Geeks + Gamers › Forums › Entertainment › Movies › did #metoo and cancel culture kill the Rated R movie?
I asked this on another forum I’m on. When I mean Rated R, I’m talking about every genre in the Rated R section.
Maybe in the sense everything is now rated MA. The woke seem to love to watch violence, gore and debauchery. Sure, that stuff belongs sometimes but not every damn thing needs to be dark and or full of violence, sex, bad language.
I think it’s more to do with so many films having crazy high budgets these days. These films have to make like over $500 million at the box office just to break even, so everything is toned down to a PG-13 to appeal to the widest global audience possible. Increased reliance on international box-office has resulted in a homogenization of most studio films and is a large part of why there are so few new franchises, as the old familiar stuff keeps getting recycled to death in watered down versions.
The strange thing is television is now awash is sex, violence and profanity, while movies are usually sanitized. It used to be the exact opposite.
I’ve seen some really bad movies. Ones that I regret seeing. If this is the case, it might be the one thing that movement got right.
Some comic book films (and films in general) are rated a 15 in the UK despite their PG-13 rating in the US. ‘Suicide Squad’ and ‘Venom’ are two examples that I can think of. I can also remember that there were calls to get ‘The Dark Knight’ shifted to a 15 in the UK because of the violence back in 2008. So no, the R/15 rating isn’t dead here.
Also, this just cropped up:
https://uk.movies.yahoo.com/suicide-squad-viewers-shocked-violent-104030898.html
I’m laughing at the whimp that wrote this; they most certainly not’ve survived watching the original ‘Blade’ films if they think that the new Suicide Squad film was “too gory” (no I’ve not seen it but I think I’m tempted to now). We really have been dumbed down. 12a’s/PG-13’s would’ve been considered teen films when I was growing up. Not the family friendly nonsense that we get now. Same with the R/15 rating. An 18 rating was considered and adult film.
I think you can understand the majority of idiocy and lack of creativity because of one thing: they are trying to make as much money as possible. Their goal is not art. So they are going to get rid of R-rated movies because it excludes a huge portion of the population that could be giving them some more cheddar. I am all for creative industries making money, don’t get me wrong. But if you want to make something really good, you’ve got to have some integrity and be willing to take risks. As far as I can see, almost all creative industries are too concerned with market research than something with soul. But the good thing about all that is it just takes people willing to creative something good and develop an audience. I think that in the next couple decades, we are going to see a huge shift toward smaller films that are much more interesting and impactful than the blockbuster.