[fociz]

For the last few years some VERY cool scripts that have actually blossomed into movies have gotten the Oh So Wonderful PG-13 treatment..


Aliens vs. Predator anyone? From what ive read the Director is PISSED cause the great & all knowing studio forced/cut scenes out of his film that would allow it to become a PG-13 rated film just a few weeks before release so they could attract a larger/younger audience and therefore make their bundle of cash at the expense of creating a film that actually made sense and did justice to a once unique and intelligent franchise that..as we all know has been smacked around like a red headed step child by the geniuses in Hollywood(and that money hungry biatch Sigourney) who seem to care less about quality in their craft and more about those first big weekend numbers.


I now have noticed that The Grudge(a film i was excited about) is now PG-13, sigh..this story deserves better..


Can we adults not get a true blue rated-R film that is not cut to hell just to get the whole damn family to come and watch it?


PG-13 the new family friendly rated-G.


We can still show plenty of T&A and just enough blood and gore to convince the UNINFORMED parents to allow their kids to come see our movies that are REALLY meant for an older audience..and in the process throw the story out the window.


Once you see these movies you find they are merely an empty shell of what could have been a truly scary/suspenseful/intelligent film but no..lets make sure it meets that PG-13 criteria so we can get the big payday!


/spit.

 

[union1411]

A good director doesn't need blood, guts, profanity, etc. to create suspense/horror. Look at Hitchcock.

 

[FoxyMulder]

The director is so pissed that instead of re-instating the scenes you talk about into Alien vs Predator he is simply re-instating a different opening which amounts to 1 minute of new footage not seen at the cinemas, why not additional gore and action ? could it be that the film was made as a PG-13 from the outset and no such scenes exist or is the studio going to release an unrated cut 6 months after the original release in January ?


As for Hitchcock if he was alive today he would have had more blood and gore in his movies, he always pushed the envelope and tried to get away with as much as possible for the time he was living in.

 

[fociz]

Quote:

Originally posted by union1411 A good director doesn't need blood, guts, profanity, etc. to create suspense/horror. Look at Hitchcock.

While i do agree with this to an extent..that is not the point here.

 

[kal]

Money talks. PG13 = wider audience = more money.


The only thing you can do is vote with your pocketbook and don't go see the movie in question I'm afraid...


Kal

 

[mike411]

Quote:

Originally posted by kal The only thing you can do is vote with your pocketbook and don't go see the movie in question. Kal [/b]

and I vote every weekend.

 

[Matt_Stevens]

AVP was supposed to be an R rated film, but when the studio saw it was POS, they forced it into a PG-13 in order to get maximum dollars on the opening weekend. That is what PG-13 is all about. MONEY. More money for the studios. They force feed everything into PG-13.


I am working on a project right now that very clearly would benefit from being an R rated film. But they want a PG-13, so the entire film is going to be compromised. Imagine LETHAL WEAPON force fed into a PG-13. Or DIE HARD. Or ABOVE THE LAW.

 

[chris5977]

On the same token, I know people that WILL NOT watch a movie unless it is Rated R, because of this phenomenon. So maybe they are losing some money, too...

 

[raidbuck]

Here is one example where it didn't pay off. The Alamo was going to be directed by Ron Howard and really show what it would have been like with all that hand-to-hand combat in a realistic portrayal of the events.


Disney boght it and said no, had to be a PG-13. Ron Howard left. Is that why it flopped so badly? I've seen several G or PG renditions and wanted to get a feel, like in Saving Private Ryan, the real horror of it. So when I saw it was cut down I saw no reason to spend that much on it. Mybe the new DVD will have the original battle scenes before they were re-shot.


It is really strange how the 'R' movie has lost prominence lately. 30 hears ago 'R' was much more prevalent.


Of course, Topsy Turvy (the Gilbert and Sullivan movie) was rated 'R' for one topless scene, totally not needed, where the rest of the movie was basically a 'PG' for drug use and mostly a 'G'. I still don't understand why Mike Leigh did that.


Rich N.

 

[HTCrazy]

Well as a parent who's stopped TV viewing in the house (well except for sports), having more PG-13 movies coming out is a good thing. Just more video's we can watch every week.


If I were without kids though, having all these watered down movies would definitely suck. On the other hand it also put in check the trend of movies having to outdo the gratuitous violence of anything that came before it. And if it forces movie makers to come up with more clever and subtle devices to achieve the same end, so much the better.

 

[mkultra]

blame it on temple of doom and gremlins in 1984

 

[Matt_Stevens]

The Alamo flopped because it sucked, because it had very bad press and because it starred Dennis Quaid.

 

[Gary McCoy]

Quote:

Originally posted by mkultra blame it on temple of doom and gremlins in 1984

Temple of Doom? I'm supposed to get upset to see somebody reach through the chest of somebody else and pluck out their heart? I never found the scene at all believable, and laughed instead. Maybe it was the "monkey brains" or the crunching insects that violated the PG boundary. Or just maybe the Thuggee assasins didn't play well in Bollywood?


As for Gremlins - a splash of green goo from a puppet in a blender does not gore make. Or maybe perhaps it was those same puppet's use of tobacco and alcohol that is supposed to upset me?


Gary

 

[Dean Roddey]

I'd prefer more adult fare, but of course many people would argue that that Hollywood fills movies full of sex and violence to get rich, but here they are being damned for not putting enough in to get rich.

 

[Sergei Esenin]

Quote:

Originally posted by HTCrazy Well as a parent who's stopped TV viewing in the house (well except for sports), having more PG-13 movies coming out is a good thing. Just more video's we can watch every week.

But this is a matter of appearance, not reality. So many PG-13 films these days are just R rated films without the explicit nudity or more than one use of the word "f-ck", that you may as well be letting your kids see R movies. To make up for the lack of nudity they cram in as much blatant and often crass sexual innuendo as possible, and to make up for not being able to say "f-ck" more than once they use other coarse language even more often.


PG-13 films of today would often have been R rated films when I was a kid. Take for example the campy comedy-slasher classic Student Bodies --in 1981 it got an R for use of the word "f-ck" once in a nonsexual context, and sexual innuendo. Today it would be PG-13. By the same token, the vast and gratuitous sexual innuendo, crassness, and messages of today's PG-13 films like Mean Girls , many would have been rated R in 1981.


Personally, I'd rather have my adolescent kids see an R rated film with nudity and a good lesson about relationships and sex like Lost and Delirious than see a "clean" PG-13 movie with awful messages about relationships like Crossroads , which trains teenagers to be shallow, crass sexual consumerists.


It's really not about the ratings, it's about the content. The line between PG-13 and R today is too fine to be useful anymore, since PG-13 often has more "mature" content than R. Ratings in this country are a farce, accomplishing next to nothing in their current jumbled-up form where PG-13 can mean family-friendly or "soft R". What we really need to revive the distinction between R and PG-13 is an Adults rating (18+, no kids even with parents), so that clueless people will stop thinking of R as an adults-only rating when it was never meant as such. What would also help is the "movie ID" system some theaters have started to experiment with--parents go with their kids to the theater and get a card made listing the maximum rating the kid is permitted to see and their photo. There are many parents who, like me, would give their adolescent kids "R cards" not because we're irresponsible, but because we know it's appropriate for their maturity level.


One or both of those things would do wonders for restoring the viability of the R rating.

 

[djdrock]

One thing that I find funny is the TV versions of films. Take "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" for instance. The TV version actually shows Stacy in the hospital getting the abortion, yet, they substitute Linda's line "It's just sex Stace" with "It's just fun Stace!"

 

[Josh Z]

Quote:

Originally posted by Matt_Stevens The Alamo flopped because it sucked, because it had very bad press and because it starred Dennis Quaid.

And yet The Day After Tomorrow made a lot of money.

 

[plain fan]

I knew The Alamo was a lost cause when Ron Howard walked because of what Disney wanted. He didn't want to sugarcoat what happened and Disney wanted to make money; the results speak for themselves.


I think the R version of Alien v Predator is just a rumor. Supposedly the pre-shooting script is exactly what was shown in the movie. OTW the director is covering for a poor movie. I don't know how anyone could take 2 R rated movies and come up with a PG-13 movie.

 

[watchformore]

Quote:

What we really need to revive the distinction between R and PG-13 is an Adults rating (18+, no kids even with parents), so that clueless people will stop thinking of R as an adults-only rating when it was never meant as such.

Isn't that part of what the NC-17 rating was supposed to accomplish?

 

[GSOgymrat]

I don't have kids but I think parents need to be able to tell which movies are appropriate for children and which movies are not. The rating system isn't perfect and it is understandable that producers want to make money by expanding their audience to include kids. What bothers me are PG-13 movies that really should be R. That hurts the system because people see some PG-13 movies and think "if this is PG-13 I'm sure not going to let my kid see an R rated movie," which increases the stigma of R, which pushes producers toward PG-13. I also wish there were more NC-17 movies and that NC-17 was not perceived as a financial kiss of death.