This thread is for movies that you think had the wrong movie rating(G, PG, PG-13, R etc.) assigned to them.
My example is “Jesus Christ, Superstar”. Intensely emotional, with songs and scenes involving persecution, murder plots, insurrection, sensual love and execution by crucifixion. Why did it get rated “G”(For General Audiences)?
“Summer of 42” had an R rating.
Why is that wrong? I believe the plotline of a teenager having sex with a middle-aged woman, complete with topless scene, earned a, “R” rating.
Well, Gremlins and Temple of Doom both received PG ratings and caused the creation of the PG-13 rating, and there’s all of the questionable PG movies that came before then.
**Terminator 2 **was obviously a PG-13 movie to me. I think it would be easily today. It kind of walked into the R rating because of the first one.
Arachnophobia was a PG, when it should have been at least NC-17, or possibly banned outright.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture starts with a horrific transporter malfunction and ends with a guy boinking a robot. It was rated ‘G’. (At the time, the joke among my friends was that the ratings board all fell asleep before the end and missed the implications of the Decker-Ilia “joining”)
Today I see the opposite. Truly innocuous movies like Frozen and The Spongebob Squarepants Movie get ‘PG’ for ??? SBSP had a bare-butt joke, and that was enough? Anything unsuitable for the smallest toddler ends up getting at least a PG. I remember when a film maker had to stick bare breasts in a family movie to get a PG (Original Clash of the Titans, anyone?)
Based on the level of graphic on-screen violence, Passion of the Christ should have gotten an NC-17, instead of an R. But since it was Jesus, I guess that made it OK.
They do that on purpose now that PG implies “family movie” while G implies “kid movie.”
The Andromeda Strain. Nudity and Plague and a G rating.
The Hawaiians (1970) had a topless scene (practically a nude scene), and it got a “GP” rating
(This was before they decided to reverse the letters to be “PG”. Apparently too many people thought “GP” was the same as “G”. “General Patronage”:. I recall one comedienne at the time, commenting on that topless hot tub scene, saying that “GP” really stood for “Get Popcorn”, because that was the excuse she used to get her teenaged son out of the theater during that scene.)
In ST:TMP, yes, Decker and Ilia “joined,” but there’s nothing graphic to it (they’re just standing together in a big glowy lightshow). Implied sex doesn’t generally trigger the ratings board (though I agree, the transporter accident is pretty disturbing for a G).
The G rating has become something that a lot of makers of kids / family movies want to avoid; there’s a perception that G is now for little kids. And, so, Disney and the others try to put in just enough non-G content to get the PG.
Rumor was always that we have Uncle Ben and Aunt Owen’s skeletons on screen to avoid a G rating and get a PG.
Star Wars is clearly a G movie in almost every way, though.
G rating, in the 70s, did not imply children’s movie. It was literally General Audiences. It was Flanderized over time to be for children. But a few examples for the thread, Planet of the Apes got a G despite Charlton Heston’s bare butt and violence, and his spoken “damned dirty ape” and “God damn you all to hell!” 2001:a Space Odyssey was rated G despite the murder of several characters. Sheena had full frontal and got a PG.
I was going to suggest Meet the Feebles for this thread. It would be an easy X rating, except it’s with puppets. I checked IMDb, though, and apparently it doesn’t have a rating. I didn’t know any theater would show unrated films.
The Wild Bunch is an unusual case. It was made in 1969 and given an R rating. In 1993, there were plans to release an expanded edition with ten extra minutes. The ten extra minutes consisted entirely of character dialogue or establishing shots; there were no new scenes that contained any sex or violence.
But it was technically a different movie so it was submitted to the ratings board - and surprisingly received an NC-17 rating. The studio disputed this and said the new version didn’t contain anything objectionable that hadn’t existed in the original version that had been rated R. The MPAA said it was sticking with the NC-17. The studio said it would simply re-release the movie with the R rating it had received in 1969. The MPAA backed down and gave the new version an R rating.
You have to remember that prior to the MPAA, Hollywood had produced movies within the constraints of the Production Code. The Production Code dictated the certain things were simply prohibited in movies. So all movies were made within what were essentially a General Audience standard. If the ratings system had existed, every movie would have received a G rating - if it didn’t, it wasn’t released.
The MPAA system, with all its flaws, was a step forward in that it made it possible for movies to be made and released that were outside of this General Audience standard.
IIRC Godspell (1973) was GP when it was released and was far more “innocent”. The Bible (1966) contained implied nudity, murder, sodomy, mass death, etc and was rated G.
MPAA ratings are all contextual and highly subjective. Jesus Christ Superstar was the first of it’s kind in 1973 and the ratings board likely accepted it as a G movie because of it’s Biblical context.
Arthouse / independent theaters might do so – they also often show foreign films, which, as I understand it, tend to not get submitted for an MPAA rating unless the distributor was planning for a wide release in the U.S. The big, general theater chains (AMC, Marcus, Cinemark, etc.) almost undoubtedly would not, as a matter of policy.
For a time, whenever a movie made before 1965 was re-released, it was almost automatically given a G rating. It wasn’t until the 80s when old movies were put on home video that the MPAA really bothered to watch the films again and give them a nice appropriate rating (e.g., Casablanca was re-rated PG while A Streetcar Named Desire and Psycho were PG-13).
The standards for what constitutes a G-rated film have gotten a lot more stringent over the years. Right now, in addition to the usual taboos of extreme violence, sexual content, nudity, adult themes, and profanity, the MPAA takes into consideration things like scariness, intense scenes, disturbing images, and open consumption of tobacco and alcohol. As a result, G-rated movies have become increasingly rare. The only type of film that could get a G-rating now would be 80 minutes of a kitten sleeping.
There’s a trope for this. I think Roger Ebert called it “penis breath” - the phrase Elliot says in E.T. that probably gave it its PG rating.
Sometimes, it’s hard to tell just why - Hey Arnold!: The Movie got a PG (even though it was a conversion of a TV-movie that would have been rated TV-Y) for, IIRC, “thematic elements.”
The Simpsons Movie got a PG-13, but there may be an explanation for that, and it’s not “the obvious one” (i.e. Bart’s penis); near the end of the movie, Otto is shown using a bong, and the MPAA’s “list of things that automatically rates PG-13 or higher” is any drug use shown.