The series was for kids. Period. To make the movie uber violent and bloody would be flat out stupid.
The books
were "uber-violent and bloody", my friend.
Question: what other "intermediate/young adult" books have you
ever read that were half this graphic or politically complex? Dealing in grey areas and moral ambiguity?
That would lead me to believe that, yes, while the core audience was comprised of middle-school readers, Animorphs doesn't fit neatly into that category. When have you
ever seen anything else aimed at 13 year olds where kids their own age are killing people with claws and teeth, and stealing bombs from military bases to blow up an enemy installation? Or holding a fork to a guy's ear while promising to kill his parents? Watching a guy turn into a giant predatory monster and bite an alien into little pieces while listening to him scream? Deal with the after-effects of combat, of war, reflecting on how you sent your cousin and brother to their graves?
You can use that "but it's supposed to be for kids!" thing all you want. Truth is, though, 90% of parents who ever actually read these books, screening them for their kid before letting them read it, wouldn't be happy to expose their children to most of this stuff.
The honest truth is, Scholastic marketed this to the middle-school crowd, slapped some pretty & colorful covers on the books, and emphasized the "cool funky animals!" aspect while playing down the "stabbing someone in the face with a railspike claw" angle. So, yes, technically it's a children's series. And I have no problem with children reading these books, they might learn something, as we did. They'll be exposed to something a little more lofty and high-brow than the other crap churned out for people that age. But to lump this in the same category as Goosebumps or Harry Potter, etc, would be a mistake. As dark as HP is becoming, the darkest stuff in Harry Potter doesn't even scratch the surface of book #1, here.
Facts are facts. If you adapt this
faithfully, you're not going to get past the first stage of MPAA scrutiny. They wouldn't let kid John Connor in Terminator 2 fire a gun. What makes you think they're going to let you show kids the same age do what they do in the books?