It would also be an affirmation of the commercial viability of the "parental guidance suggested" rating. With the obvious caveat that The Force Awakens will make buckets of money no matter what it gets rated (assuming it's not an NC-17), a PG rating for Star Wars: The Force Awakens would be a worthwhile (if wholly symbolic) signal that this new franchise is as much, if not more so, for young fans of today as opposed to older fans of yesterday. That's not to say that Disney won't go full-Han/Luke/Leia in the next trailer or in the final weeks before release, but thus far the marketing has been about making fans of Star Wars: Rebels and The Phantom Menace as excited as fans of The Empire Strikes Back. That's presumably one reason why, thus far, the older cast members have not been prominently featured in the marketing materials. Walt Disney knows that the long term strength of their new Star Wars universe isn't rooted in the nostalgia-driven fan base, but rather the younger and/or brand new fans who will want to be welcomed into the fold. In fact, the likes of Star Trek aren't more violent than the likes of Return of the Jedi and other movies that used the PG before there even was a PG-13. And the newfangled PG kid-friendly movies don't have to be defanged, as Maleficent and Pan prove. Walt Disney somewhat refreshingly leading the charge with the likes of Into the Woods, Alexander and the Horrible, Terrible, No Good Very Bad Day, and Tomorrowland, to say nothing of their "live-action version of a Disney animated classic" sub-genre they've been turning into an unending cash cow. Now the live-action PG movie has made a small comeback over the last few years, with The live-action PG movie was as much of a casualty as the R-rated film. So it's really great to see films that are not only PG-rated but actually feel like they darn well deserve that PG and it's not just "eeek, thematic elements!" keeping them from a G.īut as I've discussed before, when the four-quadrant fantasy tentpole took over Hollywood a decade or so ago, we didn't just lose the outright adult movies, we lost the outright kid-friendly flicks too. We now see films like The Martian or Ant-Man that absolutely could have gone out as PG if the desire existed (those Matt Damon "f-bombs" are really the only thing keeping The Martian in the PG-13 zone) as well as films like White House Down or No Good Deed that are R-rated movies in every way except judicious editing choices and a lack of outright explicit content. In this day-and-age, the PG-13 has become so common that it basically is a stand-in for a PG, with young kids flocking to the likes of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and Avengers: Age of Ultron. Obviously all four movies may well fall or fly for reasons wholly unrelated to the MPAA classification, especially in the case of The Walk which is arguably targeting adults. Having now seen three out of four of those films (and I'll assume Jem and the Holograms won't push any boundaries with its "thematic material including reckless behavior, brief suggestive content and some language"), it's nice to see that, if only by circumstance, the live action PG is alive and well.
Sony's kid-friendly horror romp Goosebumps, and Universal/Ĭomcast Corp.'s Jem and the Holograms by month's end.
But that's before we had an October with four live-action PG movies. We'll see to what extent the PG ratings help or Robert Zemeckis's The Walk, Warner Bros./ Will Star Wars: The Force Awakens do what is expected of it and get a PG-13 for something like " intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action throughout?" Or will it stay within the bounds of (most of) its prior installments and go out with a PG rating? A year ago, I would have told you that the chances of the film forsaking the PG-13 were pretty slim.
0 kommentar(er)
