Attack of the Clones Cut in UK

MartyJG writes "The British Board of Film Classification has demanded a cut in Ep2 AOTC for a head-butt. I don't know which is more extreme: UK viewers insisting on viewing the US version for 1 second of extra film, or that a 1 second cut means the difference between a '12' (~PG-13) and a 'PG' certificate. For some reason the distributors must think fewer people would see the film if it was a '12'. The film report is on the BBFC website."

Comments

How nitpicky can they get?

[Black Aardvark House]

All those over a one-second headbutt? I wonder how many British children are exposed to professional wrestling? They'll see loads there.

But even on the other side, this is one of those things where ignorance is bliss. If this was never reported, no one would have complained, since one second is a trivial amount of footage.

I'd have to side with leaving the footage in. After all, there's much worse violence than a lousy head-butt.

Re:How nitpicky can they get?

[Schnapple]

Actually, what probably happened is they were told that they had too many violent images to get a PG rating and they had to cut at least one - best to cut the least interesting/important one (light saber to the face = important, head butt != important)

I'm just glad to be in the USA where movie ratings aren't enforced by law.

Does anyone else find it interesting...

[InterruptDescriptorT]

...that while a movie that shows graphic violence, including decapitations, disembowellings and other acts of torture and sickness that turn viewers' stomachs can still a 'PG-13' or 'R' rating in the US, while just about any sort of hint of sexual acts, both heterosexual and homosexual, will merit at the very least an 'R' or an 'X' rating?

American censors and the film ratings boards seem to believe that it's OK for people to see violence because it won't affect them at all. Hey, the country was founded in a pit of blood during the Revolutionary War. But it's a hell of a lot better to have that on screen than it is to see two people who love each other show it intimately. Better that we have teenagers running into their school brandishing easily-purchased assault rifles than it is to have them falling in love with someone and spending time with them.

I'm just curious when the culture of violence and hate that the United States pushes on its citizens will finally become tiresome or offensive to them. Look at crime rates in Europe, where guns are near impossible to get hold of and where there are no restrictive anti-sex laws on television. Is it any wonder that their crime rates per capita are significantly lower than the US?

Let's keep producing more violent movies and glorifying war, like Platoon, Saving Private Ryan and all the Rambo movies do. That'll make everyone safer...

Re:Does anyone else find it interesting...

[Peyna]

I think you could almost say that Saving Private Ryan glorified war. Sure it tried to make us vomit and puke, but it's very easy to say "oh, it's just a movie, big deal" and pass it off. (personally I like conan's PG'd version of Saving Private Ryan where the guy is holding a Daschund like a rifle).

I always found All Quiet on the Western Front to be so much more terrifying and really helping me to realize what war is more than any movie. I think that being a book, plus written by someone who was there really made a big difference, and some of the scenes he describes and takes you through are much more horrendous than just severed limbs.

Re:Does anyone else find it interesting...

[Loligo]

>Let's keep producing more violent movies and
>glorifying war, like Platoon, Saving Private
>Ryan

Uh... You honestly think Platoon or Saving Private Ryan "glorif[y] war"?

Have you SEEN Saving Private Ryan? Have you actually WATCHED Platoon? There's nothing in either of those movies that glorifies war. They both attempt to portray war as the horrible nasty hellish nightmare that it is.

After the release of SPR, military recruiters all over America reported a drop in inquiries. This from a nation that was ALREADY largely apathetic about military service. This was almost exclusively in response to the opening D-Day scenes.

If you're looking for a movie that glorifies war, go find a copy of The Longest Day (B&W, please, none of that Turnerized colorized crap). Watch the Omaha Beach landing sequence. Compared to SPR's, it's about as violent as an episode of Seinfeld.

For a more modern movie (yet set in an older war...), go get Mel Gibson's "The Patriot".

Neither SPR nor Platoon try to be "feel good" movies. Neither is a chest-thumping rah rah "we kicked their sorry asses" movie.

Oh, and I can't let this one go...

>Look at crime rates in Europe, where guns are
>near impossible to get hold of

That kid in Germany sure seemed to have his share. I won't mention terrorist groups like the IRA, Red Brigade, ETA, 17 November, or any of a hundred splinter groups...

-l

Re:Does anyone else find it interesting...

[Loligo]

>Please, don't judge us poor Europeans by the
>behaviour of those of us who make the headlines
>across the pond.

And we Americans would appreciate the same courtesy.

-l

Re:Does anyone else find it interesting...

[vidarh]

Actually, the idea that 1984 promotes communism is not that strange. Orwell always belonged to the left, even to the extent of fighting for a Marxist group during the Spanish civil war. However he came out strongly opposed to Stalinism.

From "Spilling the Spanish Beans" (september 1937) "The logical end is a régime in which every opposition party and newspaper is suppressed and every dissentient of any importance is in jail. Of course, such a régime will be Fascism. It will not be the same Fascism Franco would impose, it will even be better than Franco's Fascism to the extent of being worth fighting for, but it will be Fascism. Only, being operated by Communists and Liberals, it will be called something different."

Orwell likens regimes like the USSR to a fascist regime with a different ideological mythology, run by people at least in name claiming to be communists.

1984 and Animal Farm are anti-fascist. They are also anti-USSR. But they are not anti-socialism, and only anti-communism to the extent that communist ideology and symbolism has been used (or abused, depending on your view) to legitimise a regime that for all intents and purposes share the traits of a fascist regime.

If anything, 1984 and also Animal Farm makes a strong point about societies divided by class, whether by default (the farmers in Animal Farm) or by a coup d'etat shrouded in symbolism drawn from socialist and communist ideology (the pigs in Animal Farm, or the ruling party in 1984).

This is really the core of why some people considers 1984 as a work promoting communism: It underscores Orwells position that class divide was bad regardless of what name was put on the regime it is found in. This is something even Marx argued

That is also what made many stalinists join the choir and complain about Orwell being anti-communist: He pointed out that class divide is class divide whether it is between the working class and the bourgeoisie or between the working class and a party claiming to work for the interests of the working class.

Socialism and "real" Marxist communism has at it's core the goal of abolishing the class divide, and with it the classes, and a major part of the stalinists hold on the left was that they pretended that what had happened in the USSR was somehow better than the class divide in capitalist countries.

Clearly the USSR and the stalinist "Communist" parties didn't do anything to get rid of the class divide, and Orwell was one of the extremely few well known socialists that had the guts to not only criticize the right but also criticize dangerous tendencies on the left.

To finish with another quote from Orwell himself: "Indeed, in my opinion, nothing has contributed so much to the corruption of the original idea of Socialism as the belief that Russia is a Socialist country. [...] And so for the past ten years I have been convinced that the destruction of the Soviet myth was essential if we wanted a revival of the Socialist movement." [CEJL vol. 3 p. 458]

(Note: The USSR claimed to be socialist, not communist, but with the goal of developing into a communist society)

Re:PG vs. 12 certificate

[jonathan_ingram]

We're not yet as lawsuit-crazed as in the US.

Re:PG vs. 12 certificate

[Ngwenya]

I guess they figure that young kids are not that likely to lop somebody in two with a light sabre, but they're pretty likely to stick the nut into some little kiddy's face.

I don't really have a problem with the BBFC's decision. The film makers are perfectly entitled to say "Fuck you, the headbutt stays". It's just that they have to accept a 12 certificate. Which means lower revenue (gee, a whole $20m less that $5b) in the UK.

Now we get to see whether artistic integrity will triumph over filthy lucre...

--Ng

Lucas - most violent director in history

[Animats]

Lucas was the first, in 1978, to blow up an inhabited planet on-screen. That was the most violent, genocidal mass murder in the history of motion pictures.

Few objected, because it wasn't "graphic violence".

Re:PG vs. 12 certificate

[Happy Monkey]

At least in my mind, the real issue not that the studio capitulated. If they had to, so be it. The problem is that there are people in charge who feel that a head butt is enough to prohibit parents from bringing their kids into a theater. I mean, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles head butted, and they were aimed at a younger audience than Star Wars.