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Why Fear the End of the R-Rated Superhero Movie?
brumgrunt writes "Last year, Marvel said that R-rated comic book superhero movies weren't in its future plans. Now, in the light of Watchmen's box office performance, Warner Bros is going the same way, meaning high-profile comic book superhero films will be restricted to the PG-13 rating at most. But is this a bad thing, and should we fear the end of the R-rated superhero movie?"
The graphic, lovingly photographed violence in Watchmen is what kept people away. Heck, it almost kept me away.
I'd love to take my 7 year old son to a superhero movie. He saw the Fantastic Four movies, they were pretty light. But even Iron Man was too adult.
That being said, the Dark Knight really should have been rated R. It was like watching Spinal Tap being forced to pay only at 10.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
We should not fear that Warner Bros is ending the R-rated movies. We should fear the fact that one single company has such massive influence that we even bother talking about this.
...lately, at least to me, is that they are elements of the fantastic that dovetail nicely into the hollywood version of 'the real world' that we live in. They are grittier, people are less 'cookie cutter/superficial bad guys.' In most of the non R rated superhero movies I've seen you could always walk away with the feeling that the main villain could have, at any moment, had a change of heart because he's not really evil - he's just made bad choices (lol.)
In the darker movies, the most definitely R rated movies, you can see struggle, ugliness, depravity, insanity (not the laughable kind), all things that give the villain and the unfolding events a sense of gravitas and immorality that you can't (imho) really get from a movie that HAS TO fit in some production company's ratings 'box.'
Personally, if there's a superhero movie where I'm not really interested in the super hero itself (for some reason), and it is R rated - there's a very good chance I'll go to see it because the director has obviously not pandered to the 13 year old boy market (although he may be pandering to me by throwing in R rated stuff.) If there's a superhero movie that I am interested in and then I find out that it is PG-13, it's unlikely that I'll see it. Perhaps on video.
Seriously, imagine if the Dark Knight movies were made PG-13? What a loss that would have been.
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Haven't had my morning coffee yet. Irony detector may not be functioning.
Batman Begins: PG-13
The Dark Knight: PG-13
Um, the Dark Knight was PG-13. That was part of the point of this article, had you read it ("look at the successful PG-13 comic movies!").
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/
Also part of the point was that damn, that was seriously rated PG-13 and not R?
-- What did Spock find in Kirk's toilet? The captain's log.
The only movie I saw in the last 12 months was Watchmen. Sure, Spider-man 6 might make a bigger profit, but if you concentrate only on getting the biggest possible slice of the Spider-man 6 demographic, you'll never get any money from people like me, and the industry as a whole will be poorer.
The music business already fell into this trap, churning out countless spice-girl clones in the hope of hitting the jackpot and ignoring the fact that even if they can find a girl-group that outsells the spice girls, there are a lot of potential customers who just don't like that genre.
If the big studios stop making $100m blockbuster R-rated movies, then a smart film company should start leveraging CGI to make $5-$10m ones to tap into that market.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I think the wwriter is failing to take something into account.
I'd heard of Batman all my life - never heard of watchmen until this movie. I suspect I'm not the only one.
For an accurate comparison, they should do an r-rated Batman.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Apparently Americans don't want full frontal nudity in their superhero movies.
The only thing that people fear is women's naked bodies and maybe some excess swearing. Those movies end up with an R rating. Of course V for Vendetta did get an R so there are still some levels of violence that will garner an R. Things like Dark Knight would have ended up with an R rating in the past. No longer. The boundaries of these things are constantly being pushed. A while back I had the ducts in my house cleaned and we found some old stashed gentlemens magazines. The average Redbook or Vanity Fair magazines have more nudity in them than these old porn magazines did. 10 years from now V for vendetta might also fall into the PG-13 category.
Yes, it won't be huge profit, but come on, for such violent and anti-mainstream experiment they got nice cash back. It is 165m (costed 120m), and it is only third week.
I love movie, I only would like to be it more itself not just a copy of living very good comic book. However, it would require to move sideways from original material.
Anyway, I think team who made it have proven their point. Kudos to them, all actors especially.
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Howabout Hollywood writes something original and new instead of rehashing old material over and over again? Put any rating on it you want.
I'm a 2000 man.
I'd love to live in a world where movies were made how best the story could be told and the ratings were figured out later... but it comes down to simple economics.
The R-rated version of a movie might be the better one, but reducing it to PG-13 is not going to cost as many people as it gains.
IOW. People who want Watchmen as PG and won't go to R > people who want it R and won't go to PG.
It's the same problem in the video game world. It's not that niche' games won't sell... it's that non-niche' games sell better.
Personally, I hope they DO lock the big comic book companies into PG-13 (I'd even like to see PG) ratings.
I've thought about this long and hard, but I cannot escape the conclusion that we're being terribly unfair to our kids by turning the stories WE loved as children (as did the generation before us) into fare for adults, just because we don't want to give our toys up to the younger generations.
Yes, the potential for great stories is immense given the formula of old comics + modern day grittiness + Hollywood production techniques, that's a given. I just can't bring myself to let my kids watch the Dark Knight though, it's too violent-in-mindset (worse than fake blood in my opinion). I -LOVED- the movie, but I cannot shake the feeling that we're robbing the next generation because we don't want to grow up, but we want grownup things.
I truly believe it's a disservice to the future and I hope we can correct it.
Honestly the frequency of R-ratings have gone up for all movies. I remember when there were countless great movies from the 1980s that were all rated PG. Now most comedies seem to be rated PG-13 and R. I don't personally have anything against R-rated movies being that I use "fuck" as a comma and have nothing against watching on-screen violence, but I'm wondering if the movie industry is hoping to move back to where it was 20 years ago. Hell, we say that they need to change how they do business, perhaps this is a step in that direction--something which they hope they will get back to a time when they feel that they were a little more successful?
Obviously they thought that their core demographic required that they have a movie rated R to attract viewers. Instead of flashy CGI they're moving to over-the-top language and T&A to cover the fact that the dialogue kinda fucking sucks. IMHO Iron Man, while rated PG-13, wouldn't have gained anything by becoming rated R.
Batman Begins (2005) - Rated PG-13 for intense action violence, disturbing images and some thematic elements.
The Dark Knight (2008) - Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and some menace.
Remember that scene where they bring Joker's "corpse" to Gambol, only Joker jumps up from the table alive and psychotic...?
What exactly does he do to Gambol?
How about those two guys that were standing right next to his "corpse"?
Did you ever actually see what happens there?
A good director can do wonders with PG-13.
Always remember that we never really see the actual stabbing in Psycho.
Why the R-Rating then? Phantom boobs, men dressed in women clothing and even toilets being flushed.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
it was Dr. Manhattan's package that those seven people were turned off by (my sister said it was like watching porn)
Ironic, since the blue willie is about as non-sexual as you can get without explicitly stating "this penis is not meant to be taken sexually". I'd even say it's pointedly non-sexual: he's transcended the human state, his body is really just a convenient shell, and he has pretty much started to lose sight of what the whole point of sex is (as the plot shows you).
Is Watchmen really a failure? I mean, for an R-rated comic book movie, it's doing pretty well in my opinion. But that's not really the subject of the article.
The problem with Watchmen is not the R rating, at least in my opinion. The problem is the changes made to the ending that really changed the tone of it, and thus changed the meaning of the ending.
Let's look at it this way. Watchmen is a source material about which people are passionate. It was a seminal piece of comic book art, a graphic novel before there were graphic novels, and as the first of a genre it has a rather devout following. I know, I read it on first release... and re-read it... and re-read it... and yes, I loved it. However, in the intervening years (decades? OMG... I'm old!) I have not touched the source material and as such somewhat grew away from it. I re-read it last year as an adult and although I still found it to be an incredible piece of art, I found that it didn't resonate with me the same way it did when I was 13 and 14 (when it was first released). I still loved it, but in the way you do an ex girlfriend with whom you had a "soft breakup" because you grew apart instead of a difficult one.
I went to see the movie, and was blown away. 90% of the movie was damned close to the comic book... closer than I would've expected from Hollywood... and it would've been impossible to get that close without an R rating. The original comic book should have had an R rating as well! The ending though, had a different meaning for me than the comic. I won't spoil it here, but it IS different. However, for me it did not fundamentally change the tone of the entire movie... and in fact I think the comic book ending would've been less accessible to a more general audience and probably would've looked somewhat ridiculous on screen.
OK, call me an heretic. I enjoyed both of them but for different reasons. But the R rating is not the reason for the lackluster box office!
Here's my theory; the box office taking are low because of two things; (1) The Watchmen is a comic book that appealed to a niche, and (2) that niche is typically the very technically savvy.
OK, let's expand on that a little:
(1) Watchmen didn't appeal to a wider audience because it had a lot less exposure. Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Iron Man... all highly identifiable characters with a long history in print. All of them are part of the common consciousness that we have in the Western world, and all are characters we can visualize easily. Rorschach, Nite Owl, Doc Manhattan... who? These were all characters created for Watchmen because Alan Moore wasn't given the go-ahead to use the characters he wanted to... those with an history.
The upshot of this is that we have characters that only a small subsection of our society identifies with because they never really got into the social consciousness the way the more "iconic" characters did. This means that Hollywood produces a Watchmen movie, and the characters are new to the average viewer... and the average viewer doesn't want new; they want more of the same.
There's also this idea in the public consciousness that superhero's are always good, always doing the right thing. Watchmen's moral ambiguity on the part of ALL of the characters means that the average viewer won't identify their icons within the context of the movie, and thus won't connect with them. They're looking for simple... black and white. Watchmen is full of shades of grey.
(2) Because the subset of society is mostly tech-savvy, it means that they are going to read reviews of the movie before they go see it, usually written on websites by people with similar tastes... the blind leading the blind in a sense. This leads to one or two slightly negative reviews driving away the very core audience that was most likely to see it.
I refer in part to Massawyrm's review of Watchmen on Aint It Cool News (for which I can't find a direct link right now, sorry!) in which he slammed the movie
it was Dr. Manhattan's package that those seven people were turned off by (my sister said it was like watching porn)
If your sister likened the Doctor's blue dong to porn, she is into some freaky shit.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Just like the graphic novel, the point is not the plot. As the creators have said, the plot is just an excuse for a number of character studies.
Infinite time means everything that can happen, will. You being you is absolutely incidental. You do not exist.
I'm looking forward to NC-17 rated superhero movies instead.
"Bigger, Bluer, and Uncut!"
Your name is apt. You are an idiot.
You get roughly eleven seconds of Dr Manhattan manhood in the entire thing. The problem you have is that you instantly go "It's a dick! FIXATE FIXATE FIXATE..." Exactly the same as my girlfriend did.
The same thing appears in the comic book. That's why it's there. It shows his lack of regard for human ideals; The human body is not to be ashamed of, or revulsed, surprised, or shocked by. I have one. You have one. Your dad has one. Get over it.
The plot was lost because the story takes a HELL of a lot longer than 2.75 hours to read. It's the way comics work. You get time to stop, consider the implications, imagine the scene, then move on. You didn't get that in the movie. It was still a reasonable good movie, though, and true to the comic.
If the only thing you brought back from that movie was "OMG LULZ I SOR A PEENAR!!1122" then you need to grow up a little.
Yeah yeah, off-topic. It needed to be said.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
... you've been playing too much Grand Theft Auto, and he hasn't.
I also like sci-fi, and unfortunately these superhero moves seem to be the nearest we get to scifi a lot of the time these days.
So keep em bloody and full of sex, then us adults that don't care for the saw franchise or chick-flicks have something to wath that isn't constantly thinking of the children.
Screw the children.
(not literally, please).
...is not the age rating, its the dichotomy of trying to produce a movie with "arthouse" audience appeal with special effects that dictate a popcorn blockbuster budget.
I'm sure Watchmen could have been made PG-13 by cutting a few minutes. Giving Dr Manhatten a thong might lose a minor point about his diminishing humanity, but its hardly going to ruin the movie; and it should be possible to establish that Rorschach was Not a Nice Person without employing an angle grinder.
However... would that have stopped 13-year olds (who might not "get" the politics, psychology or the artistic application of comic-book visual styles to cinematography) from being absolutely bored to tears after an hour and a half? Doubt it.
Ironically, when I watched it, the cinema was plugging their latest wheeze: by popular demand, over-18s-only screenings of PG/12A movies. So, obviously no market for 18-and-over-films.
Of course, this is in the UK where Watchmen was certificate 18, and most cinemas do at least try not to let in anybody holding a teddy bear; There's also a 15 cert which gets used for things like Serenity, V for Vendetta and the DVDs of the new BSG. "Watchman" could almost certainly have been trimmed down to a 15.
Sounds like the US could do with something between PG-13 and R (spurious precision, of course, but this is a political game, not a practical one).
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Heck, I agree with you: Watchmen is not suitable for an 11 yo. There is too much gratuitous violence (some of it from the HQ, some from the director), people being blown up to pieces, sexual violence, children being beat (and beating other children),murders, realistic sex scenes, complex themes that most 11 yo won't understand.
But it has nothing to do with Dr. Manhattan's penis. It appears because he doesn't care about clothes, not because he is about to have quantum sex with anyone. It is as sexual, in the context of the movie, as his arm or leg - he walks around naked just as a child would. I doubt any children would care about the penis - it's the fucked-up adults that instantly associate it with sexual perversion. Get over it, 50% of the human population have penises.
Besides, it is not even big. Heck, what size are yours to be so obsessed with his?
Where is that guy who'd die defending what I had to say when I need him?
Additioanlly most of us have/will have sex,...
Remember, this is Slashdot...
Yeah, I almost feel bad even going for such low-hanging fruit.
My grandmother used anecdotal evidence all the time, and she lived to be 120 years old.
Watchmen was the first superhero movie I've voluntarily watched since "Mystery Men" (which was pretty funny). I despise most comic book movies (unlike Watchmen, their source materials don't DESERVE to be called "graphic novels"). They're cookie-cutter, predictable, trite pieces of FX-driven shit. I had a girlfriend who forced me to watch the first Toby Macquire "Spiderman" movie and it made me almost physically ill. God, poor Willem Defoe and the indignities he had to endure in that turd (I think he actually shakes his fist in the air at one point and yells "I'll get you Spiderman!"). Sure, that kind of candy crap is fine for kids (and those with the maturity of kids), but I'm an ADULT. Watchmen was the first superhero movie in a long time that was actually geared toward me, and not just my 13-year-old nephew (who rates the quality of movies based solely on how many cool FX shots they contain and honestly doesn't see the "bad guy vanquished/good guy wins" ending of every Batman/Superman/X-men/Shitman movie coming long before the first frame even clicks).
The fact that so many supposed adults, when asked about the quality of Watchmen, responded with "OMG, they dared show a penis!!" shows how brain-dead and immature the average moviegoer really is. But for those of us who've matured beyond the mental age of a 14-year-old schoolgirl giggling at a Jonas Brothers video, it was a amazing anomaly--the first, and sadly probably last, adult superhero film.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
What makes Dr. Lecter the second last villain? That word doesn't mean what you think it means.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Comic book films for the most part have been terrible. I dont care about their ratings, I care about their content! That is where they suffer.
Films should not be made to fit a certain rating. A rating should be assigned based on the content within the film. That content should be the artist's vision.
Looking purely at the numbers, by the third week the worldwide box office receipts are $148,909,463. The production cost was around $130,000,000. Factor in publicity and a few non-production costs and they are probably around break even right now. Anything they earn from here on out is profit.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
We get it, we get it, you really liked Dr. Manhattan.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
As in it was a work of art - not a commercial for toys.
I thought it was perfect. Everything about it was gritty and sublime. Super heroes, super problems. An alternate timeline where superheroes destroy the VC in vietnam and with as much ignorance and lack of humanity as was present in our own timeline? Then as a result Nixon is hailed and re-elected 3 times? Wonderful social commentary on what could have been.
Watchmen was about a real scenario where people have super-powers, all the ignorance and corruption and pettiness mixed up with noble intentions, fear driven obsessions and moral paranoia which would affect our society if this was the norm.
You want a story that matches up with this and is kid safe? Watch The Incredibles. It has a similar timeline but leaves out all the confusing parts. Want something more adult but still sanitized.. watch that Will Smith movie (at least he's a drunk).
The Watchmen did very well in it's opening weekend when all the fans went out to see it. No it did not appeal to the masses... did it have to? There are a lot of films that don't convert into blockbusters but are considered to be incredible works that stand on their own merit (rather than how much money they bring in).
Pop culture can have it's heroes, just let those of us who aren't afraid to experience a different reality have a few of our own.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
This was a 3 hour movie! You're telling me by making it kid friendly, it's going to do even better? Kids don't have that kind of attention span, I don't have that kind of attention span. If you're going to make a 3 hour movie you may as well make it adult to keep my interest.
Just because this is Slashdot doesn't mean we don't have sex.
Nobody specified it had to be with someone else.
You are welcome on my lawn.
my sister said it was like watching porn
Your sister watches Smurf porn ?!?!
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Most comics and graphic novel enthusiasts have known for years that not all comics are for kids. Some are, and those are fine to be made into the PG movies you desperately want to take your kids to. Some are most certainly not, and Watchmen is one of those comics. There was no way to do the series credit with a rating of less than "R" because the series deals with some dirty, not-at-all family-friendly subjects. Any informed source could have told you this before you showed up, and you would have known what to expect. This is another example of using a 3rd party to fill in for parental responsibilities. Take the effort to know what you are going to see before you go, and explain to your kid why you can't go if you can't go. If I see a PG adaptation of "The Sandman" before I die, you will see a grown man weep.
"Hey, don't knock masturbation, it's sex with someone I love"
I am not a crackpot.
I don't like low hanging fruit, I prefer nice ripe pert ones ...
You're very right about that. Last semester, I did a content analysis of the top ranked G, PG, PG-13, R and X/NC-17-rated films from before and after the institution of the PG-13 rating (1984). The results were pretty conclusive that the MPAA's ratings body will turn a blind eye to violence but regulate the living hell out of sex.
The Dark Knight had 104 instances of violence and was rated PG-13. But, there was no profanity and no sex. Eyes Wide Shut (the uncut version), had no violence whatsoever, but there were 13 instances of sex and some profanity. It was rated NC-17.
The really funny part about this is that the MPAA still insists that the ratings group treats sex and violence the same.
This sig is false.
Watchmen could have easily toned down the sex and violence. I mean seriously, we get the point, they're having sex. We don't need the scene to go on for a minute and a half (although the fire jet as apparent orgasm symbol was funny). Similarly, we didn't need the length of violence in which the Comedian is killed. It was more detailed and longer than the comic. The sex and violence could have been reduced and then we could have had the plot from the book, i.e. giant squid not crap that doesn't make sense duplicating Dr. Manhattan's power. In this case, if they had tried to make a PG-13 movie it would have been better.
Well, there's no more R-rated superhero movies. But keep in mind that the Dark Knight, which has lots of sadistic violence, somehow got a PG-13. Violence which would have earned an "R" even 5 years ago is now PG-13 material. On the other hand, PG movies from the 70's and 80's featured brief nudity, which would earn an automatic "R" today.
Ratings change, there's no doubt about it. I'm not sure if this change was for the best, however...
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Yea, why not make it a saturday morning cartoon.
Surely none of the artistic meaning would be lost...
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Americans, Brits and the French massively overemphasize the west front in WWII, and tend to ignore the East Front. A more fair assessment is that the Soviet Union defeated Germany, with significant logistical and material support from the USA (the most important of which was trucks and food, IIRC). Germany was already losing against the Soviets by the time of the Normandy invasions.
Are you adequate?
I always hate the "X army did more than Y army" debate of WWII.
There was one overriding thing that dictated the outcome of WWII.
America's manufacturing centers were basically untouchable.
In the end, we simply made material faster than it could be destroyed.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.