Back on September 5 word around the Internet grew into a roar following an interview director John Moore gave to DasGamer regarding the R-rating his upcoming videogame adaptation Max Payne received.
Das Gamer: How challenging has it been to get a PG-13 rating for Max Payne?
John Moore: It continues to be a challenge. We’re right in the middle of it now. We’re suffering from what I call Batman blowback. The Motion Picture Association of America gave The Dark Knight a PG-13 rating and basically sucked Warner Bros. cock. I have a serious amount of issues with the MPAA. Did you know it was made up of volunteers? As if that somehow excludes them from some type of wrongdoing. You can’t serve on it if you’re a homosexual or if you didn’t grow up in a shared parenthood home. Go to their website and read their charter about what gives a fair and balanced view for typical parents. We’re still strangled by an association that’s straight out of the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Surprisingly, the “challenge” Moore speaks of was apparently not as much a challenge as he may have led folks to believe. It seems he was stoking a fire that didn’t even need to burn. In a new interview with GameDaily he gives the following message regarding the film finally getting the required PG-13 rating:
I must say, and that’s what’s a little bewildering about this, I didn’t have to change much. We trimmed some frames more for the sake of trimming frames than anything, but we got the rating without any major changes at all. I’m a little surprised that we changed their minds, effectively, but I’m happy about it. It proves that if you stick to your guns and you have the creative, and dare I say moral sense, that you’re in the right, that you can get the right thing done.
Yeah, John, you and your Internet cronies are so powerful that you effectively shook up the MPAA and their 86-year-old rating system with Max Payne. Gimme a break.
I am sorry, I have had very little respect for Moore ever since watching some behind-the-scenes features for Flight of the Phoenix and his career since has done very little to make me change my mind and this is just one more instance it seemed he tried to make a much larger story out of nothing. How does something go from being a “challenge” and something you are “suffering” over to something that “didn’t have to change much”? Trust me, if anyone is going to have an effect on the MPAA it isn’t going to be John Moore.
In his GameDaily interview he goes on to discuss the unrated version of the film that will be found on DVD, which is yet another aspect to movie making that is continuing to bring down the artform. Sooner or later consumers are going to stop buying into this fad of “Unrated” versions of films on DVD. When I see a director’s cut of a film by Ridley Scott such as Kingdom of Heaven then you have my attention, otherwise, do we really need anything more than what we have already seen? You can read the rest of the interview here.
As for the official MPAA rating of Max Payne, it is yet to be released and I expect we will probably have it by Wednesday.
Max Payne hits theaters on October 17.
