Why was TMP G-rated?
- Thread starter gottacook
- Start date
The official ratings logos do actually spell out what they stand for:
http://blogs.furman.edu/com221sp10d/files/2010/04/6a00d8341c62f053ef00e55064bc158833-800wi.png
http://blogs.furman.edu/com221sp10d/files/2010/04/6a00d8341c62f053ef00e55064bc158833-800wi.png
Arnold Schwarzenegger used that line in The Sixth Day. It was PG13.What if a character says "Oh, go fuck yourself"?
Anyway, this is my impression of MPAA ratings over the years:
Late 1960's
G - Most mainstream movies
M - Edgy movies
R - Very edgy movies
X - Even edgier movies
Early 1980's (before PG13)
G - Kids' movies
PG - Most mainstream movies
R - Horror movies, Sex comedies, art movies, hard-core action movies
X - Porn
Today
G - Animated kids' movies
PG - Live action kids' movies
PG13 - Most mainstream movies, including stuff as mild as The Devil Wears Prada and some of the Harry Potter films, as well as stuff as brutally violent as Taken, and everything in between. Almost all summer action movies go here.
R - Slasher movies, sex comedies, art movies
NC17 - Really edgy art movies
As it turns out, unfortunately, Stephen Collins wasn't adequately confined for being a child molester.
That seems about right. The problem is that the ratings standards have shifted so much over time that the letter ratings are basically useless for assessing the suitability of older movies. I mean, someone today might look at the original Planet of the Apes and think its G rating means it's okay for small children, only to discover that it has intense violence and nudity and mature themes.
That's part of why I think we should abandon using letter ratings and just use content descriptions.
Well then,
G - cheap animated kids' movies
G - cheap animated kids' movies
Beneath the Planet of the Apes seems even more insane to me. The brutal deaths in the last two minutes alone should have kicked it up to a PG. The only film in the original series to get that rating was Conquest and that was after it was massively cut. The uncut version is pretty intense. Although there is one very comical scene where they editor didn't quite cut tightly enough and you can see the "cup of blood" being thrown at the ape being shot in the face. Even without that, it's the cruelest film in the franchise.
The recutting of Conquest included the addition of Caesar's "Kirk Speech" at the end. The original plan was for him to have all the human captives killed, and go on a reign of terror. But when test audiences didn't like that (AT ALL, from what I've read), they added the speech to mollify audiences that while the apes have taken over, they're not really out to exterminate all mankind.
Funny you should say that. I saw a documentary not too long ago called "This Film Has Not Been Rated" that argued about the secretive nature of the MPAA.
Of course it also argued that the MPAA unfairly overrated scenes with explicit and/or kinky/disgusting sexual scenes (two of the scenes proffered as proof were a man making love to a woman who found himself being unexpectedly sodomized mid-coitis, the other was a coprophagia scene).
Simultaneously, it argued that violence was severely underrated. Going from memory, I believe that it called for all films with any violence (which included not acted upon threats of violence) to be a minimum PG-13 if not NC-17.
I really don't get Hollywood sometimes...
Beneath was "G" too? I'm genuinely startled by that. The whole last act of that movie is a bloodbath with people being shot and killed and blood spurting everywhere. And that's not even counting the part where a mind-controlled Brent assaults Nova, or the hallucinatory images of the Lawgiver bleeding ....
Honestly, it was a bit too brutal for me as a kid and I was nearly twelve at the time.
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