So I Was Going Through My Superheroes And I Noticed The Ratings

[Seil]

So last summer was the summer of superheroes. That much is obvious - you have The Dark Knight - the highly anticipated sequel to Batman Begins. Then you've got Iron Man and holy crap look how awesome Robert Downey Jr. is! Then you have The Hulk, and Edward Norton just turns anything into gold. So I wanna watch Iron Man, because it's a pretty spiffy movie. Then I think - after a 40 - that 'Hey, The Hulk is awesome, I should watch that!' Then it just turned inot a free for all where if I watched The Dark Knight, I'd halfta watch Batman Begins, 'cause Batman Begins is awesome, and was I gonna watch the original Batman flicks or Spawn or any of that other stuff....

(The answer is no, 'cause the older Batman movies, while entertaining, dun hold a candle to the newer flicks, and Spawn... Well, Spawn is my most favoritest superhero ever. His comics sometimes suck, his movie sucked awful donkey bung (save for the first time you see his shroud come out, that was pretty fuckin' awesome) so I didn't watch those movies, only the superhero summer blockbusters)

But after I watch Iron Man, and I stick The Hulk into my PS3, I notice that the rating thing that pops up says the Hulk is like... PG13 or something like that for "Frightening Sci-Fi imagery."

...

What the fuck? "Frightening Sci-Fi Imagery?" Now, I know The Hulk. I've watched it a bunch - a testament to Norton's acting talent - and I agree that the Hulk change might - might- mightmightmightmightmightmightbe kind os worrisome to an ultra-conservative mother just coming from church on Judgment Day. But other than that, all the people who come and see the film are gonna be like "Woah, this is AWESOME! AWESOME IN SAUCE FORM!"

So I wondered - who "grades" these flicks? What basis do these people have to tell me that I shouldn't watch something because it contains "A scene of nudity?" Are there any specific guidlines or are these people just like "OMG I SAW A BOOB R TIEM IT'S RATED R!" Do you guys have any anecdotes about the ratings system - like watching a flick that you think should've been rated higher or lower? Why,. as a society, do we need this system?

I need to drink less. I've had far too much, I'm watching superhero movies way too early in the morning and I'm really hungry. Like, i need to go out ad buy food. But it's way too early and I have superhero movies to watch.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

When Ulssyes (the film version) came out here in the early 70s not only did they make up a new rating for it (R21+) which has never been used since they actually made men and woman watch in seperate cinemas so they didn't get too excited. I always find that fact awesome.

At least over here therei s a special censors office and they have a pretty full list of what puts what into what category. It's still quite an art but yeah its a persons job.

Also thread title is not too clear.

[Pip Boy]

Well, actually, these movies are rated by the Motion Picture Association of America (http://www.mpaa.org/) and they supposedly have an established set of guidelines that decide what gives a movie a certain rating. For example, I'm pretty sure if the word "Fuck" is said twice in a movie, it is automatically given an R rating.

Nudity on the other hand, I'm pretty sure is allowed in small doses if shown in a Non-sexual way, but even partial nudity shown sexually gets an R rating. This would explain why Titanic got away with a PG-13 rating while many movies are rated R because you can see a girl's belly during a make-out scene.

Actually, [s]I was wrong about all that./s] I found a page on their site (http://www.mpaa.org/Ratings_HowRated.asp) that says they just hire a bunch of parents in LA to vote on it, so I can see why so many movies have bass ackwards ratings.

EDIT AGAIN: Nope, turns out I was not entirely wrong. In their ratings descriptions it says that PG-13 is for "material nudity" and that R is for "Sexually-Oriented Nudity".

EDIT SOME MORE: As for the high rating because breasts are shown, showing your gender bits is a giant taboo in modern society. I'd say that not lowering movie rating standards based on how easy it is to find porn on the internet is a good thing, especially considering that just because an R rating does not mean people won't watch it.

[TheWolf13]

I like when it says "for thematic elements" in the warning. Doesn't that just mean the movie has a theme? I always thought that was a good thing.

I'd have to say the frightening sci-fi imagery in The HULK probably comes from the scene where Abomination destroys a chunk of New York.

I think TV does a good job of just having three major categories. Violence, Language, and Sexuality. Movie ratings have become so descriptive that no one knows what they mean anymore. "Animated Violence" could be Jerry hitting Tom over the head with a large wooden hammer or it could be someone cutting somebody's head off and blood spurting all over the place.

[Magus]

While the description of why they gave the rating to The Incredible Hulk may have been a bit wonky, I think PG-13 was more than justifiable having watched the film. It wasn't a PG film (although nowadays PG seems to be the new G so I'm not really sure of G's relevance to the industry anymore except for something completely unobjectionable to 99.9% of the public) but wasn't graphic or anything to justify an R rating

At this point I hope the MPAA just uses precedent when rating films because that would be much easier than trying to come up with an objective system, which would probably be impossible, especially since it leads to idiotic decisions sometimes (the "two fucks means an R" could be in this category, for one thing, though I like it in some respect when movies hang a lampshade on it. I believe Be Cool did this when John Travolta complains in the first five minutes that "if your movie says fuck more than once you automatically get an R-rating" and then the film proceeded to never say fuck again and garnered a PG-13). Some people complain sometimes, saying The Dark Knight should've been rated R or such-and-such movie that got an R should've been rated PG-13, but other than some really silly stuff like 8 Mile getting rated NC-17 (I still have no idea why, other than that it was a terrible film so maybe they just didn't want parents unintentionally damaging their children), in comparison to the sorts of things that go on in other countries as far as banning/censoring movies I'm fine with the MPAA.

An interesting sub-topic: should films receive automatic R-ratings if they show someone smoking a cigarette/cigar? I'm of course in the realm of "no" since smoking is so often a thematic element of films, present and past, that to give a movie an automatic R-rating for it seems completely nuts to me. I don't think they'll start doing that but since people are talking about I guess it would be possible.

EDIT: I'm actually not even sure who complains about ratings or why. I mean, yeah, someone who's under 17 will complain because they can't watch the movie at the theater, but they can't vote so their opinion isn't important (lol). The only two groups other than that I could think of were people who found actual fault with the ratings being too stringent/stupid (i.e. the two fucks rule), but who aren't actually affected by it at all anyway because they can watch any movie they please, and then the other group would be parents complaining that the ratings aren't stringent enough and their little Johnny was exposed to something they didn't want him to be, but since I so often see parents bringing their kids to things like Watchmen it's difficult to take these people seriously, even though I'm sure there are people who are quite sincere and responsible when it comes to keeping track of what their kids are watching. I just can't work up any reason to complain about ratings because what rating a movie gets doesn't affect me any more at all.