How much heat should a kiddie film pack?

Times change. The whistling mouse of Walt Disney's 1928 "Steamboat Willie" has turned into a guinea pig, joined his commando buddies and, under the same Disney banner, become part of a new act: Guns N' Rodents.

When Sarah Palin cranked off recently on the "anti-2nd-Amendment circuses from Hollywood," it made you wonder: Has she seen the billboards for some of the movies this summer?

Now in its second week, "G-Force" was produced by action-meister Jerry Bruckheimer, who knows a few things about what gets 'em in the door. What gets 'em in the door? The promise of righteous bloodshed, whether the film delivers it or not. (His earlier, unlikely kid-aimed hit "Kangaroo Jack" was about as wholesome as a serial killer.)

The latest "G-Force" print ads have toned things down; the initial ad campaign featured four guinea pigs wielding critter-sized AK-47s. It's a little creepy. I suppose you could say the pee-wee bravado is part of the movie's comic appeal, but the Bruckheimer production (not the worst thing you'll see this summer) doesn't go in much for levity. Even my son, born with the uncanny ability and persistent interest in re-creating rapid-fire laser and machine-gun sounds while racing around the house, was taken aback by the "G-Force" billboards — taken aback, but taken in.

Last week, Rachel Lee Harris in The New York Times covered the weekend box office results for "G-Force" ($31.7 million on 5,200 screens). She noted, vaguely, that "there was some concern that families would be turned off by a marketing campaign that relied heavily on gun imagery." I'm not sure where the alleged concern originated. I'm quite sure, however, that millions of parents aren't giving it a second thought.

This summer's posters are pointing an awful lot of firepower directly at the eyeballs of the preteen and young-teen audience, trying to get them pumped up and locking-and-loading and ready to fire, if only vicariously. The polestar is the ferociously militaristic "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," which calls out the Obama administration by name for its wimpy politics of appeasement. The film offers a barrage of mayhem and just enough sleaze to make an 8-year-old either grateful or uneasy, depending on the kid, to be seeing something he or she really should not be seeing at that age. (Well, any age.)