PG-13: Good, Bad, or Ugly?

[dubious]

Originally Posted by darkness2918

Terminator Genysis

DId we watch the same movie? I barely remember anything that qualified it for PG.

[C. Anton]

Originally Posted by AaronJ

Fincher did exactly what what Hitchcock did, in making you THINK that you saw way more than you actually saw.

Watch the movie again. Closely.

I've seen it several times.

[AaronJ]

Originally Posted by C. Anton

I've seen it several times.

I question that.

[C. Anton]

Originally Posted by AaronJ

I question that.

What exactly do you question about it? Is it the dead fat man fully nude on a slab, the bloody woman on her bed, the tortured fiend, or maybe the man with some of his stomach fat cut off? The language? Tell me Aaron, what should I be paying closer attention to?

[AaronJ]

Originally Posted by C. Anton

What exactly do you question about it? Is it the dead fat man fully nude on a slab, the bloody woman on her bed, the tortured fiend, or maybe the man with some of his stomach fat cut off? The language? Tell me Aaron, what should I be paying closer attention to?

You never see any of the violence. Sure, you see some of the results, briefly. But it's not even a remotely violent film in as far as a viewer experiencing the violence.

Take, for instance,

[Show spoiler]the conclusion with Gwyneth's head in the box. Fincher tells the story of how a woman at a party came up to him and was infuriated that he would show something like that on screen. He tries to explain to her, over and over again, how there was nothing on screen, she only imagined it. The woman was CONVINCED that she had seen the head in the box. We all know it never happened, though.

It's a seriously dark and grim and horrible movie, yes. But the vast majority of what people are horrified by is stuff that they extrapolate from brief images. And if you actually look at the amount of violence in the film, it's almost nil. Fincher manages to create a horrific environment. Yes. That's the entire point of the film, and one of the reasons why I think it's one of, if not the, best films of the past 15 years: there's a oppressive darkness that is relentless.

But take any episode of "True Blood" or, heck, "American Horror Story" and you'll see more violence and bloodshed than in Se7en. Again, it's extrapolation. The guy who ate himself to death: Disgusting. But you see a corpse for about a few seconds. You hear a description of what may have happened. And one's imagination takes it the rest of the way, making it even worse. That's why it's brilliantly written and directed.

What you imagine is always worse than what you see. Yes, seeing someone's limbs sawed off is terrible. But you see a young woman pulled into a room, a door close, and then hear terrible, horrible screams that go on for like 3 minutes? Way worse. Why? Because your imagination fills in what's going on behind that door. And a human being's imagination is always worse than what you're going to see on a screen.

The same goes with Se7en.

[C. Anton]

My argument was and still is Hitchcock could have fit Se7en into a PG-13 setting, and most would still love it. Se7en as is, isn't close to PG-13 and I gave several examples as to why. I don't have to THINK I've seen more than I have, what I've actually seen is the point. I do think Fincher is amazing though, and I haven't talked to many who disagree.

[AaronJ]

Originally Posted by C. Anton

My argument was and still is Hitchcock could have fit Se7en into a PG-13 setting, and most would still love it. Se7en as is, isn't close to PG-13 and I gave several examples as to why. I don't have to THINK I've seen more than I have, what I've actually seen is the point. I do think Fincher is amazing though, and I haven't talked to many who disagree.

Hitch would only have done such a thing because of the time period. What Fincher did with Se7en is EXACTLY what Hitch would have done with such a movie. Make people think they saw much worse than they did. That's exactly what he did in Psycho, for example. There were people who LITERALLY never took a shower again, even though you never really see anything in that scene.

[chip75]

Originally Posted by AaronJ

What Fincher did with Se7en is EXACTLY what Hitch would have done with such a movie.

I don't think he would have, Hitchcock was getting more and more explicit as time went on. I'd imagine he would have ventured in blood-soaked-slasher-territory (in full Giallo style) eventually if he'd remained physically well. He kept pushing the boundaries. He would have enjoyed the source material and enjoyed freaking people out with Se7en's more gruesome moments.

[Rodney-2187]

Paul Verhoeven

“A PG-13 rating is the studio wanting to make money. R-rated movies are excluded because they limit the audience. The capitalist system completely dominates the American film industry. It’s all about the bottom line. Any argument about filmmaking or art is lost. Even the art of meaning is lost. There’s no meaning to American cinema anymore. The only meaning is money. It’s reduced to that, and it’s horrible.

Capitalism can also accept there are other values than money, but it looks like studios can only look at movies for pure profit. That’s why the R rating is gone. Then you get more people, but you sacrifice everything that is edgy or sexual. You sacrifice anything that might offend people. Now if you go to a multiplex, everything is PG-13.

You can still express yourself in American filmmaking. Look at ‘The Big Short,’ which I think is a really well-made movie. It’s still interesting and innovative. It’s still possible to make good American movies, and there’s an enormous amount of talent, but it’s not used in the maximum way… I don’t think things will stay that way. The balance might shift.”

[AaronJ]

Paul's got a point.

[MassiveMovieBuff]

I prefer all of my movies to be rated R, NC-17 or unrated (which would be NC-17 if released that way in the theater initially). I own quite a bit of PG and PG-13 movies that I love and when the film is done right those ratings can pass but I still prefer all movies to be R or NC-17

[BoogalooShrimp]

While Verhoeven is right, it's naive to think the movie industry would act any other way. They've always been this way and had PG 13 been available in the 70's they would have used that rating the way they do now. They have stock holders to appease after all. Maybe because he's from the Netherlands, he has a different expectation of the film industry. Art and commerce are tricky things to combine successfully. While the rated r blockbuster is pretty much dead, there are still great rated R films being made. You're just not going to find them at the local multiplex (at least not for more than a week or two).

[TheBlayman]

PG13 films are just fine. I find excessive profanity a major turnoff.

[AaronJ]

Originally Posted by TheBlayman

PG13 films are just fine. I find excessive profanity a major turnoff.

You definitely wouldn't like Bad Moms then.

[Rodney-2187]

The ratings system is broken. Just watch This Film Is Not Yet Rated. Sure, the studios want to make the most money, but the criteria for determining what is PG-13 is so arbitrary and decided on by just a few rather inconsistent people. The values seem way off. Why is sex or a profane word regarded more harshly than shooting someone?

[AaronJ]

I've said more times than I want to that the stuff on TV -- "Criminal Minds" or "American Horror Story" or "Law and Order: SVU" for example, is WAY more disturbing than the stuff they give an R rating to. I mean, the stuff on those shows is gruesome, and we all know it. And those shows, with the exception of AHS, are on broadcast TV.

OTOH, the rating gives me a way to judge what is going to happen. I know ahead of time how much they are going to rip out of the film, and I can make a judgement. We were talking in another thread about the Jessica Chastain Painkiller Jane movie. If that ends up PG-13, it's not worth seeing, frankly. If it's R, then it's going along with the original material.

So, it ends up being complicated. But I find it weird that stuff on broadcast TV is much more horrifying than stuff that they give an R rating to in movies.

[WhySoBlu?]

Originally Posted by BoogalooShrimp

While Verhoeven is right, it's naive to think the movie industry would act any other way. They've always been this way and had PG 13 been available in the 70's they would have used that rating the way they do now. They have stock holders to appease after all. Maybe because he's from the Netherlands, he has a different expectation of the film industry. Art and commerce are tricky things to combine successfully. While the rated r blockbuster is pretty much dead, there are still great rated R films being made. You're just not going to find them at the local multiplex (at least not for more than a week or two).

Except that back then there were PG movies with far more extreme content than what can be found in a PG-13 film today. The Beastmaster, for example, has more edge and sexual content with a PG rating than most modern PG-13 films.

Here's what I said in response to someone rolling their eyes at the idea that PG-13 is an unnecessary rating:

[Show spoiler]

That's how it was until a bunch of whiny parents complained (because they apparently forgot that "PG" stands for "Parental Guidance" not "automatically okay for little Timmy to watch.") G was for kids, PG was for older kids/teens, with the caveat that parental guidance was suggested, and R was for adults/older teens, with the exception that kids could see it when accompanied by a guardian. That's why a lot of older PG movies have violence, nudity, language, etc.

And PG-13 was never intended to be what it's become. It was supposed to be PG with a bit more spice/kick. It was supposed to accommodate the more graphic and gooey (but still not R-worthy) violence of movies like Temple of Doom and Gremlins, while allowing for a little nudity and/or language. It was supposed to take over for the more adult PG movies (think Beastmaster.)

Instead, it became the sweet-spot for theatrical revenue and became more neutered than what the old-school PG was. Now, you rarely get nudity, the violence is completely - or at least mostly - bloodless and sanitized, language is closely monitored and often altered to ensure a PG-13, and absolutely no drug use is allowed to be shown.

Basically, instead of doing what they were supposed to do with the PG-13 rating, they just shifted a couple of the ratings slightly - PG is the new G and PG-13 is the new (albeit neutered) PG.

[FilmKoala]

I feel like this was a much bigger issue ten years ago when we heard of studios trying to cut everything down from an R to a PG-13, specifically the PG-13 horror boom. But nowadays I genuinely don't notice it. Maybe that's just me being naive, but I rarely ever hear about studios neutering their R rated films to secure a PG-13.

Originally Posted by BoogalooShrimp

While Verhoeven is right, it's naive to think the movie industry would act any other way. They've always been this way and had PG 13 been available in the 70's they would have used that rating the way they do now. They have stock holders to appease after all. Maybe because he's from the Netherlands, he has a different expectation of the film industry. Art and commerce are tricky things to combine successfully. While the rated r blockbuster is pretty much dead, there are still great rated R films being made. You're just not going to find them at the local multiplex (at least not for more than a week or two).

But there are tons of R rated films still being made and given wide releases, and a lot of them do pretty well.

[Jasonic]

Having seen Arrival, I think it's quite funny they clearly did this in the opposite direction. This movie could have actually very easily been PG. But they shoe-horned in one F-bomb in order to secure a PG-13 rating. PG movies today have a stigma of only being for family films. Not that it bugs me, but it's pretty obvious they wanted to avoid that rating.

[shukocarl]

The only thing I have to say on the matter is this;
When I was a teenager I paid to watch great films made for adults. Now I rarely go to the cinema as the films are made for teenagers and I'm an adult FFS!!