Ross here.
And we have a rating for Terminator Salvation and it’s a bit of a frustrating one to announce.
After the break is a copy of a picture from the Slashfilm article confirming this news, and I’ll tell you my honest opinion of the PG-13 rating. A Terminator film being rated PG-13 and just why I think it ended up being rated PG-13.
PG-13 is an interesting rating in that you can in certain cases get away with Nudity and rather grisly violence. Of course now-a-days you can behead people in a PG movie but we won’t get into that right now. Just in the past year we’ve had two really gritty PG-13 films one of them being TDK and the other being Quantum of Solace. Most people don’t think of QoS being particularly gritty or violent but Bond gets in a knife fight and kills Mr. Slate with a slice across the Jugular with some pretty copious blood…and later the villian Mr. Greene gets an Axe through the foot. And well we all know just how pushing the edge and dark TDK was.
That is how I expect Terminator Salvation to be. It’s going to borderline in violence, and themes and just because it’s PG-13 don’t count the much talked about Moon Bloodgood scene to disappear. I looked it up and such a scene falls comfortably within PG-13 guidelines. The fact of the matter is that MCG has compared this film to Children of Men, a very bleak look at the future and just because WB got gun shy on R-Rated tentpoles doesn’t mean that that all that much can really be changed. I still expect a chilling, shocking, spit drying film that tells an excellent story.
McG has always consistently said he was shooting and fighting for an R-rating and I’m not going to doubt him on that. In fact, when Salvation comes to DVD I’ll be getting his Unrated cut of the film. It’s not his fault that Salvation lost it’s R-rating not in the slightest. Warner Brothers said after Watchmen’s lackluster performance there would be no more R rated tentpoles, and unfortunately the axe comes down on Salvation first.
Personally to me it’s not the rating that really matters.
It’s the film that matters.The story that’s told and how it is portrayed and unfolds is what matters. Hyper violence and bad language rarely make a film better, but a script that is solid. Worked upon by such names as Shawn Ryan, Paul Haggis, and extensively rewritten by Jonathan Nolan is what matters. Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Michael Ironside, Anton Yelchin and Helena Bonham Carter giving there all, that’s what matters. Danny Elfman’s music that’s what matters. And McG’s breakout direction that seems to be on display in the trailers, that’s ultimately what matters.
Welcome to the Future War, I’m sure we’ll enjoy our stay.
Ross Out.
*standing ovation*
Bravo. Well spoken, and equally written.
I’ve watched R rated movies where its so stuffed with senseless blood, gore, nudity and gratuitous sex scenes it made me wonder what the frakin point of the movie was to begin with; utterly losing its story to the overly abundant candy that R rating offers.
I’ve seen and enjoyed PG13 and even PG rated movies. National Treasure with Nicholas Cage was produced by Walt Disney and the story was top notch, and thus made for a quality movie enjoyable and worth watching. It didn’t have any blood or gore, or adult sexuality.
And to that you make an excellent point – with a PG13 rating, there’s still going to be blood and violence, some gore and plenty of grit. All of which will be useless if the story isn’t there and the directing is sub par. PG13 movies can still have plenty of mature content too. Yes, that’s right, plenty of PG13 ‘teenager’ movies still had sex scenes in them, it just scaled back how much skin was shown. Little to no bare female chest, little to no bare skin down to the waist, and nothing shown below the waist, especially the bump and grind motion with bare thighs.
I’m with you Ross, I’m looking forward to a quality movie, regardless of rating.
I’m sick of the constant neutering of R rated franchises to make a profit.
Terminator is R. Should be R.
It is meant for adults and not kids, tweens, or teens.
True, all that matters is how well the movie was made but it’s very likely that either there were some serious cuts made to get that PG-13 rating or the movie was made with PG-13 in mind.
Either way, what you end up with is a neutered movie that will lack any sort of real impact and will leave you wondering what they really wanted to do but were forced to hold back in order to get the (probably) studio mandated rating.
I’m sure it’s possible that this could be a good movie even with all the stuff they had to remove but my bet is that it’s going to join the unforntunately growing ranks of R rated franchises that went PG-13 and faded out of existence.
This is just a general Reply to all who are concerned about the rating, I’m concerned about it to. But having seen the fiull rating block and description it seems the only thing we’ll be missing is Nudity.
For Intense Sequences of Sci Fi Violence, Action and Language. (To be exact).
Basically what this tells me is Violence, Action and language that is intense is Just fine….but Nudity not so much. Except that nudity is allowed in PG-13 movies as well.
Anyhow thanks for checking out my blog.
Cheers.
Who in there right mind would want to see a watered down heavily edited version of this movie? I completely lost interest after finding out its rating. There is just so much intense brutal violence you can get with a kid friendly PG-13 rating. This movie will be your usual boring run of the mill explosion fest. Also if a pair of tits was the only thing that would’ve given it an R rating, it wasn’t going to be as brutally violent as we all hoped. What a shame. I will not be wasting my money on this garbage. And this is coming from a huge Terminator fan.
Do you have a time machine? And if so may I borrow it? I ask because apparently not only were you on the set during filming and you saw heaps of violence that now won’t be present in the finished version because it’s been watered down. Or you have traveled forward in time and already seen the film. Both are things I would REALLY love to do given the chance. If you have done neither of these things than you are making assumptions of its quality based on being upset that it was not rated R like the rest of the series. Sound like I need to write my follow up piece already and take a look at just how much R-Rated violence was in these films in the first place. I think you’d be surprised, And this is coming from a huge Terminator fan.