Face it, you have always wanted to go to that new horror flick that all your friends want to see, but the downside was that it was rated R. Sadly, you are not allowed to watch that movie unless your parents want to take time out of their day, go all the way to the theater and buy your ticket, because you are not 17.
Movies usually have one of four ratings. They are rated G for general audience, PG for parental guidance suggested, PG-13 for parents strongly cautioned, and R for restricted.
Great movies, like “Silver Linings Playbook” or “Saving Private Ryan,” and just pure amazing movies such as “Die Hard” are often overlooked just because they are rated R. Why did they get those ratings? They are rated R for language and violence.
Movies should not be rated R for language. Swear words are used so often these days that they have pretty much lost their meaning. I am not saying little kids should be saying these words but that does not mean “The Breakfast Club” should be rated R because Bender’s most memorable quote has an F-word in it.
Since you have to be 17 to see an R movie, directors will sometimes cut back the action so they can get a PG-13 rating. If it is PG-13, more people can see it. But by doing this, movies get ruined. “The Hunger Games” is a perfect example. With all the gore that was in that book, the director could have made it a rated R movie, but since the target audience is teens, they could not make it rated R. If the director had, he would probably be missing out on his giant paycheck after it grossed almost $408 million.
I think the R rating either needs to drop down, or the PG-13 rating needs to be jacked up, way up.
According to www.howstuffworks.com, the people who rate these movies are actually located in Los Angeles, California. A rating board consists of 13 full time members who discuss as a group the rating the film should get.
The main problem I have with movies being rated R is that people will find a way to get in anyway. I remember when “A Nightmare on Elm Street” was released but was rated R for the language and little gore it had. When I saw that there were almost 50 or so of my classmates that had gone, I had to ask how they got in. Let’s just say that “The Last Song” was sold out, and nobody was in that theater.
A movie that has no nudity what-so-ever, but is rated R because of its language, seems completely stupid. Students are finding ways to sneak in anyway, so why let them commit criminal behavior just because they want to see a decent flick?
Movie ratings need to be lowered so more people can enjoy decent films. Parents have a right to be concerned what their kids are watching, but it is a little ridiculous that people have to worry about a film’s rating when they should be able to see anything they want.