Okay, like about 90% of the world’s population, I went out and saw Episode 2 a while back, but this isn’t necessarily about the movie itself, but more the rating it received. Like all other Star Wars movies, it was rated PG. In retrospect though, this kinda bugs me, because thinking back on it, the movie had:
Two bodily dismemberments
Three on screen decapitations
Countless CGI, yet apparently humanesque creatures being cut into little bits
Two huge battle sequences full of people being shot and blown up.
Various other deaths
Suprisingly, looking back, there was a LOT of violence no screen in this movie, a heck of a lot more than all the others. So, why simply a PG rating? I heard the only reason it got a PG rating in Great Britain as opposed to a U was because of the whole “slaughtering the villiage” scene, and even then, it wasn’t for the on-screen deaths, but the implication that women and children were slaughtered? Is it simply because there was no blood that the violence is accepted? Titan AE was a cartoon with I believe three on screen deaths, only one rather violent, and yet it received a PG-13 rating. What’s the deal with that? Or is this another one of those “Lucas has a big name and lots of money, he could show Obi-Wan sodomising a small child and we’d still give it the rating he wants” kinda situation?
A scene of one of the Fetts headbutting someone had to be removed for the film to get a PG rating instead of the…what’s the next one up, 15?..in the UK.
As for the US, I’m not sure, although I must say I think the idea of Lucas bribing Jack Valenti is funny.
Contrast with U2: Rattle & Hum which was rated PG-13. The only reason I could possibly think of was the single utterance of the phrase “Fuck the revolution!” The whole system is pretty arbitrary I think.
“Gone with the Wind,” which was released prior to the existence of the MPAA, was given a G rating by the board on its re-release in 1971. It features an attempted rape, a man being shot point-blank in the face, the bloody aftermath of a battle, and several other violent scenes. But aside from “damn,” there are no “curse words,” no explicit sex, and no other objectionable material. It deserves its G rating.
Children are perfectly capable of seeing graphic violence without harm as long as it is presented in a reasonable context. I think the PG rating for AOTC is perfectly reasonable. *
*To the extent that any ratings are reasonable. Generally speaking, the MPAA gets nearly everything wrong.
It’s my impression that sex, four letter words and nudity automatically gives a movie in the US a higher rating. Somehow I find it odd, that the depiction of love on screen should be more dangerous to children, than violence. In Sweden, the ratingsystem works the other way, and Foxfilm actually had to edit ESB to get a rating for 11, when it was originally released. The burnt corpses, and the decapitation of Dart Vader was left out.
If I was into conspiracy theories, I would say that the moral majority is responsibel for the MPAA’s way of rating.
Usually stupid USA policy is lots of violence is okay, as long as no one gets an anatomy lesson. The only movies i can think of that have lots of naked chicks and are still PG are Barbarella and Rapa Nui, which had the lovely Sandrine Holt…Mmmmmm…Sandrine Holt…What was i talking about? Oh, yeah, Papa Smurf wore the red clothes, Grandpa Smurf the gold!
OTOH a show like C.S.I. is pretty graphic in the violence. I don’t know what hours it shows, though, since I couldn’t be bother to navigate TV Guide online.
The MPAA is notoriously arbitrary in their assignment of movie ratings. Several directors have claimed that they’ve sent a print to the MPAA, had it stamped with an ‘X’ (or NC-17 rating), recut the film, gotten same rating back, and then when they shipped off an uncut version of the film gotten the ‘R’ rating they were after.
How much of this true, I don’t know. I do find it funny when a movie like The Doors gets an ‘R’ rating for a few seconds of female full frontal nudity, but The Wide Sargasso Sea gets slapped with an NC-17 for a few seconds of male full frontal nudity.
I also heard from my Biology teacher that South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut’s first version got an NC-17 rating. The makers, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, then proceeded to make it more vulgar, sent it again, and got their R rating.
Actually I think the story is that first the title was something like South Park Goes to Hell and the MPAA said “Oh dearie me, you can’t say hell in a movie title.” (Obviously that wasn’t it…we just had From Hell last year, but I forget what their real beef was.) So they changed it to the obviously vulgar “bigger, longer…” title just to see what happened and they said “oh well then that’s better.”
I think initially they had issues with the dildo, but when Parker and Stone explained that it wasn’t actually a picture of an actual penis, but a picture of a dildo they said “oh, ok then.” CRAZY!
Well the on screen violence in ATOC was not gooey.
You know when that dude decapitated that other dude and even later when the headless dudes kid picked up the helmet there was no goo coming out of it so…
