to condemn Leon. I just think, the whole point of the romance is to be inappropriate. It’s one of the many unsettling things in the film, and it’s supposed to be weird.
I was more suggesting that there is a precedent for live action films with inappropriate age differences.
I feel like it’s hard to separate out from this film the context that is the director, his wife, and the after effects of his next production, The Fifth Element, namely the whole affair between his new semi-auto-biographed wife and Milla.
I agree that there is too much unnecessary age discrepancies in TV and film, but sometimes that is the point the authors are trying to explore. I may be misremembering, but I think I even Humphrey Bogart thought he was too long to be the love interest of just-back-from-private-school Sabrina in the movie of the same name, so that works as an example of where the ages should have been closer. There was no reason for the disparity.
In contrast the disturbing relationship in L.I.E. between a teen and a pedophile had to have that age disparity (I’m not recommending this movie and I do not think it appropriate for most audiences – I saw it as part of a film festival and was not ready for it, but I do feel it has a right to exist).
I have not seen the webtoon in question here, but from the title, it sounds like the whole point of the show is the age disparity – but that is not an appropriate subject for kids. That’s something that should only be tackled in an NC-17 style drama because as soon as you make it light entertainment, you normalize a bad behavior.
Leon is a damn good movie, but boy have I seen people do some serious mental gymnastics saying that character isn’t a groomer.
It has been ages since I saw that film, but was one of my favourites as a teen. I thought Leon was “grooming” her in the sense of being a mentor to her while being an assassin and being open about his work?
Why was this even a DISCUSSION???
Weird, it would have made a killing with the Republican party.
And with the religious crowd. Always grooming the children.
Least deranged webtoon.
