On April 5, 2006 I posted the first ever MPAA Ratings bulletin on RopeofSilicon. Since that time I have posted every single ratings bulletin since and have posted a total of 146 separate updates in my weekly The Ratings Board feature (posted every Wednesday). Occasionally the news causes a stir such as when I announced Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince would be rated PG and even though it was my 136th consecutive ratings post I got email after email asking me if it was true. The Dragonball: Evolution announcement also recently caused a minor stir.
I think taking a look at the ratings once they are official can be a fun practice. It’s interesting to see how the MPAA rates a film, but it is by no means a way to judge the quality of a feature. However, nowadays it has become common practice to lambaste a film before it even gets a trailer if the wrong MPAA rating is even hinted at. Most recently the victim was Terminator Salvation.
Understandably, online Terminator fans want the franchise to continue down the dark and R-rated path of the previous three films, but there has been chatter Warner Bros. and director McG have been shooting for a PG-13 rated film. McG has gone to ridiculous lengths to rile up crowds even to the point of throwing female star Moon Bloodgood under the bus asking an audience of convention goers if they want to see her naked in Salvation. You can imagine the audience reaction as Bloodgood sat on stage and listened to the whole thing.
There was a similar online backlash when Live Free or Die Hard was made as a PG-13 film while its three predecessors where all rated R. Many used the rating as a reason to hate the film; I personally liked it, but haven’t watched it since. Not sure what that means.
I bring this up now, because recent news out of IESB.net says Warner Bros. “is apparently skittish about losing money if a superhero/tentpole film is rated R rather than the more family friendly PG-13” following the box-office letdown of Watchmen.
As a result of all this IESB goes on to say Warner Bros. is said to be focusing solely on PG-13 rated superhero/tentpole films only, definitely harder than the “family friendly” superhero films of Fantastic Four but not in the R rated range. If true, this sounds as if they will allow for a film to go as dark as The Dark Knight went, but the sex and blood will need to be kept to a minimum, two aspects prominently featured in Watchmen. And just to simply get it out of the way, I am sure many fans will argue Watchmen isn’t necessarily a superhero movie in the same vein as Fantastic Four or even The Dark Knight or Iron Man. Let me say I agree with you, but for this topic of conversation that is beside the point and on top of that IESB also adds to “tentpole” films to the equation.
IESB also uses the Salvation example and references upcoming WB properties such as Green Lantern and the long gestating Wonder Woman saying audiences should certainly expect PG-13 from those titles.
My question is, “Who cares?”
I am not saying IESB’s story isn’t newsworthy, because it is, but until a film is released the rating doesn’t matter one bit, and even then it is still intended as an audience guide and nothing more.
Take a look at The Dark Knight for example, that movie is so close to an R-rating that had a single drop of blood squirted as The Joker made a #2 pencil disappear into another man’s cranium it would have meant those under 17 would need to be accompanied by a parent or adult guardian, but in its current form it was simply enough for parents to be strongly cautioned.
How about The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian? That film was rated PG and featured a mouse that went around slicing throats and included an actual beheading. A beheading — in a PG-rated motion picture. According to the MPAA Prince Caspian contained epic battle action and violence. That’s how it got its PG-rating. The PG rating for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is due to scary images, some violence, language and mild sensuality. Not sure about you, but it sounds like Harry may have gotten away with a little bit more than the complaining fans are assuming, but that’s exactly my point.
Fans of the Potter franchise are worried Half-Blood Prince may not live up to the novel due to this “softer” rating, but the MPAA seems to always be softening its stance on violence and dark materials. It’s with sex that they maintain their firm grip.
If Terminator Salvation is extremely violent and merely doesn’t include one scene with Moon Bloodgood in the rain topless and gets a PG-13 rating does that mean it isn’t worth seeing? If John McClane doesn’t say “Yippee Ki Yay Mother Fucker” does it mean Live Free or Die Hard should be knocked down another notch?
I will admit when films deviate from a director’s original vision in order to satisfy an MPAA rating that is a problem. A film such as this would include Touchstone’s King Arthur in which director Antoine Fuqua made an extremely violent film for a Holiday 2004 release only to be told it was going to be moved into summer and would need to have all the violence edited out and made into a PG-13 movie. Guess what, it sucked. Not just because the violence was cut out, but because the violence was so ingrained into the film therefore removing the raw nature of it all sucked the life out of it. Granted, while I enjoyed the unrated cut of the film it was still flawed, but there is much more to that story than this simple paragraph, but suffice to say, it didn’t turn out as the director intended.
As for my question in the headline, there’s no doubt it’s a difficult question to answer.
On one hand not enough attention is paid to MPAA ratings as children too young for R-rated films and even a film such as The Dark Knight are brought in with their parents. On the other hand fans get too worked up when it comes to ratings as they worry their highly anticipated film may not have gotten the treatment it deserved when in fact they have no idea of the treatment until they see it.
One thing is for certain — something I think we can all agree on — the MPAA rating process is seriously flawed and it either seems to cater to studio pressure, producer pressure (find a Spielberg or Disney film that didn’t get the rating it wanted) or simply seems to lean much further one way than the other, a distinction between sex and violence being the #1 issue. Of course, I am old enough none of it matters anymore and since I don’t have children I don’t have to worry about that either. My interest is purely from an editorial perspective and from what I see an MPAA rating is no way to judge a film’s quality, and occasionally no way to judge a film’s content.
