Rewatching The Matrix in anticipation of Reloaded I was reminded again that The Matrix is incredibly tame for an R rated movie. No sex, minimal swearing, and stylized violence roughly on par with your average James Bond movie.
I remember reading an article awhile back that a few F bombs in the Marilyn Manson song that plays over the credits was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’ve also heard that killing police officers on screen is an automatic R rating (which makes even less sense).
Are either of these theories true? Or even close?
FYI, the offical MPAA rating designation is “Rated R for sci-fi violence and brief language.”
It’s not a gory movie, but I’ve seen few movies with as much shooting and violence. You can argue it’d be pretty scary to somebody younger, which also factors in, I think.
How the MPAA rates movies is a mystery to even industry insiders. Roger Ebert regularly rants about how the ratings make little sense and are completely arbitrary and subjective.
In Australia The Matrix is rated M - 15yrs+, unless accompanied by an adult. The same rating as LOTR. Many under 15’s will have seen both and many other M rated movies.
Here, viewing is left to the parent’s discretion for movies with this level of violence.
Not knowing where your article came from, I have to say that this sounds to me like speculation at best and nonsense at worst. But, if it comes from a reliable source, I guess it could be true.
I think a lot of discrepancies can be understood if you realize that the Ratings Board isn’t a static entity - the people whom it comprises are changing all the time.
They weren’t real cops at all. They were computer AI.
Now you have identified a genuine pressing need for The Matrix to justify its R rating. The solution, fortunately, is simple: We need to see Carrie Ann Moss nude. NOW!
Seems like some of you either don’t watch many violent movies or have a very skewed memory of the bodycount. It has maybe 40 total deaths and a couple of fairly wussy fights, and there’s barely a drop of blood throughout. I’ve seen PG-13 movies I thought were a lot more violent.
No, the cops were not AI, but actual humans like Neo. This is clear because the agents could take over the bodies of the cops.
Someone on the web (in a list called "50 reasons to hate The Matrix) wrote about the injustice of the big shootout scene. The cops were just doing their job, but were cruelly mowed down. Neo and Trinity could create virtual automatic weapons, but couldn’t create virtual CS gas to nonviolently incapacitate the cops?
The Matrix, while not over-the-top violent(like Pulp Fiction or something), is quite intense. The movie is aimed at an audience above 18.
It also has some “F-words” and in the Lobby shooting spree, quite a few people get killed.
I used to wonder the same thing about Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Even today, I think it would get “R”, mostly for intensity. I’ve heard T3 is going to be PG-13, another sign it is going to be a wussified movie.
I watched it yesterday and I think I heard the F bomb dropped once, if at all, during the actual movie. And again, the body count is no higher than your average James Bond movie.
I’ve actually been wondering this for a long time. I’ve been meaning to ask why for a while now, but I just kept forgetting.
“The cops were just doing their job, but were cruelly mowed down. Neo and Trinity could create virtual automatic weapons, but couldn’t create virtual CS gas to nonviolently incapacitate the cops?”
The agents could just possess the cops if the cops aren’t dead. Morpheus explained earlier that if you’re not “one of us, you’re one of them.”
There’s not a lot of blood in The Matrix, it’s true. (That Parents site was pretty funny, by the way.) But there’s a LOT of shooting, more than any other 5 movies I can think of. The lobby scene is just crazy.
It should be noted that I don’t go for the kind of movies with a lot of that, but still. I think the entire ratings system is very stupid, but I don’t think it’s hard to see why The Matrix got an R in this country.
Well movie ratings are decided upon by a panel of regular folk. They watch a movie, have some big discussion about it and then decide upon a rating. Sometimes their ratings make sense and others you can’t figure out why such a light movie got such a harsh rating for the life of you. Just because The Matrix gets the same rating as a lot of other violent flicks doesn’t mean it’s equally violent/bloody/gory. Remember, the panel is just made up of regular men and women. Sometimes they make bad choices.
Unless you are going to try and rationalize away the whole “If you take the red pill…if you take the blue pill” scene.
Those were drugs.
So tell us Justin, exactly how many people have to be blown out of their socks before you will consider a movie worthy of an “R” rating? 400? 4,000? 4,000,000,?