For whatever reason, movies and TV series love to trot out a long-lost parent for the protagonist to deal with. Often it’s a reason for our hero to consider whether they are a product of their environment or their genetic makeup, sometimes it’s just a cheap plot device, and always it strikes us that these deadbeat movie parents get forgiven too easily for abandoning their children. Sure, they have their reasons, but movie parents typically have reasons stemming from blind ignorance, ineffectual protectiveness or pure selfishness.
So before you check out how Hiccup’s mother Valka fares in this weekend’s How to Train Your Dragon 2, take a look at the history of deadbeat movie parents and decide for yourself which of these absentee moms and hobo fathers deserve redemption, and which deserve to be thrown under a bus.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
The Top 15 Deadbeat Movie Parents
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King Stefan
From: Sleeping Beauty (1959) and Maleficent (2014)
Whichever Disney version of Sleeping Beauty you prefer, King Stefan completely abandons Princess Aurora immediately after she's cursed, even though it's not even supposed to take effect until her 16th birthday. In the original, he gets drunk and plots her arranged marriage without ever having met her. In the reboot, he goes mad, lets her mother die off-screen and doesn't even seem to care when his daughter finally comes home.
Was He Forgiven?
In Sleeping Beauty, King Stefan will probably have to deal with his daughter's lingering resentment for years, but they seem to be on good terms. In Maleficent, his penance is considerably more harsh... and permanent.
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Mitch Evers and Maggie McKendrick
From: The Parent Trap (1961)
Mitch and Maggie had a highly unorthodox divorce. Rather than share custody of their identical twin daughters, they decided to split them up, raise them separately, and never even tell either of them that they had a sister.
Were They Forgiven?
Their daughters are unexpectedly forgiving, swapping places and then conspiring to get their parents back together at the end of The Parent Trap. We think they deserved a lot more than a slap on the wrist.
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Dr. Eldon Tyrell
From: Blade Runner (1982)
Dr. Eldon Tyrell was the "father" of a race of android replicants, which are nearly indistinguishable from humans in every way except that they only live for four years. Their pleas for "more life" fall on deaf ears.
Was He Forgiven?
Although Tyrell is surprisingly sensitive when his creations finally track him down, they ultimately decide he's a total asshole.
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Darth Vader
From: Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), The Return of the Jedi (1983)
Darth Vader thought his unborn children died after the events of The Revenge of the Sith, but found out sometime between Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. Sure, he'd already killed his son's mentor, but he quickly tracks him down and offers him the chance to rule the Empire side by side.
Was He Forgiven?
Luke Skywalker beat Darth Vader near to death with a lightsaber, but it was only when his father sacrificed his life to save Luke from the Emperor that everyone agreed that Darth wasn't all bad.
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Sarah Connor
From: Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Sarah Connor dedicated her life to preparing her son John to rise up against an army of robots that would one day take over the world. So she was locked up for being crazy (and committing an act of terrorism), abandoning her son to apathetic foster parents and leaving him vulnerable to more Terminator attacks from the future.
Was She Forgiven?
It helps that she was right all along, but John finally comes around and forgives her for letting the stress of raising the messiah go to her head. Still, she should have at least tried to stay out of the asylum in the first place.
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Noah McManus
From: The Boondock Saints (1999), The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day (2009)
Noah McManus was very busy murdering mafiosos as the vigilante "Il Duce" when his sons, Connor and Murphy, were born. He skipped out on his kids to protect them from his enemies.
Was He Forgiven?
After Connor and Murphy grew up and - by sheer mindboggling coincidence - became vigilantes themselves, they forgave their father and eventually joined forces. After Noah tried to kill them of course, but it was a complicated time for everyone.
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Monica Swinton
From: A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Monica Swinton and her husband Henry were beta testers for Cybertronics of New Jersey. They raised a robot child who was capable of love named David while their own son was ill. When their real child came back into the picture, and sabotaged David like a total dillweed, Henry chose sides and told Monica to bring David back to the company to be destroyed. Monica "mercifully" abandons her robot child by the side of the road instead, dooming him to unrequited love and victimization forever.
Was She Forgiven?
How screwed up is David? He never even gets mad at her, even though she didn't stick up for him or do him the kindness of ending his now meaningless existence. He spends his whole life pining, and the only catharsis he ever gets is a total lie.
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David Banner
From: The Hulk (2003)
David Banner conducted genetic research on himself to increase his ability to heal, and passed that trait on to his son, Bruce. Pretty sweet, right? Except when the government came, David tried to kill Bruce and spent 26 years in a mental institution.
Was He Forgiven?
David tries to make amends with Bruce when his son becomes The Hulk, but things go sour when David turns himself into The Absorbing Man and reveals that he killed Bruce's mother. They fight to the death.
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William Turner Sr.
From: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006), Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)
William "Bootstrap Bill" Turner was a member of Captain Jack Sparrow's pirate crew when they were cursed to live forever, but the crew turned on him and sank him to the bottom of the ocean, eternally drowning. He made a deal with Davey Jones to work aboard his ship for 100 years, never to see his son again.
Was He Forgiven?
William Turner Jr. grew up a with a lot of Daddy Issues, but once he found out the truth he forgave his father and joined him aboard the ghost ship The Flying Dutchman, effectively abandoning his own future child in the process.
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Dr. Henry Jones, Jr.
From: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
Dr. Henry "Indiana" Jones never knew his son, Henry "Mutt" Jones III, was even born. He was too busy banging hot Nazis in World War II to notice. They finally reunite when Mutt was a teenager and his mother, Marion Ravenwood, went missing, but neither of the Jones boys learns the truth for a long time.
Was He Forgiven?
It wasn't entirely Indiana's fault that he was a deadbeat, and even before he learned the truth he was very supportive and paternal to the kid. They bicker a lot but develop a strong bond, and eventually even Marion is forgiven for the deception.
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Kevin Flynn
From: TRON: Legacy (2010)
Computer genius Kevin Flynn completely vanished on his son Sam, leaving him the family Fortune 500 company and a ton of abandonment issues. It turns out Kevin had been sucked into a virtual world of his own devising by his digital doppleganger, Clu.
Was He Forgiven?
Sam eventually teams up with his father to fight the evil A.I.'s on their own turf, but he's kinda snarky about it.
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Dominick Cobb
From: Inception (2010)
After Dominick Cobb was framed for his wife's murder (it's a VERY long story), he was forced to flee the country and leave his two young children behind. He pulls illegal dream heists to take care of them by proxy, and pulls one big job in the hopes of clearing his record. It never occurs to Cobb that he could simply bring his kids with him.
Was He Forgiven?
However you choose to interpret Inception's ending, we never get a proper answer. We imagine it's complicated either way.
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Charlie Kenton
From: Real Steal (2011)
Charlie Kenton skipped out on his son Max and was completely willing to give his ex full custody, but her rich new boyfriend paid Charlie to take the kid for the summer so he could have a romantic vacation with the boy's mother. He only accepts his paternal responsibilities for the cash.
Was He Forgiven?
Max knows full well that his father is an irresponsible freeloading douchebag, but they team up in a robot boxing tournament and form a bond anyway.
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Richard and Mary Parker
From: The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)
Dying isn't really the same as abandoning your kid, but the Parkers made sure to get the abandonment out of the way first. Even before that, Richard would tell his son they were playing hide and seek as an excuse to get work done in the basement, and they clearly spent millions of dollars that could have gone into Peter's college fund on a super secret subterranean spy lair.
Were They Forgiven?
Peter eventually learns that his parents were trying to save his life by fleeing the country and decides that all is forgiven. Then again he's the forgiving sort, having forgotten by that point all about the murder of his surrogate father, Uncle Ben.
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Valka
From: How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014)
Valka was the wife of Chief Stoick and the mother of young Hiccup who decided to move in with a nest of dragons rather than live with her family and do battle with the creatures every other day. When Hiccup grows up to become a dragon sympathizer, they cross paths once again.
Was She Forgiven?
Valka assumed she never could be forgiven, but Hiccup's actions in the first How to Train Your Dragon openend Stoick's eyes and made room for her redemption.
