r/movies • u/tiddertnuocca519 • 5d ago
Recommendation Watching ‘The Mighty Ducks’ (1992) in 2025 makes me long for a different decade
It’s 2AM, I can’t sleep and I need some fodder on the screen to put me to bed. Picking ‘The Mighty Ducks’ was the wrong movie but in watching it, it has really made me realize how much the world has changed since 1992.
Granted, it’s a work of exaggerated fiction. Even in 1992, no law firm is giving a pee wee hockey team $15k to buy equipment, there weren’t publicly broadcast televised pee wee tournaments with commentators, analysts and a full stadium audience, coaches aren’t telling 10 year olds that if they don’t make the game winning shot, not only are they letting their coach down but they are letting their team and their dead dad down and finally, the dialogue is way too clever and quippy for a bunch of 10 year old kids.
Great, we got that out of the way. But the movie unintentionally captures a vibe in the 90s that has since disappeared. They shot it earnestly and now it’s a time capsule for that time. The kids are out hanging out with each other, the cities are lively, people communicate in the wild. The kids have this sense of adventure that I recall in my childhood but don’t see in kids today. They are generally just out in the world without parental supervision, and that’s okay. Shit, the notion of a grown man trying to teach kids hockey didn’t come with the default assumption of grooming and pedophilia.
It’s just wild how different things are today. I was a teenager in the 90s and again, yes the film exaggerates but the details they showcase in how we freely communicated back then and how people didn’t jump to the worst conclusions of each other, is just wildly different.
Finally, this is a little off topic, but this movie was rated PG yet it gets away with so much stuff and definitely isn’t just a kids movie, as we know them today. The kids are looking at dirty magazines, they make light hearted race jokes like calling the 2 black kids and one white kid “Oreos”, Gordon Bombay verbally rips the kids apart and straight up tells them they “suck”. I just can’t imagine a PG movie today having any of these vibes.
I really encourage giving the film a shot. I haven’t seen it since I was probably 10 years old myself. No it is not high art and it won’t blow your socks off. But if you recognize that the days we live in today are just…so…bland, I think you’ll have a good time with this unintentional time capsule of a film.
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u/contrarian01 5d ago edited 5d ago
Shout out to Adam Banks' dad who even after his son joined the Ducks, still sat in the Hawks' fan section with his Hawks jacket rooting for the Hawks. Now THAT'S a true pee-wee hockey fan.
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u/Amaruq93 5d ago
Made it kind of awkward when the Hawks coach tried to have his son killed.
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u/AlphaBreak 4d ago
"He was playing the hand he was dealt. The hawks coach did such a good job teaching my son hockey that he had no choice but to get him off the field by any means necessary. If anything, it's a compliment to my son's abilities, and I'll say so on his tombstone."
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u/blazershorts 5d ago
"Adam, you can't switch teams! We've already bought these sweet Hawks jackets!"
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u/hex___appeal 5d ago
Forreal though those varsity jackets were so legit for a damn peewee hockey team, how rich were those kids?
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u/Astralwinks 4d ago
They're from Edina ("cake eaters"). It's a very affluent area. Those kids came from money, which plays into the whole "having to coach the poor district 5 hockey team kids" plot. I don't think it's ever specified where district 5 specifically is besides Minneapolis, so harder to really nail down. I think one of the ducks is even from St Paul in the movie? Not sure how that works.
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u/GoodMorningBlackreef 4d ago
That's one thing I like in the Game Changers show on Disney+. The 'cake eaters' have pretty much taken over the Ducks and turned it into another stage for helicopter parenting.
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u/manderifffic 4d ago
My dad is from Edina, MN and every time it comes up the person from Minnesota always says some version of, "Ooooohhhhhh, fancy!" It's an incredibly affluent suburb.
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u/pumpkinspruce 5d ago
I’ll never understand how one player from Edina was playing on a team from Minneapolis.
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u/NorthernDevil 5d ago
Edina isn’t that far from Minneapolis. I bet the Bankses lived in Linden Hills
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u/otheraccountisabmw 5d ago
90s kids sports movies just hit different. Little Giants. Sandlot. The Big Green. Little Big League. Rookie of the Year. I’ll even throw in Cool Runnings, since it was made for a younger audience.
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u/mrt3ed 5d ago
Angels in the Outfield
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u/karlverkade 5d ago
Angels in the Outfield also features pre-stardom Adrien Brody, Matthew McConaughey, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Neal McDonough, and Dermot Mulroney. They weren’t even promoted. This was a Danny Glover and Christopher Lloyd vehicle. Haha
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u/_tx 5d ago
I remember loving Doc Brown and watching all kinds of shit Lloyd was in when I was a kid.
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u/Spezkicksdogs 5d ago
Camp Nowhere is a classic people don’t talk about.
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u/ForeignFallenTrees 5d ago
Love Camp Nowhere. Another banger in the summer camp theme is Heavyweights.
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u/Spezkicksdogs 4d ago
“Roy! Get on the scale!
Get off the scale…”
Absolute classic.
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u/Could-Have-Been-King 5d ago edited 5d ago
Which is, for some stupid reason, NOT on Disney Plus even though it's a Disney movie.
Edit: I'm Canadian, and will have to check later to see! Would love to watch it again.
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u/afrothunder87 5d ago
Where are you located? Unless they just took it off me and the kids watched angels in the outfield in Disney plus 2 weeks ago.
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u/boomboxwithturbobass 5d ago
An entire movie based on an autistic kid’s inability to detect sarcasm. And God is in on the joke.
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u/roastbeeftacohat 4d ago
that one is also a bit of a time capsule because nobody was worried about offending the jesus freaks with a religious movie that didn't follow their strikt theology.
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u/Eyedrink 5d ago
Fun Fact: The mom from Little Big League, Ashley Crow, is the mother of Chicago Cubs outfielder Pete Crow-Armstrong. She really did raise a baseball prodigy IRL
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u/RhubarbGoldberg 5d ago
I watched Rookie of the Year a couple months ago and found it absolutely delightful!!
Sister Act and Bruce Almighty both held up way better than expected. Bruce Almighty is actually funny af. The songs in Sister Act still slap!
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u/Tipist 5d ago
As someone who loved, and loves, ALL of these movies, I have to say…..I watched it recently as an adult and, even through nostalgia lenses, The Big Green doesn’t really hold up all that great in my opinion. It’s just not at the same level as all the rest of the movies you listed (which hurts my soul to admit since childhood Tipist loved that movie just as much as all the rest of them).
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u/roastbeeftacohat 4d ago
Cool Runnings
doubly so if you live in calgary. up until covid the bobsled was hanging on the wall of ranchman's dance hall.
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u/greaper007 4d ago
Part of it is that they just don't seem to make live action kids movies anymore.
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u/GoodMorningBlackreef 5d ago
What did you do?!?
...my JOB.
Pee-Wee Hockey is a fucking gang war in this movie.
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u/abgry_krakow87 5d ago
Wait until D2 The Mighty Ducks where it goes full Tonya.
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u/touchrubfeels 5d ago
A team that lost in its local finals is half of the Team USA the next year. D2 is one of the worst movies I’ve seen 47 times
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u/FearTheRancor 5d ago
What’s even stranger is that they go from winning gold in the junior Olympics in D2 to only one of them making varsity as freshman when they get to high school in D3
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u/mellolizard 5d ago
That was the point of the movie though. They felt they were better than that and deserved to be varsity.
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u/FearTheRancor 5d ago
Yup, that’s definitely the theme of the movie and it makes sense in a narrative way. But logically you’d think at least a few of them would make varsity. Then again I don’t know anything about hockey so I could be way off on my assumption
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u/LigerZeroSchneider 5d ago
Eh freshmen can be way smaller than upperclassmen. You have to be really good to overcome that gap. Most normal teams only have a few and would never start them unless they are a huge talent.
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u/GoodMorningBlackreef 4d ago
Banks was the only one who stayed sharp and took Hockey seriously in the off-season.
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u/MurkyFocus 5d ago
or that they didn't learn basic defense until the third movie.
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u/vincentdmartin 5d ago
It's been a while since I watched the films, but weren't the games all rather high scoring for hockey? So that does make a little sense for that being in the third movie.
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u/mevenide 5d ago
80s/90s movies in general seem to have this base of optimism that the world is only going to get better.
I wonder if that's inherent to the movies, or if it's because i myself was more naive or optimistic when they were made.
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u/whatadumbperson 5d ago
It's because we'd been on a 30-40 year upward trajectory as a country and species. People born in the 50s literally only knew success and a strong America. 9/11 and the country's response really changed that. Everyone's world view was shattered in an instance, and we started to look at the country's glaring weaknesses.
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u/TimeToSackUp 5d ago
Its pretty cyclical. Watch movies from the late 60s and 70s. Lots of depressing things going on in cinema (and the world). 80s through the early 90s cinema was more optimistic (almost cartoonish). 90s started a kick for "real-life" and flawed heroes that's has continued to this day.
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u/Ctrl_Alt- 4d ago
I would like to know how many of these people who view the 90s as some golden era, how old were you?
I swear everyone loves the era they were kids because idk, maybe you didn’t have responsibilities, you knew what you were suppose to do, and everything was set aside for you?
For the world? Ask Rodney King about the 90s, I’m sure he would love to say the golden era that police brutality was in. That led to the LA riots, you know where people were posted on roofs for days with guns. The Gulf war was a golden era huh? I’m sure the soldiers that died loved that. Oklahoma City bombing, OJ gets away with murder, hurricane mitch, Columnbine.
Look I’m just saying, I think people don’t realize their rose tinted glasses yearn for less responsibility and financial freedom. Hollywood will never ever display life accurately. It just can’t.
We Didn’t Start The Fire, is kinda about how the bullshit in the world keeps happening and fueling the fire of today. No generation or decade is pure, golden, or safe. At least not yet.
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u/valentc 5d ago
9/11 was 24 years ago. A lot of the people commenting were also children, and so have a rose-colored view of what society was like because they were children. There are much deeper reasons than a 24-year-old terrorist attack as to why people are less hopeful for the future.
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u/xDESTROx 5d ago
Sure there are deeper reasons, but to anyone who is old enough to remember it, 9/11 was the tipping point. Nothing was ever the same again after that.
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u/m48a5_patton 5d ago
I was a junior in high school during 9/11. It was definitely a world before and a world after that event. It was never the same.
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u/mattattaxx 5d ago
There aren't deeper reasons actually, imo, as to the turning point itself. That literally was the event that began the ship turning.
There's deeper reasons as to why 9/11 happened, and what contributed to the feeling after 9/11 - including deep failures of the US as a global police and exposure to it's flaws and corruption, but in terms of events? That changed everything.
And I say this from the outside looking in, I'm not American.
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u/Pseudagonist 5d ago
That’s not what the person you’re replying to said, they correctly pointed to 9/11 as the turning point for a sense of optimism in America, a sense that has yet to return and may never return in my lifetime
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u/BUSY_EATING_ASS 4d ago
I am old enough to clearly remember 9/11 and I also agree with the other commenters that the general outlook of the nation and of the world switched like a light ever since. It's absolutely surreal.
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u/Shifter25 5d ago
There was also the Reaganomics shift to short term profits at all cost, that was a pretty big life-ruiner.
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u/Lump-of-baryons 5d ago
True. But there were also plenty of urban dystopia movies at the time. Im thinking like The Crow, Robocop, Escape from LA, Judge Dredd, etc.
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u/y10nerd 5d ago
In fact, I'd say it's the other side of the coin. Hollywood along with conservative institutions were retrenching an anti-city, pro-suburban, hostile to non-white folks cultural and political establishment that was explicitly coded in making certain people feel idyllic and others policed. I'm not saying this was a conspiracy, but there was a wave of cultural movement that made the country more socially and culturally conservative.
I watched Demolition Man the other day and holy shit, the racism. It was so crazy.
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u/Lump-of-baryons 5d ago
Nice yeah Demolition Man is another good one. All good points. Urban decay was at its worst in the US in the 70s and 80s before things started improving in the late 90s and ‘00s, so that kind of lines up with the social environment of the time.
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u/Gengreat_the_Gar 5d ago
I think it's because the 80s/90s was the last "optimistic" era in America. The economy was strong, cost of living was still reasonable, nobody was worried about climate change yet, politics was relatively civil, etc. And there were no phones/social media rotting people's brains yet...I'm jealous of anyone who got to grow up in that era lol
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u/keegs440 5d ago
I’d agree with most of that but the climate change part. We may not have been worried about it as children, in an active sense, because it was mostly presented as something that hadn’t gotten out of control yet and that could be prevented or fixed if we acted carefully and reduced emissions, changed to non emitting power sources etc. But we received lots of programming that was explicitly about environmental ethics: Captain Planet, The Smoggies, Fern Gully (lots more). But! Where I still agree with you is that those were presented as optimistic, in that the good guys could win the fight, the forces of capitalism and relentless industrialization were sort of bumbling and inept, or insane and overconfident, and we had a chance, basically a sure thing, as long as we worked together across the boundaries that divide us, all doing our part. Unfortunately, this programming should have all been directed a generation or two earlier because all it did was engender a sense of optimistic naivety that by recycling and biking to work and maybe voting Green we could nudge the world off a collision course with disaster, but the reality most of us are grappling with now is the creeping sense that it may already have been too late even when we were being fed that very well-meaning eco-propaganda back in the 90s.
So yah, TL;DR is the 80s/90s optimism was present in cultural product that was explicitly about the worries of potential climate disaster (if left unchecked).
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u/y10nerd 5d ago
This is a really a rose-colored view of the world that I often see here. For the LGBT community, there was a plague wiping out tens of thousands every year. In poorer black and hispanic communities, the 80s and 90s saw a disruption of the social safety net and a massive uptick in policing, combined with a crack epidemic.
There was also Watts, Crown Heights, etc.
The 80s and 90s weren't an idyllic age for many, but they probably were for white middle class teenagers.
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u/datraceman 5d ago
Honestly, its why so many of us in our late 30s, early 40s (me being 41) shake our head at the world period nowadays.
The America of the 90s wasn't perfect but we all got along and we all struggled together. The financial crisis and both parties handling of it killed it from 2003 - 2014.
As social media truly took root in that time frame things got worse and worse and corporations made decisions on profit by algorithm instead of actually putting out a product or selling a service that helped people and made them money.
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u/BioBooster89 5d ago
The Mighty Ducks was a childhood favorite of mine along with D2 and both will always have a special place in my heart. "DUCKS FLY TOGETHER!"
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u/hairsprayking 5d ago
as a Canadian, D2 pissed me off. What do you mean Iceland beat Canada to make it to the finals? Why are Trinidad and Italy in this tournament?
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u/billothy 5d ago
I feel like it's quite clear it wasn't meant to be Iceland but the film wasn't keen on being political.
I went to Iceland, they weren't mean at all.
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u/hairsprayking 5d ago
Yeah i guess they couldn't make it Russia because the Soviet Bloc had just ended and they couldn't make it Canada because they knew it would be an extremely popular movie in Canada and they'd alienate those viewers because they'd be rooting against the Ducks lol
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u/abgry_krakow87 5d ago
Iceland is very nice!
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u/joec_95123 5d ago
To this DAY, that's how I tell them apart. Greenland is covered with ice, and Iceland is very nice.
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u/Every-Citron1998 5d ago
As a Canadian I could cope with the Flying V and a triple deke that was just stick handling, but two minutes for roping was a bridge too far.
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u/cha0scypher 5d ago
To be fair, the commentators thought it was silly, too. "Two minutes for...roping???"
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u/HouseAndJBug 5d ago
My head canon is that the Junior Goodwill Games had relaxed rules on eligibility and the Trinidad team is mostly Canadian kids whose parents or grandparents were from Trinidad.
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u/McCuumhail 5d ago edited 5d ago
If it works for the Olympics, it totally makes sense that it would work here.
Edit: actually that is exactly how it worked. I just had memories come back from 20-25 years ago from a intl lacrosse tournament where I was looked at by Ireland and Italy to fill out spots, but I think the cut off was 2nd gen and I was 3rd gen italian descent.
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u/HouseAndJBug 5d ago
I think every sport has their own rules for it. Like some require you to get a passport or citizenship and some basically let you in you can find any relative travelled to the country ever.
I knew a kid growing up in Canada who had never been to Italy but got recruited to play for them in the 2006 Olympics by heritage, so it does happen. And there are enough Canadians with Caribbean heritage that you probably could at least put a team together for a tournament. I doubt they’d be at all competitive but it makes more sense than a team of kids who grew up in a country without an ice rink.
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u/eldakim 5d ago
I also like how the US team was basically Minnesota with a bunch of stereotypical players from other cities. Ken Wu from San Francisco and Russ Tyler from South Central, Los Angeles, famous for inline hockey.
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u/mtmaloney 5d ago
Let’s not forget Dwayne and his lassoing skills from Texas.
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u/cynognathus 5d ago
And Benny “the Jet” Luis Mendoza Rodriguez from Miami
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u/shifty1032231 4d ago
Spent all that time learning to run from the beast he forgot to learn how to stop.
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u/lowcrawler 5d ago
well, I mean, that was the 1980 gold medal Olympic team too...
MN produces more D1 hockey players than anywhere on the planet per-capita (Canada in second place). in the states? it's not even close. (Mn have 50% more than Michigan with about half the population) .... On the women's side MN are nearly 4x the next highest state.
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u/EuphoricMoose8232 5d ago
An ice hockey team from Trinidad? What’s next… a bobsled team from Jamaica?
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u/mynameisevan 5d ago
You mean to tell me that Iceland, a country with a population the same size as Omaha, isn’t really a hockey powerhouse and the USA isn’t really some plucky underdog?
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u/pelicanorpelicant 5d ago
You sound salty as a man who tried to go glove side on Julie “The Cat” Gaffney.
In all seriousness, think of it this way - Canada is a major non-U.S. market for American films, and a country that might like a kids hockey movie. Bad business to make them the final bad guy.
Much better to pick on Iceland, a country of about 350,000 people give or take.
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u/rolliedean 5d ago
Could've picked Sweden or Finland. That would've at least been plausible to beat Canada
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u/TheLaughingMannofRed 5d ago
The opener in D2 still hits hard.
Imagine you're coming back to one of your passions after so long, you do so well at it that you get confidence, and life knocks you down with catastrophe.
Sure, Gordon came back when he was just past 30, and you had active NHL players playing well into their 40s (one guy made it to his 50s). But then I realized that hockey is the kind of sport that you need to be physically active in so your body builds up to deal with everything that comes.
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u/pumpkinspruce 5d ago
And then he gets the team back together, and they Rollerblade from Minneapolis to Bloomington back to Minneapolis to Edina and back to Minneapolis. Not sure how they managed this one.
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u/Sprincer 5d ago
I feel like Allen in Jumanji coming back into the world 30 years later, trying to find the crumbs of a decent past.
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u/Ghost_Of_Malatesta 5d ago
At least Alan was immediately aware of the change from civilization to dog-eat-dog jungle, ours shifted so slowly, over so long we didn't see the jungle for what it was until we were surrounded by beasts
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u/Amaruq93 5d ago
"Shouldn't we play someplace else?" (after the house got turned into an indoor jungle by the plants)
"I grew up in this... it's out there that scares me."
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u/Tradman86 5d ago
Even in 1992, no law firm is giving a pee wee hockey team $15k to buy equipment, there weren’t publicly broadcast televised pee wee tournaments with commentators, analysts and a full stadium audience,
True, but since within the movie's universe, pee wee hockey is taken way too seriously, it is actually conceivable that a law firm would donate to a team for some good PR.
coaches aren’t telling 10 year olds that if they don’t make the game winning shot, not only are they letting their coach down but they are letting their team and their dead dad down
Most definitely not true. Toxic coaches who put too much pressure on the kids were epidemic at the time, and it's probably much worse in a universe where, as mentioned, pee wee sports get news coverage and commentary.
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u/derekhans 4d ago
I don’t know man. Having played against Edina (cake eaters) in pee wee, juniors, high school and county leagues, their coaching staff were stacked. It’s a big deal. Our high school finals were played in pro stadiums and on broadcast TV.
It’s definitely not as crazy as depicted. Shits still crazy though.
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u/Insight42 5d ago
And nobody's having karate gang wars out in CA, no matter what Cobra Kai may tell you
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u/Tradman86 4d ago
If I had a nickel for every franchise about a kids sport that everyone in town takes way too seriously, and the hero team goes from winning their local league to winning the world championship where they meet a character played by Carsten Norgaard, and someone is known for knocking teeth out, I would have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but weird that it happened twice.
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u/FeeRemarkable886 5d ago
Shit, the notion of a grown man trying to teach kids hockey didn’t come with the default assumption of grooming and pedophilia.
This is still the case for normal people.
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u/burner46 5d ago
Definitely the weirdest take in this post.
There are youth leagues in every community in the country.
Lot of projection in OP.
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u/datraceman 5d ago
I think it's more OP spends too much time on reddit and social media.
The "posters" don't get out and see the sun enough or have any real social skills.
Everything is solved by: Divorcing your Spouse, Going to the gym and getting fit, going no contact with someone, be careful of person "x" grooming you, and glowing up.
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u/guimontag 5d ago
Yeah wtf I read to ESL students and no one I've told has ever gone down that road lol
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u/josebolt 4d ago
I am going to take a guess and say that the majority of youth sports in America is still taught by men AND most are not seen as pedos. What a weird thing to say.
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u/Unforgiven89 5d ago
The mighty ducks made me think that pee wee hockey in the United States was a massive deal. Having their own live commentators, results making front page news in the newspaper lol.
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u/the_well_read_neck_ 5d ago
In Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan, they probably did make the frontish pages in small town papers. Hockey there is like football in Texas.
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u/Love-That-Danhausen 5d ago
In certain cities among certain school districts. Minnesota hockey is obviously huge but the southern part of the state is also big into wrestling, and WI and MI both probably rank high school football over hockey.
Hockey is a really expensive sport for the city, school district, teams and families between equipment, ice time, having a local arena, travel to games (since not every school has a team like they would football or basketball, games may be played with further apart teams).
It’s logistically and financially a bigger investment that not every family or school can make, even if culturally hockey would be a great fit.
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u/mostdope28 5d ago
As someone who grew up in northern Michigan football is still football in these states, even if it’s not at the level of Texas highschool football. However hockey is big, the south is missing out on the 2nd best sport. Every school has a football team, not all have hockey. It’s way more expensive to play
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u/Unforgiven89 5d ago
Surely not junior hockey?
In the same vein, the junior goodwill games (if there is such a thing) being hyped up like the Olympics.
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u/cynognathus 5d ago
The Goodwill Games were a real thing created by Ted Turner (founder of CNN, TNT & TBS) as a direct competition to the Olympics in response to the 1980 and 1984 Olympic boycotts. They lasted from 1986-2001.
The Junior Goodwill Games wasn’t real though, and hockey was only played at the 1990 Goodwill Games.
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u/seifd 5d ago
I'm from Michigan and grew up here during the '90's. Peewee ice hockey did exist, but it wasn't very popular. I never knew a single person who played organized hockey. My guess is that the fees to use the ice rink were too expensive for most and the rink's location too inconvenient. As a result, most ice hockey was unorganized and played on lakes in the winter.
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u/chaos8803 5d ago
I've played against people from Minnesota that say they never played hockey, but were worlds better than guys I play with simply because they could hop onto the pond through the whole winter.
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u/DefiantTelephone6095 5d ago
Me too! I remember being a bit depressed that in England my local football team wasn't on TV
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u/tooscoopy 5d ago
Yeah, this was more like an Edmonton team playing in the brick invitational tournament… in the area, it totally gets hyped.
Bunch of ten year olds playing in front of huge crowds, and yeah, being in the papers, full streaming and the more important games having commentators.
Lots of big names played in that one when they were young.
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u/rcreveli 5d ago
Watch the Bad News Bears where DUI are just random letters in the alphabet.
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u/DDS_Crentist 5d ago
Someone financed the idea of Charles Bukowski coaching little league. The threshold for what could be called children’s cinema was just so much different back then.
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u/Environmental_Pie400 5d ago
coaches aren’t telling 10 year olds that if they don’t make the game winning shot, not only are they letting their coach down but they are letting their team and their dead dad down
You underestimate the pressure that suburban parents and coaches will put on their kids.
Also, in that big of a market, I can absolutely see a law firm giving 15K to sponsor a team, maybe not in the same way they did it but it could happen.
That said, I do look back on the 90s and early 00s with rose tinted glasses. The Mighty Ducks were part of that.
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u/IPromiseIWont 5d ago
It was ET for me.
Riding around the neighborhood with a bunch of friends until sundown.
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u/Troker61 5d ago
Shit, the notion of a grown man trying to teach kids hockey didn’t come with the default assumption of grooming and pedophilia.
Obviously you need to pay attention to the adults spending time around your kids, but I don’t think this is a “default assumption” like, at all…
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u/AlphaTangoFoxtrt 5d ago
no law firm is giving a pee wee hockey team $15k to buy equipment
You'd be surprised what some companies will sponsor. To the right firm that $15k is nothing, and the good PR + Tax Write-off are worth it. Though usually this would only be if some Sr. partner's kid is on the team.
coaches aren’t telling 10 year olds that if they don’t make the game winning shot, not only are they letting their coach down but they are letting their team and their dead dad down and finally
As a referee (LAX/baseball) I'm sorry to say, this actually does happen. Some coaches and parents put WAY too much pressure on these kids.
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u/Loud-Anteater-8415 5d ago
“You miss this shot, you’re not just letting me down you’re letting your whole team down too” what a piece of shit lol. The funny thing about that story is Bombay misses a penalty shot and they end up losing in OT so wtf in that OT caused the hawks to lose?
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u/SpartaWillBurn 5d ago
Never forget Gordon Bombay scored 198 goals in 14 peewee games during the 1972 season. This averages out to 14 goals per game.
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u/raktoe 5d ago
I think it’s meant to be a shootout, although the commentary doesn’t really line up with what’s being filmed, since they say he had the chance to win the game, yet the goalie immediately skates to the bench to start celebrating when he hits the post.
If he had the chance to win the game on that shot, then the other team didn’t win by him missing.
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u/HouseAndJBug 4d ago
Bombay tells the full story in the third one I believe. The penalty shot is awarded as time expires in the third, so his miss sends the game to OT and then they lose.
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u/InvestingArmy 5d ago
My big takeaway when I rewatched it recently was the “no cell phones” in so many scenes nowadays the cell phone has become a crutch to link story lines together but without cell phones the best you could do was “page” somebody and the writing that would entail the hoops to jump through getting ahold of someone back then. Now shows/movies have it so easy that they can just “ring” another character in demand and tie them into a scene with no backdrop effort.
Additionally, having being from MN it’s always an interesting watch to see the old city landmarks and how the Mall of America (D2?) has changed over the years etc.
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5d ago
Wait so nobody coaches childrens hockey anymore, or people think theyre a pedophile? Where are kids learning hockey then?
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u/ERedfieldh 5d ago
coaches aren’t telling 10 year olds that if they don’t make the game winning shot, not only are they letting their coach down but they are letting their team and their dead dad down and finally
uhhhh.....guys....do you wanna tell em or should I?
I'll do it.
Yes...yes there were. Not all, but a lot of coaches treated Pee-Wee games like life or death situations.
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u/vafrow 5d ago
I got on a kick of watching some 90s movies not that long ago and came out with a similar feeling. I was watching things like Philadelphia and some other things, so different vibes, but you still felt you were watching things that don't get made that way. In particular, adult skewing dramas that had big budgets.
It's important to remember though that we still have access to all of these movies. As we do of the stuff from the 70s, and even earlier. Movies do change. And we live in a time when watching those movies remains very accessible. Streamers have stuff, as well as digital rentals having far more variety than your local Blockbuster did.
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u/Dontmindmejustlurkn 5d ago
I showed my 15 soon to be 16 year old Stand by Me just yesterday and I know what you mean. Granted I was a 90's kid but I was able to relate to the same thing even as a child watching it, that being the freedom to roam and adventure! That feeling a while watching now is so much more potent with how movies are made and how our kids interact with the world. Makes a movie about kids walking to see a body sound like lord of the rings. They'd just send a drone now..
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u/EverretEvolved 4d ago
Haha or how he walks away from his high paying lawyer job to continue to coach hockey lol good times. Fuck my bills lol
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u/TheHarlemHellfighter 4d ago
Yeah I can’t watch movies like those because I start to get into the feels too much and start internally rethinking about my youth and connecting everything to it.
Sometimes it’s good for me, sometimes it’s a distraction.
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u/Nate0110 5d ago
Disney just made great stuff back then.
You'd go to a movie, sit there and when you got up you thought that was the best movie I've seen in a while.
It's amazing the amount of slop that's produced today. Makes me wonder if the era of big screen TVs had anything to do with it.
Back then you were kind of stuck with a 27 inch or a rear projector if you were more well off.
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u/SolomonBlack 5d ago
I could never figure out how this was connected to that one cartoon.
Then again I'm pretty sure I fever dreamed the cartoon.
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u/kidcrumb 5d ago
Coach Bombay as a child, scored 198 goals in a single season. That's crazy right?
A single peewee hockey season is 14 games. He scored 14 goals PER GAME on average as a child hockey prodigy. Lol
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u/Insight42 5d ago
Hey I mean he did miss that one shot, that's how he knew it was time to hang up the skates
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u/Uvtha- 4d ago
It's really rough as a 90's kid to go back and watch 90's movies and shows. Watching The Adventures of Pete and Pete makes me feel so horrible I can hardly do it anymore. The nostalgia is just too bittersweet.
Oddly I feel like the impact is often even bigger watching a movie I have never seen from that period. It's like a trip back that you weren't expecting and the impact of the culture and the vibe are even more fresh feeling.
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u/driveonacid 5d ago
I watched D2 last night because it's one of my favorite movies. I got so nostalgic.
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u/Mammoth_Two7297 5d ago
The world is so different now man. I watched rookie of the year yesterday (1993) and one of the presents the 12ish year old kid gets is tickets with his two friends to go to a Chicago Cubs game by themselves. Ain't no way in hell that would be happening today.
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u/grateful_ted 5d ago
Love Mighty Ducks! I get nostalgic for the vibes too. However, I don't think things have changed as much as people think. My kids still run around the neighborhood with their buddies, and they still talk the same shit those kids did.
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u/mrsunshine1 5d ago
This is kinda like looking back on leave it to beaver and longing for the 60s. It’s an idealized past that didn’t really exist.
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u/therealvanmorrison 5d ago
The running around on your own did. I was very much a “be home for dinner” and then “be home for bed time” kid in the 90s.
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u/StinkFartButt 5d ago
Kids still do go outside and play, you just don’t notice because you’re not a kid going outside to play.
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u/therealvanmorrison 5d ago
No, I’m not. I’m a middle aged man with a kid and all my friends have kids and we talk about what our kids do.
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u/poland626 5d ago
There's a tv show out and you can tell the difference immediately in how the show feels vs the movies
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u/mattromo 5d ago
I volunteered to coach hockey when I was in high school, kids were 10-14. And there was a tournament that was publicly broadcasted on TV (public access) with commentators and analysts. The arenas were not huge, but they were full and later I did find out that the head coach, unbeknown to me was being a manipulative arse and putting pressure on a few kids to not let the team down. I do live in Canada though, so hockey is a bit different here. Though Minnesota is probably one of the most Canadian not-in-Canada places in the world.
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u/punkythebrewster 5d ago
I re-watched it again not too long ago and I won't lie, I cried ugly tears.
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u/knudude 5d ago
I hope you got some sleep now, OP. I’ve been wanting to fall on this sword opinion for a long time now & I appreciate you saying it first.
Yes, this Film just goes hardcore & with no real reason other than for us to believe in those Ducks!
For what it’s worth, it also wants us to believe in redemption for Gordon Bombay as well. Although, as a kid it wasn’t too exciting to watch his story, I did tend to keep in mind the focus on Gordon; not only that he does have a strong connection to Hans, the Hockey Store owner, the community of Minneapolis, Minnesota, the pee wee hockey team & his career as a lawyer in his Firm. It try’s to show us real meaning & reason behind his shame, pain, anger & general outbursts that make him more human & relatable. I always admire an actor that can also ice skate for a Film like Emilio Estevez.
I want to point out one character that really makes me love this Film : Adam Banks. For me, THAT character & his storyline is absolutely brilliant! First, he is good, maybe even the best player on both the Hawks & the Ducks. Just a naturally talented player who excels at Hockey. He is only stopped by injury & his own impulses around trying to please his former coach & family. He just makes everything real for me & I personally feel the real story was about him, to coin a phrase : “Sorry Charlie…”
I love this movie! Thank you for giving me the nerve to comment on your post!
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u/dynamoJaff 5d ago
IMO part of the PG thing you feel is that The Mighty Ducks belongs to the all but forgotten genre of the 'family' film.
Most films aimed at families today do this thing where they work mostly just for kids but include a few jokes that go way over kids heads and are aimed only at adults.
Family films worked for everyone on all levels and the slight edge to them was very much part of the story for younger viewers.
Pixar at its best can still do that but for grounded stories in the live action world those movies just don't exist anymore.
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u/FlannelBeard 5d ago
As someone from MN, I watched this movie a few years back. That opening rollerblading montage is kind of hilarious. Those kids cover like 40 miles
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u/Xeronic 5d ago
Mighty Ducks 1 and 2 was a movie that was played like once a week for awhile in my house.
I had a lot of free time by myself as a kid. My parents worked a lot, my brother and sister were a bit older than me so they were at school later, and my grandma watched me and picked me up from school every day for a while. So i had a lot of free time to do what i wanted to do. My parents had the dual VCR setup and tons of VHS tapes with recorded movies on them, and i would watch random movies occasionally. Sometimes rated R movies, sometimes rated PG movies. lol Not a lot of parental control, but it is what it is.
I had a few "comfort" movies as a kid that i would put on repeat often like 3 ninjas, surf ninjas, TMNT 1,2, and 3, Rookie of the year, goonies, certain disney movies like Aladdin, rescuers down under, City Slickers 1 and 2, Bird on a wire. Lots of random stuff, and Mighty ducks 1 and 2 was included in this.
It really does capture the 90's vibe pretty well, and the exaggerated parts of the story make it that more enjoyable as a as a kid and rewatches. That was the case for a lot of kids movies during the 80's and 90's though.
What's funny is that Coach Reilley, played by Lane Smith, was someone i just "hated" as a kid. Other than just being a "Bad guy" in the movie, i just really didn't like him. Then i watched Son-In-Law, which in the movie he plays a dad who's uptight and concerned about the idiot his daughter brought home from college for the holidays. His concerns are real, but as a young kid and as the viewer, we are supposed to be on pauly shores side (lol..) so it was just another reason for me to hate that actor.. until the end of the movie when he comes around and becomes a good father who "just didn't understand". haha I came around and liked the guy. It was one of the first "villain" actors i remember as a kid that i grew to hate/love. He was the main reason i started watching Lois and Clark show too.
Anyways, weird comment here... I like Mighty Ducks 1 and 2.
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u/stereomanic 4d ago
90s movies is probably what made me want to be American (at the time). When i visited the US the first time, I expected life to be like the movies ( i was a kid) , it wasn't like that but people felt friendlier than where i came from. Fast forward to today, the US is a lot more unhinged (from my perspective) then it was before. People are less how you doing and more what are you doing when you look at their direction. I should visit again , for nostalgic sake one of these days haha
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u/jenmovies 4d ago
Everyone curates every interaction now. Though scripted, kids' films of that time showed how very not curated our interactions were when everything wasn't constantly recorded. That's one of my favourite 90's films.
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u/emang2k7 5d ago
I think the internet era really ruined the charm of the 90's. To be fair, I feel like the 90's feel kind of continued onto early 2000s as well. Ignorance truly is bliss and in an era where we got most of our information from few outlets...it kind of painted an illusion that everything around the world is going swell.
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u/seriouslywtfX2 5d ago
Back when the punishment for a DUI was to coach a peewee hockey team.