Why Macaulay Culkin Isn’t In Home Sweet Home Alone

Home Sweet Home Alone doesn’t include Macaulay Culkin as Kevin McCallister — we look at the possible reasons why Culkin skipped the 2021 reboot.

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The Home Alone franchise is rolling again with the newest installment, Home Sweet Home Alone, but Macaulay Culkin doesn’t return as Kevin McCallister. Now streaming on Disney+, Home Sweet Home Alone focuses on the series’ newest young protagonist, Max Mercer (Archie Yates), who similarly finds himself left home by himself during the holidays. Home Sweet Home Alone doesn’t completely distance itself from the originals, featuring an appearance by Kevin’s older brother Buzz (Devin Ratray) along with an update on what the adult Kevin himself is up to.

Despite early rumors of Culkin appearing as Kevin, he would later make clear that he would not return in Home Sweet Home Alone. There are few possible, and totally understandable, reasons for why Culkin chose to sit out the latest Home Alone. A big one likely has to do with the amount of time that’s passed since Culkin’s Home Alone heyday.

Culkin’s last official portrayal of Kevin was in 1992’s Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Though he did appear as an adult version of Kevin in a 2018 Google Assistant commercial, it’s been nearly three decades since his last canon performance as Kevin McCallister. This could offer some indication to Culkin’s own perspective on the role that made his famous and the circumstances under which he’d be willing to reprise it.

In his adult career, Culkin has appeared in roles far removed from his Home Alone days, such as on American Horror Story: Double Feature. His absence from Home Sweet Home Alone might boil down to something as simple as Culkin just wanting to stretch his legs as an actor by taking on different roles. The Google Assistant commercial might indicate Culkin hasn’t necessarily written off returning to Kevin altogether, but it might need to be under what he would regard as the right circumstances.

Another possibility might lie in how iconic Kevin McCallister is to the series. It’s easy to forget today just how much of an unexpected cultural phenomenon Home Alone was when it was released in 1990. Home Alone 2 wasn’t as well-received upon its release, but its reputation has warmed significantly in the years since. Kevin, with his house full of traps, has cast a shadow over the Home Alone franchise ever since that both of the installments sans Kevin, Home Alone 3 and Home Alone: The Holiday Heist, weren’t able to overcome. Even the one installment that did bring Kevin back, Home Alone 4: Taking Back The House (in which Kevin was played by Mike Weinberg), still couldn’t match the kind of holiday season impact of the original two. Kevin loomed heavily over Home Sweet Home Alone long before it was released, and had he appeared in it as an adult, even so much as a cameo would’ve snagged all of the attention from virtually everything else in the movie.

Whether Kevin was simply too iconic of a character to compartmentalize or Culkin having just moved on from the role (which a 2019 social media joke by Culkin on what Kevin would look like now could also suggest) the reasons for Kevin McCallister not returning for Home Sweet Home Alone are easy to understand. What’s more, Kevin already has two Christmas classics to his name that viewers around the world revisit every holiday season. Even without returning for Home Sweet Home Alone, Kevin and his deadly house of traps are already as universally beloved as it gets.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/home-alone-reboot-macaulay-culkin-kevin-missing-reason/