themovielord's Blog

It depends on the movie and the theater, really.

I used to do exit polls - hand out surveys at the start of films and collect them at the end, to see how people like movies on opening night. Many of the theaters in the Chicago area actually DID have an employee checking tickets at the actual doors to the specific films. While this was often as much to keep ticket sales accurate and to not oversell for a certain theater (fire codes - they could get in big trouble for having too many people in one room) and it also stopped "theater hopping" (buying 1 ticket at a multiplex, going to multiple movies that day) this also, effectively, kept people who couldn't purchase the R rated ticket from getting in to see the R rated film. Sure, after the movie started and the employee moved on to another duty people could sneak in, but what is the alternative? Do you really want a person with a flashlight checking tickets DURING the film? Sometimes you had to keep your ticket on you, cause they did occasionally do spot checks of people walking back into theaters.

Granted, now that I'm back in Wisconsin, the theaters are so understaffed you can buy whatever ticket and see all the movies you can in one day no problem, but its a much smaller population area. I'm sure lots of theaters in New York City and certain cities in California were similar to what I saw in many theaters in Chicago.

Long story short - many theaters DO check. In fact I've seen articles about theaters that refuse to show R rated films. So the ratings DO serve a purpose.

There are also parents who do NOT drop off their kids at the theater, trusting them to "do the right thing." They either go with their kids to the movies (yes, even teen-agers) or don't let their kids go to theaters at all, only DVD rentals (of which the parents are there and approving or disapproving of the rentals.)

I see no problem with ratings at all. It lets uptight people "protect" their "precious" children from "disgusting" content. I'd rather have films rated and those parents being all overprotective than have films NOT rated and deal with more boycotts, petitions, law suits, and attempts at "moral" censorship.

Summer blockbusters CAN get R ratings. Matrix movies, anyone? And kids WILL want to see them. If the films AREN'T rated and all you have to go on are advertisements that are safe enough to be shown on television, what parent of a ten year-old would think twice about sending their son off to see the Matrix? Some anti-violence parents, sure, but that's about it.
Or high-school sex comedies? Those are often rated R, but if we just didn't rate them, of course teen-agers will want to see them. And how can the parents know the level of content?

Let me turn the question back around to you, themovielord. Think of it this way - WITHOUT the PG-13 rating that those "family friendly" films are trying to keep their films at, would all those films remain at the content level to get a PG-13? I'd argue NO, and hence why we have the ratings.

I am all for the rating system. I just think it's foolish to put: "this film is not yet rated" (before it is rated) on a film that is clearly made and marketed for a PG-13 Audience.

There are films that fall into that gray area and need to be rated. Andy Samdberg's new movie "Hot Rod" instantly comes to mind. Rated R or rated PG-13? It's unclear to me what kind of humor this film is going for. It looks like Jackass meets a plot with a long SNL skit mixed in there.

The rating system works, again I am for it. I just think its relevance doesn't matter to most people.

As for checking identification at the theater. I too Merin have seen people checking tickets, but that was in Century City (CA) and opening weekend for Gladiator... out here on the East coast it's easy to hop from one movie to the next.

Keep the discussion going...

The theater in my town that I go to I find only checks for tickets when they are HUGE films. Examples would be recently Spidey 3. They do this to make sure people aren't theater hopping to go see the bigger movie. Also, as Merin had pointed out, fire safety hazards.

Personally, although I agree with the ratings system, I do not like how it's ran in this country. Yes we know those movies are going to be PG-13, but it's still best to wait. An example would be Star Wars: Episode 3. Every Star Wars film before it was rated PG. Most of us figured this one would be too. And then we found out that it was getting the jump up to PG-13 because of the Anakin burned alive material. Is this a huge step when comparing PG-13 to R? No, it's a lesser development. Still, we may know most likely what these are going to be, but every once in a while it might surprise us. Even when it comes to the big names.

Resident Evil is another example. One of the reasons George Romero was fired from the film was because he wanted to make his unrated version then have it cut down to an R for the theater. Releasing his director's cut on VHS or DVD. The studio wanted a PG-13 movie with higher marketability. Somewhere in between they were convinced by Paul W. (I suck the sweat off a donkey's testicles) S. Anderson that this movie should be R instead of PG-13. Although fans of the games and zombie movies to begin with knew that for it to be good it was going to have to R, but the studio for a while didn't want that.

When I found out that movie was gonna be R I was pissed because they could have kept Romero and we would have gotten a far superior movie.

Yes we know that these movies are gonna be PG-13 because the studios are trying to build them as such. But we still need the slogan dictating that prior to the MPAA finally seeing the movie. The MPAA is poorly run in my opinion, but at least we have something instead of nothing. I just wish their system were better.

Is it necessary? Yes. We should have the 'this film has not yet been rated' for the simple reason that sometimes we can be surprised by a change to a rating. PG turns into PG-13 and PG-13 turns into an R. It does happen, even with the mega ones (just far less).

Here's a better reason. These days under the rating there are reasons for the rating. I prefer that to just arbitrarily sticking a logo on a movie. Not all PG-13 movies are built alike and neither are R rated ones. I would be far more inclined to let a nine or ten year old watch Predator instead of Natural Born Killers. They are both rated R, but one is alien violence and the other is graphically realistic. Just because we know the movie is going to be rated something doesn't mean that the reasons are going to be the same.

My father let me watch some of the most gruesome horror movies out there while I was growing up, yet some movies I wasn't allowed to see until I got to be fifteen or sixteen. It wasn't the rating so much as it was the content. Horror/Sci-Fi/Fantasy these are things that even a child can tend to understand are not real. I watched Evil Dead 2 at about the age of ten and knew it was fake blood. Knew none of it was real. Could I have said the same thing about Reservoir Dogs?

So, yes, simply because of the content information now put with the logo I do believe it's important to place the 'This Film has not yet been rated' statement on there.

A.