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The MPAA Bows Down To Disney

post #1 of 147
5/15/08 at 9:55pm
Thread Starter 
http://chud.com/articles/articles/14...NEY/Page1.html
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post #2 of 147
5/15/08 at 9:59pm
The fact that ONCE was rated R says it all.
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post #3 of 147
5/15/08 at 10:09pm
I'm still convinced that Rambo's R-rating is due to that film's pro-Christian themes, instead of Stallone's claim that the MPAA went soft on it because it called attention to the real life plight of the Burmese people.
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post #4 of 147
5/15/08 at 10:19pm
I was outraged when I saw THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED...the MPAA is a monkey council; a complete joke and it pisses me off they have the power to shit on so many good filmmakers.
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post #5 of 147
5/15/08 at 10:39pm
I guess this will be the summer when we are introduced to the PG-3:16 rating. No one under 16 admitted unless they are accompanied by evangelical religious whack-jobs.

You know, like Torture Porn of the Christ.
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post #6 of 147
5/15/08 at 10:43pm
It was a great editorial, but I'm wondering how the debate this summer will be any different from the debate over the rating that happened when "Matrix Reloaded" came out. I seem to remember there being a lot of discussion about the suitability of the R-rating then, and nothing came of it. Although Devin makes a great point that in the case of these films and "Temple," the issue is not that they're rated too high, but too low, and that may be the kicker.
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post #7 of 147
5/15/08 at 10:45pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by RathBandu View Post
It was a great editorial, but I'm wondering how the debate this summer will be any different from the debate over the rating that happened when "Matrix Reloaded" came out. I seem to remember there being a lot of discussion about the suitability of the R-rating then, and nothing came of it.
I don't quite understand. Are you saying it was harder than an R? Parents don't tend to give a shit about that. The debate is that harder movies are getting softer ratings that make them appear to be more kid friendly, and that parents might be shocked by what they're getting.
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post #8 of 147
5/15/08 at 10:46pm
No, I was saying that I remember there was quite a lot of debate about how Matrix was too "soft" for an R, but too "hard" for a PG-13. But you're right, which is why I amended my post to reflect that.
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post #9 of 147
5/15/08 at 10:47pm
The Dark Knight? R? Really?
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post #10 of 147
5/15/08 at 10:53pm
I was just re-reading an interview with Sam Raimi where he was mentioning that the MPAA is notorious for holding grudges. "I've got skeletons getting thrown around and that's an R, and Spielberg's ripping hearts out of bodies and that's a PG?"
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post #11 of 147
5/15/08 at 11:09pm
I took a speech class a long time ago (an easy credit) and when I got to choose the topic to soapbox about, I chose the MPAA. It never fails to piss me off. And I agree with the comment about Rambo getting a pass because of its Christian-friendliness.

"Look at all those limbs and guts flying around! Those murderous pedophile non-white heathens had it coming! Go Rambo Go!"
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post #12 of 147
5/15/08 at 11:14pm
Yeah, Army of Darkness was actually threatened with an NC-17 if the commentary track is to be beleieved. I love my violent movies, but I'm getting to that age where I'm regularly shocked at what PG-13 and even R gets away with. Return of the King was the biggest shock, that movie was so freaking R-rated.

The problem with the argument, and one I feebly tried to ask This Film is not Yet Rated producer Eddie Schmidt, is that it ends up turning into a violence vs. sex argument, and that just leads to more problems of like minded people finding a reason to argue.
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post #13 of 147
5/15/08 at 11:19pm
I must say living in London the past 6 months the British Board of Certification is definitely seems like a better route, and clear cut route.
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post #14 of 147
5/15/08 at 11:21pm
Thread Starter 
BBFC is way, way, way worse.
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post #15 of 147
5/15/08 at 11:27pm
PG-13 was used more appropriately in the beginning, as more of a soft 'R' for titles such as DREAMSCAPE, RED DAWN, and THE WOMAN IN RED, all early PG-13 rated films. It should have stayed as such, but instead everything shifted forward a rating. X (later its identical twin NC-17) and R mostly stayed the same, with PG-13 being pretty much the same sort of content as PG used to be, and PG becoming more of a "hard G" - the sort of G that ANDROMEDA STRAIN, BATTLE OF BRITAIN, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, or STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE had gotten in the past. G, in turn, was further softened over time into what exists today as a rating that basically indicates suitability for preschoolers. The 1990s version of THE SECRET GARDEN would never get a G rating today - too dark. It's bullshit if you ask me; we got screwed out of our intended "soft R" rating in favor of what's effectively a rating for the 5 and under crowd that is far less useful.
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post #16 of 147
5/15/08 at 11:28pm
At least the MPAA knows better then to BAN something as silly and harmless as Don't Go In The Woods...Alone or Blood Feast.
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post #17 of 147
5/15/08 at 11:55pm
My main issue is more with the monopoly they hold over niche and indie filmmakers...the ratings based on what's deemed too much is fucking arbitrary and nebulous as hell...it's self interest all the way. The MPAA doesn't seem to take those filmmakers seriously.
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post #18 of 147
5/15/08 at 11:57pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gabe Powers View Post
Yeah, Army of Darkness was actually threatened with an NC-17 if the commentary track is to be beleieved...
That is ridiculous.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gabe Powers View Post
Return of the King was the biggest shock, that movie was so freaking R-rated.
Really? What content in ROTK is inappropriate for the 13-17 crowd?
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post #19 of 147
5/15/08 at 11:58pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by reggie-wanker View Post
X (later its identical twin NC-17) and R mostly stayed the same, with PG-13 being pretty much the same sort of content as PG used to be, and PG becoming more of a "hard G" - the sort of G that ANDROMEDA STRAIN, BATTLE OF BRITAIN, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, or STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE had gotten in the past. G, in turn, was further softened over time into what exists today as a rating that basically indicates suitability for preschoolers... It's bullshit if you ask me; we got screwed out of our intended "soft R" rating in favor of what's effectively a rating for the 5 and under crowd that is far less useful.
That's a terrific deconstruction. I was somehow unaware that the MPAA consisted of suits from the big studios until I read Devin's article today, but in hindsight it makes perfect sense that the ratings would become nothing more than a way for studios to target specific age demographics. The use of harder ratings to bury smaller studios' projects is probably just icing on the cake.
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post #20 of 147
5/16/08 at 12:33am
Quote:
Originally Posted by DARKMITE8 View Post
Really? What content in ROTK is inappropriate for the 13-17 crowd?
Mostly stuff in the extended edition. The biggest shock was the launching of severed heads. I guess most of the other stuff was creature violence which people don't have as much trouble with. Mostly it was the sheer volume of violence. Basically two thirds of the film comes down to people and orcs hitting and hacking each other to ribbins. If I had a kid I would be uncomfortable, though again, I'm all for as much violence as possible.
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post #21 of 147
5/16/08 at 12:35am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gabe Powers View Post
Yeah, Army of Darkness was actually threatened with an NC-17 if the commentary track is to be beleieved....
Please tell me this was a joke from the folks doing the commentary. Aside from the rediculous geyser of blood in the beginning, is there a single other drop of blood in the thing? The first time I saw the movie I was shocked it was rated R. I don't recall the language even being that rough to warrant an R rating.
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post #22 of 147
5/16/08 at 12:43am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gabe Powers View Post
Mostly stuff in the extended edition. The biggest shock was the launching of severed heads. I guess most of the other stuff was creature violence which people don't have as much trouble with. Mostly it was the sheer volume of violence. Basically two thirds of the film comes down to people and orcs hitting and hacking each other to ribbins. If I had a kid I would be uncomfortable, though again, I'm all for as much violence as possible.
I guess I look at the fact that I was watching things that were not really appropriate for a youngster when I was a 10-or-under kid (ALIEN, PREDATOR, ROBOCOP, CONAN, etc), that tamer-by-comparison ROTK seems acceptable for a teen.

It becomes a question of graphic extreme VS pervasiveness, I guess. Quality over quantity.
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post #23 of 147
5/16/08 at 12:59am
Holy shit! When I went to see Once I never even looked at the rating. An "R" for that is ridiculous. I'm glad you mentioned Temple of Doom, when I saw that as a kid, I was freaked the fuck out.
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post #24 of 147
5/16/08 at 1:09am
Planes, Trains and Automobiles is Rated R. The mind boggles.
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post #25 of 147
5/16/08 at 1:28am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gabe Powers View Post
The biggest shock was the launching of severed heads.
One of my first thoughts about them making the LOTR trilogy was that that moment from the book would obviously be cut. Noooope.

So if Disney can get a PG for Caspian...I assume Lucas certainly was aiming for a PG-13 for Revenge of the Sith to enhance the whole "this is the dark one" image he had been cultivating to appease older, disgruntled fans (sure, I know it's dark for a Star Wars movie, but it could've easily been PG, regardless).
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post #26 of 147
5/16/08 at 1:43am
Quote:
Originally Posted by User_32 View Post
Planes, Trains and Automobiles is Rated R. The mind boggles.
I take it you've only seen the TV edit?

This scene is the reason.
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post #27 of 147
5/16/08 at 3:40am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pelican Pants View Post
Please tell me this was a joke from the folks doing the commentary. Aside from the rediculous geyser of blood in the beginning, is there a single other drop of blood in the thing? The first time I saw the movie I was shocked it was rated R. I don't recall the language even being that rough to warrant an R rating.
According to Raimi the flesh rotted skeletons and Ash drinking boiling water were too far for the MPAA.
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post #28 of 147
5/16/08 at 4:29am
This reminds me of when the MPAA slapped an R rating on Solaris because of two shots of Clooney's ass. Soderbergh couldn't get them to budge until he produced two episodes of NYPD Blue that had aired seven years earlier on network television that had multiple naked male ass shots. The real funny part is that the shots of Natascha McElhone's rather fine posterior was never mentioned in the rating. I guess the MPAA hierarchy breaks down like this:

fantasy violence < action violence < horror violence < tits < "fuck" < bush < male buttcheeks <<<<<<<<<< wang
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post #29 of 147
5/16/08 at 4:32am
Quote:
Originally Posted by DARKMITE8 View Post
I take it you've only seen the TV edit?

This scene is the reason.
That reason is awesome.
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post #30 of 147
5/16/08 at 4:35am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greg Clark View Post
Soderbergh couldn't get them to budge until he produced two episodes of NYPD Blue that had aired seven years earlier on network television that had multiple naked male ass shots.

fantasy violence < action violence < horror violence < tits < "fuck" < bush < male buttcheeks <<<<<<<<<< wang

I thought the MPAA didn't take precedence into consideration. Because if this was the case, Soderbergh could've easily shown them the male buttcheeks in Cops & Robbersons! And that was rated PG!

Let's not forget the F-word used in the PG-rated Spaceballs...

Yeah, the MPAA makes it up as they go along.
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post #31 of 147
5/16/08 at 4:40am
Quote:
Originally Posted by mcnooj82 View Post
Let's not forget the F-word used in the PG-rated Spaceballs...
And "Nice fucking model! *honk honk*" from Beetlejuice.
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post #32 of 147
5/16/08 at 4:53am
The amount of shit that got put into PG movies in the 80s is nuts. Even after PG-13. Look at Big. Underage sex (technically, anyway) and three--count'em!--three f bombs. Rating? PG.

Even ten years ago you could have multiple "fucks" in a movie (As Good As It Gets, The American President) and get a PG-13. Then around 2000, someone popped off in an interview that you only get one "fuck" in a PG-13 (probably trying to underline the stupidity of the ratings system) and suddenly it became the rule.
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post #33 of 147
5/16/08 at 5:08am
I think it's funny that this went up when it did, I was just having a conversation after watching Raiders and Temple of Doom earlier today about how I think Raiders is quite possibly as bad as Temple in terms of goriness. Yeah it has no hearts getting ripped out of their bodies but there were a lot more moments of blood spatter in Raiders than I remembered, to say nothing of the faces melting.
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post #34 of 147
5/16/08 at 5:32am
I think the R is appropriate for Once. It does have 30+ fuck words. I mean, the bar between PG-13 and R for fuck words should be higher, but you kinda have to draw the line somewhere.

And Solaris was PG-13. Really.

Except for the 3 fucks in Arlington Road, I've never found it above PG-13 level.

My parents gleefully showed me Raiders as a child and I loved it and was always freaked out by the second corpse on the spikes jump scare thing. I will be doing the same for my children, should I ever have any.
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post #35 of 147
5/16/08 at 5:34am
Quote:
Originally Posted by mediumdave View Post

And Solaris was PG-13. Really.
The point was that Soderbergh had to fight to get that PG-13 for Solaris by referencing NYPD Blue.

Unless I'm misunderstanding what you're saying...
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post #36 of 147
5/16/08 at 5:38am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by mediumdave View Post
I think the R is appropriate for Once. It does have 30+ fuck words. I mean, the bar between PG-13 and R for fuck words should be higher, but you kinda have to draw the line somewhere.

And Solaris was PG-13. Really.

Except for the 3 fucks in Arlington Road, I've never found it above PG-13 level.

My parents gleefully showed me Raiders as a child and I loved it and was always freaked out by the second corpse on the spikes jump scare thing. I will be doing the same for my children, should I ever have any.
"fuck words"?

The idea of treating all fucks the same is stupid, by the way. In ONCE fuck is just a punctuating word, not a descriptive one.
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post #37 of 147
5/16/08 at 5:44am
Quote:
Originally Posted by devincf View Post
"fuck words"?

The idea of treating all fucks the same is stupid, by the way. In ONCE fuck is just a punctuating word, not a descriptive one.
To expect the MPAA to make that kind of distinction between punctuating and descriptive is asking way too much of the MPAA. Hence your advocate!

They just don't want to think they're allowing kids easy access to such a 'filthy word'! Context doesn't matter for them and they want to achieve the semblance of doing something about it.

This is the organization that is or is thinking about making smoking an R-ratable offense. I think smoking is stupid, but that sounds just AS ridiculous.
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post #38 of 147
5/16/08 at 5:49am
I remember the commentary for Garden State, where Zach Braff said the film got its R rating primarily due to the five or six "fuck"'s uttered during its runtime. He noted the inherent stupidity in thinking that a kid can handle hearing a "bad word" once or twice, but any more than that would somehow damage the kid.
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post #39 of 147
5/16/08 at 6:50am
Watership Down was considered suitable for all ages in the UK. I don't know if WD is considered essential viewing on CHUD, but that film is one seriously violent cartoon.

The BBFC are hardly any worse than the MPAA - the former governed by political leanings, the other by financial incentives. Neither are lesser evils, since both as bias, which has no place in a ratings system. At least the BBFC have different moods depending on who's in charge. I guess you could at least give the MPAA credit for consistency.
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post #40 of 147
5/16/08 at 6:51am
Thread Starter 
The BBFC bans films. It is, hands down, worse. No question.
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post #41 of 147
5/16/08 at 7:16am
We haven't had a film banned since the 80s.

Games, sure. But them governing that is ridiculous anyway. And it's the wrong medium to discuss here.

I don't think it's fair to say an organisation who has performed poorly in the past is still considered accountable for things that occured outside the control of the current management.

The BBFC and MPAA's decisions are made by the people in control, admittedly if a group came into control that wanted to, they could ban anything they deemed fit.

I guess I can roll with The BBFC has the ability to ban films. That'll work.
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post #42 of 147
5/16/08 at 7:22am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bees?! View Post
We haven't had a film banned since the 80s.
Wrong

http://chud.com/articles/articles/13...-IT/Page1.html
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post #43 of 147
5/16/08 at 7:31am
Fair play, I even remember reading the article about it. Must be getting old.

Apparently Reuters says another DVD release was banned back in 2006.

Must have been pretty cheeky to offend them, have you seen it? (Set pieces)
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post #44 of 147
5/16/08 at 8:34am
The LOTR series got away with a PG-13 rating because most if not all of the really gruesome violence is against non-human characters.

Same thing with Alien vs. Predator. That movie is has everything from decapitations, to splattered brains, eviscerations, cut-off limbs etc'. It just so happens that all of that is creature gore.
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post #45 of 147
5/16/08 at 8:39am
Interesting read.
Do you foresee a way for filmmakers to revolt & overthrow the system? (Not happening without studio support I imagine)
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post #46 of 147
5/16/08 at 8:59am
Also the BBFC is still weirdly draconian.

If you're British chances are you haven't seen a headbutt in a film, or seen someone use a pair of Nun-chucks. Tons of little moments have been snipped out of films for absolutely no reason, and as Devin said a lot of films have been outright banned.

The BBFC is far more liberal now, but it still has the power to do stuff like the whole 'Video Nasty' thing and outright ban films.

Another great example is This Is England, which gained itself an 18 rating (meaning no one under 18 could get into see it, parental supervision or no) despite local councils lobbying for the film to be shown to schoolkids.
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post #47 of 147
5/16/08 at 9:03am
In fairness, it's difficult to say that in the age of internet and easy access to foreign editions of films - also, i'm pretty sure i've seen Vinnie Jones headbutt somebody. That might have been on the news though.

This is always going to be a difficult subject - if outside regulation is brought in, we could lose more films to banning like this in the UK. Who's to say we're not getting the lesser of evils now?

Admittedly, nobody should ever have their work banned. There's always an audience out there that will appreciate it. Even if it's one person.

Even if it's two girls one cup.
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post #48 of 147
5/16/08 at 9:27am
Am I the only one who thinks There Will Be Blood could have gotten away with a PG-13? I know the beating of Eli was fairly brutal, but it's off screen and we barely see the blood secreting from his head. But yeah, the ratings system definitely has a moralistic agenda, and there's no doubt Narnia got the PG due to its Christian themes,
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post #49 of 147
5/16/08 at 9:33am
The BBFC has become a lot more liberal in recent years, especially towards sex. For instance a number of films that show full penerative sex have got cinema and DVD releases.

Cant imagine the MPAA doing something similar anytime soon.


Also, I thought that ban on head butts and nunchucks had been lifted now?
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post #50 of 147
5/16/08 at 9:42am
9 Songs got a US release on something like 3 screens.

It might be the definition of a small release, but it's still one I guess...
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