The Dad From 'Honey, I Shrunk the Kids' Should Be In Prison

Since Disney's current business model mostly involves blood magicking its beloved old properties back to life, we're obviously getting a new Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. The upcoming sequel/reboot simply entitled Shrunk stars Josh Gad as the son of Wayne Szalinski, the mad scientist from the original film. Predictably the upcoming movie will also find the younger Szalinski shrinking his family-- because an irrational obsession with shrink-rays is genetic, apparently.

The most exciting part of all this is that Rick Moranis (one of the greatest comic actors of all-time) will return to the franchise, reprising his role as Szalinski for his first live-action movie gig since 1997. And as much as we love Moranis, and are excited to have him back, we can't help but point out that Wayne Szalinski is a monster.

Yes it's a nostalgic favorite for many, but watching the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids films as an adult it's pretty clear that Wayne is just the worst. After ignoring his son's pleas to spend some quality time together, he pours his focus into building the shrinking machine that he leaves in an unlocked room where it zaps his kids.

While in any sane universe, this would kill them within minutes, these poor children somehow miraculously survive. You'd think Wayne's takeaway from this experience would be to not let children anywhere near his wildly dangerous experiments, but then came the sequel Honey, I Blew Up the Kid. Despite the fact that he clearly had the ability to enlarge objects already, Wayne is now working on a ray that makes things bigger. And because nearly murdering their kids somehow didn't make him a less desirable sexual partner, Wayne and his wife now have a two-year-old son. For some insane reason, Wayne decides to test his new invention on his son's favorite toy.

And, well, this happens...

Thankfully this leads to the toddler rapidly growing and not, say, a funeral. Does Wayne finally learn a valuable lesson about the dangers of scientific irresponsibility? Hell no, in the third movie, Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves, he still keeps that goddamn shrinking machine in the house. And even though the government has explicitly forbidden him using the device, he gleefully dusts it off just to miniaturize a large Tiki sculpture his wife doesn't care for.

Perhaps the most disturbing chapter of this saga is the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids TV show, in which Wayne made baffling, selfish decisions that endangered his family on a weekly basis. Wayne (played by Peter Scolari) almost destroys his wife's brain multiple times, attempts to raise the dead, casually abducts historical figures, and invents a robotic teddy bear which promptly turns evil-- which would be less of a threat if it wasn't equipped with friggin' machine gun arms.

Wayne isn't a fun, wacky dad, he's a Marvel supervillain. Maybe the reboot will just be 90 minutes of him begging for his family's forgiveness.

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