The Problem with PG 13 Violence | R-Rated Violence in Movies is Back in a Big Way | Flick Connection

Violent Action Movies are back in a big way thanks to a relatively small group of filmmakers. Extremely violent action movies were big in the 80s and early 90s but have be long absent from the theaters largely because studios could make more money with a PG-13 release than with R Rated movies. Over time, these movies have become stale, boring and predictable. The spectacle of blood splattering across the screen has been absent from big budget action movies for a long time. Thanks to the success of movies like John Wick and Deadpool, however, violence in movies is back in big way! Deadpool is not only the highest grossing R Rated Action Movie of all-time, it’s also the highest grossing X-men movie of all time which is a big deal. We have 17 years of PG-13 X-men movies and most of them were big box office successes. Deadpool made more money than all of them and not just because it was a good movie, but because it was different.
Violence in action movies isn’t new, in fact it was huge in the 80s with movies like Predator, Aliens, Robocop and Die Hard. These are all huge movies that made a ton of cash and that spawned huge franchises. Movie franchises that eventually turned into boring PG-13 flicks that didn’t make as much doe as their R Rated prequels.
Violence in movies is done one of two ways. It can be realistic, which often earns a film a R Rating or it can be censored meaning little to no blood or gore which usually results in a PG-13 rating. Since the creation of the PG13 rating in 1984, studios have felt they could make more money with a violent movie if the rating allowed a large pool of people to see it and they were right, for a really long time. As time carried on, the R Rated Action Movie disappeared. The nail in the coffin was really Watchmen which had a huge budget and flopped at the box office. This essentially confirmed the studios suspicions that you just can’t fill enough seats with a movie like this if people under 17 can’t buy their own ticket.
Those days might be over though, thanks to Deadpool we got a R Rated Wolverine movie that out performed it’s PG-13 predecessors and there are a host of projects currently in production that fit the same bill, including a new Predator movie by director Shane Black who isn’t only famous for his adult humor, he’s actually the guy in the original Predator movie with all the Pussy Jokes. Yeah, really, that’s him!

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