Does "Home Alone" Happen in Kevin's Head?

Well, it's that time of year again. The time of year when all the classic Christmas movies air on TV to celebrate the holidays and we all watch them because it's a tradition. One such film that aired recently was 1990's Home Alone, and while I've seen it dozens of times, a few oddities stood out this time and got me thinking. This led me to a fan theory about this movie: that most of it only happens in the hero Kevin McCallister's head.

I know, "It-Was-Just-In-His-Head" theories are a dime a dozen in films these days, but there are a ton of things in Home Alone that either really strain logic or just don't make sense when you think about them. The whole premise alone seems like an impossibly perfect series of coincidences. What are the odds of a storm knocking out the phone lines in a neighborhood on the same week that nearly every resident of that neighborhood is either out of town or on their way out? What are the odds that Kevin slept through all the noisy commotion of his huge family rushing to leave the house on time and then a kid the same age and height as Kevin happened to cross paths with them and get mistaken for him during their head count?

That doesn't even include the cartoonishly dumb crooks who specifically want to rob Kevin's house, the cops who only take emergency calls seriously at the story's convenience, and the mysterious old man who never seems to question why an eight-year-old is completely alone in public every time they cross paths. There's also a scary furnace in the basement that comes to life and talks, but we'll get to that later. This stuff could all just be kids movie logic, or maybe it's all the logic of an actual kid, Kevin McCallister, who's very smart and imaginative.

I can think of two ways to look at this theory. The first and easier one to explain is that Kevin goes to bed after his fight with his family at the start of the film and dreams the rest of the story. He could have fallen asleep in that attic bedroom with the desire to be rid of his family fresh in his mind, then he dreamed a wild scenario where they left him behind and he grew to miss them just like his mother said he would. That would explain all of the coincidences, the crooks' abilities to survive his booby traps, and how Kevin is able to clean up the evidence of those booby traps so perfectly overnight. Kevin's habit of talking to himself and to the audience could be seen as his thoughts projecting themselves into his dream while he's thinking them. It could also be that the cop played by Joe Pesci in the first scene was a real cop, but since his eerie demeanor stuck with Kevin, the kid imagined him as the villain in his dream.

The only hitch with this theory is that we never see Kevin wake up from his dream. The ending scene where he wakes up on Christmas and his family comes home from Paris is consistent with his dream scenario, not with the scenario at the start of the film where the family is still getting ready to leave for Paris. A possible explanation for this is that we, the audience, are the ones who are meant to "wake up"from Kevin's dream and then apply what we learned from that dream to our own lives.

The second way to look at the "It-Was-Just-In-His-Head" theory is that Kevin was in fact left behind by mistake but imagined a lot of the things that he encountered during his time alone.

That's where the talking furnace comes in. The first time we see this phenomenon, Kevin himself says that it's only his imagination, then we see him silence the monstrous appliance by overcoming his fear of it. This is the only time the film ever confirms that something in it isn't real, but that can't be the only thing that Kevin concocts in his head.

Take Old Man Marley for instance. The whole point of his character is that he has an unfair reputation and he's really a nice guy once you talk to him. If he's not a deranged serial killer like the rumors say, then why does he always stare at Kevin in silence like a psychopath whenever they see each other? He doesn't say hello, he doesn't nod his head in acknowledgement — heck, he doesn't even blink. Your first thought could be that he's socially awkward because he's a recluse, but in the church scene where he finally talks to Kevin, he's totally friendly and tells the kid that there's no reason to be afraid of him. That doesn't add up.

It's entirely possible, just like with the furnace, that Kevin's imagination is making him see Marley in a more menacing way than the man really appears, and that illusion falls away once the boy's fear is overcome.

We get another glimpse at this exaggerated perception of things when Kevin first discovers that his family is gone. He recalls some of the hurtful things that his relatives said to him the night before, except their voices and expressions are much harsher than we saw them to be originally. One of those remarks, where his older brother Buzz threatens to feed him to a pet tarantula, isn't even something that we heard said before in the film. Was Kevin recalling a line from a deleted scene, or was he only imagining that Buzz ever made that threat?

It's more debatable whether or not the crooks Harry and Marv are really as they seem in this interpretation. Their behavior is consistent between their scenes with Kevin and their scenes without him, though their gullibility (and lack of peripheral vision) are questionable. It's also still questionable that they can be so physically sound after several falls down the stairs, blows to the head, and being partially set on fire. Perhaps Kevin's booby traps are not as effective as he perceives them to be and he didn't do nearly as much damage to the villains as he thought.

Unlike the dream theory, this notion of Kevin more or less hallucinating parts of his life opens the discussion for all kinds of mental issues that he may or may not have. Fans often find his talking to himself and his perfect aim with a BB gun to be concerning, and there are quite a few ideas floating around for what kind of a person he becomes when he grows up. That's another topic for another essay, though.

The "It-Was-Just-In-His-Head" theory may seem like a stretch, but Home Alone has been described by the people behind it as a dark comedy for children. While many children are able to appreciate dark humor, many others probably aren't. Dark humor often requires a cynical, less-than-innocent view of the world in order to fully grasp and enjoy it, and it takes years for someone to develop such a worldview. It could be that this film was made as a dark comedy with some light-hearted humorous elements in it so that different age groups would find it funny for different reasons. Perhaps the intent was that very young viewers would like it for its simpler elements at first and then develop a more complex and darker understanding of it as they grew up with it, similar to the way a lot of people view their families growing up.

Whether the events in Home Alone really are as they seem or if they're just the product of a very unique child's imagination, the film still proves today that a comedy can challenge you and make you think — even when you're home for the holidays.

Recurring Villains

The AMC channel has been hosting a Home Alone movie marathon for the past few days, and I got the chance to see Home Alone 2: Lost In New York again for the first time in years. Well, I remembered over the course of watching the film why I haven't bothered with it for so long. It has a lot of issues, but I think its ultimate problem is that it's so desperate to copy the first film that it keeps stretching the logic in its own story.

One case of this is the return of Harry and Marv, the two bumbling robbers from the first film. Somehow, against all odds, they escape from prison between movies and wind up in a completely different city at the exact same time that the protagonist Kevin does -- and they just happen to randomly cross paths with him in the middle of that huge, crowded city. Why did the screenwriters bring their characters back instead of replacing them with two new villains? Most likely because Harry and Marv were popular with audiences, and because they'd already proven that they could carry a Home Alone film. They were a safe bet, but not necessarily a good choice.

This brings me to today's topic: recurring villains. When do they work and when don't they? More importantly, when does a good recurring villain stop working?

Let's look at some good examples. Loki kept finding his way back into the Marvel movies despite being defeated twice, but his second and third inclusions never felt contrived. That's because his returns into the story were never coincidences. He didn't just happen to bump into Thor on Earth in The Avengers; Thor intentionally sought him out after learning that he survived the end of the first Thor film and wound up there. It's a similar case in Thor: The Dark World, where Loki spends the first part of the story in prison and is then sought out by Thor to help defeat another villain. His returns are completely plausible.

But an air-tight way back into the story is only half of what makes a recurring villain work. The other half is staying power, the justification for why they've come back. What gives Loki staying power after he returns to the story is that his character keeps developing and becoming more interesting each time. Harry and Marv from Home Alone 2 really don't grow or change after they come back. There are a few times when they're more careful because they know what kind of tricks Kevin played on them last time, but they still fall for those tricks again by the end of those scenes. Even if their return wasn't so sloppily written, their characters are still too one-dimensional to justify it.

Another good example of a recurring villain is, of course, Kahn from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn. His character had been dealt with previously in an episode of the original TV series, where he and his crew were left stranded on a desert planet. In the film Star Trek II, the character Chekov and another person land on that planet due to a misunderstanding and are (to put it mildly) hijacked by Kahn's crew. This villain's return is a lot more coincidental than Loki's, but what seems to make it work is that so much time and so many other villains have come and gone between Kahn's appearances. The whole point of the story is that this is that one-in-a-million worst-case scenario that Captain James Kirk was hoping would never happen, but did eventually happen due to his negligence over the years. It was a coincidence that occurred because of something that the protagonist failed to do. From a thematic standpoint, that can almost be seen as not really a coincidence at all. In Home Alone 2 though, the villains' escape and return is no result of anything that Kevin did or failed to do. It just happened for the film's convenience.

What gives Kahn his staying power after his return is his stubbornness. His only reason for living now is to get revenge on Kirk, and in so many words, he decrees that the story will not end until he has his revenge. Appropriately enough, he uses his final moments of life to set in motion an event that he believes will destroy Kirk's ship and crew, and then he dies thinking he won.

And this is the point where another return would be one too many. The screenwriters for Star Trek could have easily come up with some outer space scientific phenomenon to resurrect Kahn -- they did it for Spock, after all -- but they refrained from that because they understood that Kahn's character had nowhere else to go. I don't really count his appearance in Star Trek: Into Darkness as a return since that's an alternate universe and also sort of a prequel. As the original timeline stands, Kahn piqued in Star Trek II and went out on his best note.

So that's my take on recurring villains. If you think a bad guy that you've disposed of in a previous story still has potential for growth and you know a sensible way to bring them back, I say go for it. If one of those elements isn't falling into place though, I suggest creating a new antagonist in the meantime.

And don't feel bad if it takes you a while to make both elements work. Judging from Khan, the time to beat for a villain comeback is fifteen years.