It's unfair that Jim doesn't get a hot disney princess

racroen: "Jim's still a bit too young...[]...be thinking about girls, too."

Fifteen is either past the age or the intro age of having your first wet dream and/or morning wood; it is the stage of being interested in sexual activity, or having already had it --- but it's "too young to be thinking about girls? "

He's fifteen, not eight. XD;

The average teenaged boy is armed with raging hormones, a harrowing sex drive, and boiling red blood cells; by thirteen, most of their goals or accomplishments consist of receiving fellatio and reaching second base; romance, no, but has puberty been activated? Hell yes.

Thus, the age group has nothing to do with it.

Preoccupied, however --- yes. That's a proper explanation, because he is too preoccupied to be casually thinking about girls like you said; he's trying to stay alive, physically and emotionally, through more than half of the movie, and all thoughts seemed to be consumed by lack of self-worth due to abandonment issues and lifestyle mishaps, so there's no room for any other casual thought outside of his self-validation of worth: solar-surfing.

But the first segment of the movie was clearly not trying to linger on any fluffy bits about his daily life apart from what was relevant to the driving character theme; it was more like a five minute glimpse before it jumped straight to the adventure, so, who knows what Jim's track record in dating was. If there could be one, due to the seemingly 1% percent human population in his town. He could've been an emotionally detached heartbreaker like his father.

Or maybe he just collected tentacle porn. O' Disney.

Indeed, the book this film is based on is not about the main character finding romance; it's about learning his capabilities and intellectual power as a man, as a boy being forced to grow up, a coming-of-age test for adulthood, or manhood. There's no space for romance; that's why Doppler and Amelia's moments looked utterly random and "could do without."

Though, I will admit that one of the greatest tests in a man's life is a woman, and being fatherless adds a lot of interesting amateurity to that subject; a fatherless boy won't know how to deflect a manipulative Poison Ivy or relate to his mother's perspective of boy-on-girl interaction without having that "Atta Boy" male figure to help out. Without Dad, they don't know how to treat or react to the opposite sex from a male stance, for better or worse, and that's a big part of male growth, as well as teenaged abandonment issues in young men.

That being said, I don't doubt Jim being paired up, rivaled, manipulated, or scorned by a female in a sequel of this film, which has all the Disney-liberties possible, and a "new world" I.E. an academy with a variety of options for the writers to "explore." It'll probably be "The Queen's rebellious daughter" or something of that kind; I could see that cliche even if I strongly don't want to. I prefer the franchise the way it's been since reign ended; leave it as is.