Older movies need new ratings and family editions
photo credit: irina slutskyby Adam Cochran
Most people don’t pay much attention to movie ratings. The rating system is primarily there for parents and kids who don’t want to uncomfortably sit together through a sex scene on family movie night.
As our kids have grown older we have adopted a strict, no rated R movies, rule for the whole family. That means that even my wife and I don’t watch them unless they have been edited for TV.
We made the rule in 2005 after a discussion about redeeming qualities in movies. This is a valid concern when discussing movies like American Pie, Bad Santa, and most Tarantino films.
But, what ab0ut the Green Mile, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, The Jerk, BladeRunner, and many other R-rated films that have a single scene that pushes them past the PG-13 rating.
On the other hand, what about Goonies, Top Gun, or Sixteen Candles these are films which carry a PG or PG-13 rating that would almost certainly be R today based on sex, language and crude humor throughout the film.
I am not trying to initiate a discussion on whether kids should be allowed to see R-rated movies or which movies should be rated R.
I am concerned with the fact that film makers don’t see how lucrative it would be to release edited versions of the films. Every film comes out with an unedited or R-rated version, but why not a family edit?
The kids are allowed to see PG-13 films as long as we see them first and approve them. Often it only takes one single scene to change a PG or PG-13 rating to an R. Why not release edits of films with those scenes removed or edited?
The debate usually centers around the film as art and seeing the film the way the artist intended. I can understand that. However, the film industry is also a business and I would have seen a lot more films over the past four years if they hadn’t carried an R-rating.
Hollywood no doubt undertands that R is not as profitable as PG-13. The latest Die Hard and Terminator films were both PG-13. Each film was a lower quality film than its predicessors, in order to draw a larger audience, the films were edited for lower ratings. On the other hand, Watchmen or Away We Go certainly could be easily edited down to PG-13 ratings but short scenes were included to move the film up to an R-rating.
This is not proposing that we change all the “sh**ts” to “shucks.” I just wish the film industry would realize that adding a single scene or adding “f**k” into the scrip three more times to get an R-rating often prevents a good film from being scene by an audience who would otherwise enjoy it.
Annother irritation is that the rating standards have changed. In the 80s sex was edgy and everything except for F**k were given unlimited usage in PG films.
We saw Indiana Jones pull a man’s heart out in real time with his bare hands, but Planes, Trains and Automobiles was given the R for using the F-bomb 18 times in a little over 60 seconds. While the themes of Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom were deserving of the PG-13 rating, Planes, Trains and Automobiles could have a family edit released by deleting a minute from the film.
Granted, the scene in Planes, Trains and Automobile was historic comedy footage, it is also what gives it the forbidden rating from many family homes.
Perhaps I am prudish but I am also a consumer. I am simply explaining that the reason I don’t pay to see many movies has nothing to do with whether I want to see them and more to do with the letter at the bottom of the poster and what it represents.
I am also not petitioning for the banning of R-rated movies. I have no problems with the existence of such films, I just don’t pay money to see them. Just as many people avoid movies with a given actor or from a given director, I don’t pay money to see R-rated films. There are millions like me too and they all went to see something other than District 9 last weekend.