Five Kids with Awesome (and Enviable) Supernatural Powers

Remember when you were a kid, and you watched some of those movies where the kid was the same age as you and you thought “Man, I wish that were me”. The Richie Rich movie did that for me. So did the movie Escape to Witch Mountain (the original, not the remake with The Rock). The superpowers that those kids had were awesome. I wanted that to be me.

Thinking about that movie made me nostalgic for other movies from way back with superpowered kids. I don’t mean like Harry Potter or Sky High where kids are magical or have inherited vampire, werewolf or witch genes. I mean the kids that had powers that made them different, and often made them outcasts. Here are my five favourite kids-with-unexplained-powers that I wanted to be like growing up.

Tony and Tia were the coolest kids I knew growing up. They could talk to animals, communicate with each other telepathically, and had telekinetic powers that brought objects to them. Tony was also a mean harmonica player. These were just about the coolest superpowers I could think of growing up. I’d never have to get up again, I could get animals to play with me, and I could conspire with my sister without opening my mouth. Still, I somehow managed to survive, even without these superpowers coming to fruition (although I still wish I could communicate with my sister telepathically — it would make getting our stories straight ahead of time so much easier).

I’ve seen the look on many a child’s face before. Staring at homework, school stuff, or their little brother. They figure if they stare at it long enough, they might actually set something on fire. It never works for anyone though, unless your name happens to be Charlie McGee.

What do you get when two parents are being experimented on with telekinesis? You have a kid with pyrokinesis. That means she can start fires with her mind. Now while being able to start powers with my mind would not be my first choice (turning things into ice cream or chocolate if I stared at it long enough was my dream as a kid), it’s still a pretty cool skill.

I know there’s probably a big moral to the story and lots of things I missed in this film when I watched it as a kid. But the only thing I walked away with at the age of nine was that there was a boy somewhere in the film universe with the one supernatural power that I wanted: flying.

Seriously though, the movie is a cute little film about an orphaned teen who everyone thinks might be autistic, but who really only has flying powers. Is he an angel? Is he an alien? Has his traumas given him the ability to fly? No one really knows. Is it one of the coolest supernatural powers to have? Absolutely. Show me a kid who didn’t wish they could fly and it’s probably someone who wanted to be Tony and Tia instead.

Here’s a kid who had it rough. Matilda, in all her awesome supernatural power, couldn’t land herself a pair of smart parents. Matilda is cute, smart, and has telekinetic powers that allow her to move things with her mind. Because of how much she’s been bullied by the adults around her, she tends to keep her talents hidden away and to herself. But when a teacher inspires her and the principal of her school becomes too much to bear, Matilda becomes the ultimate original superhero (without the uniform). Fortunately I didn’t have as much trouble at my school as Matilda did, but I suspect she was a superhero to more than a few kids who hated to go to school.