Alright, another new entry. Like, four in five days. And, finally, more to my PG-13 rant. For my new friends and the old ones that missed it, here's the first half.
Man, I'm tired. It's been a long weekend without naps.
The year after PG-13 came into existance, not much changed... but the signs were already there. The MPAA had never been known for consistant rulings and PG-13 gave them a dumping ground. In 1985, there were 2 PG-13 movies in the top grossing films of the year. Cocoon, which was somehow more violent or sex laden than the PG rated Rocky IV or Jewel of the Nile; and, of course, the Spielberg directed The Color Purple.
86 was a banner year for the 'R' rating, with Platoon and Aliens, both well over the line in terms of violence. Oddly, the top grossing movie of the year was the only PG rated Top Gun (also recently featured on the ABC family channel, what with it's premarital sex, violent revenge, arrogent asshole main characters and homo eroticism); 5 others where PG-13, including the fairly tame Croc Dundee, and Ferris Bueller.
In the end of the 80s, the 'R' was still left for pure action movies (classics such as Die Hard, Beverly Hills Cops, and Lethal Weapon. 1989 was the change. Only one 'R' rated movie made it into the top ten and it was a sequel (Lethal Weapon 2). Everything else was PG or PG-13 (well, Little Mermaid excluded), including... you guessed it... a Spielberg directed film... wait for it... Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
The last in the series which spawned the whole thing in the first place.
So, lets talk a little about the first half of the 90s. There is a dramatic shift in the late 90s, which makes it seem almost like a different decade, but well get to that in a minute. In the early 90s, Hollywood started feeling its oats with PG-13. They realized they could tap a larger market, with kids, and, unfortunately, kids will go see just about anything.
While some very classic or at least exciting R movies came out in the early 90s (Total Recall, Die Hard 2, Basic Instinct, Few Good Men, Speed, True Lies, Pulp Fiction and Se7en), the PG-13 fare was limited to semi-vacuous yawners, usually wrapped around expensive licensed properties or star power (Kindergarten Cop, Dick Tracy, Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, Batman Returns, and The Bodyguard).
In my personal opinion, only two decent PG-13 action films came out in those 5 years and they were The Fugitive and (say it with me) the Spielberg directed Jurassic Park.
As a side note, Jurassic Park scared the crap out of me and most of the audience on the opening night I saw it. Spielberg, in his genius, didnt use music during some of the most intense scenes (such as the first Tyrannosaur attack). It has people being eaten, limbs, and horrible noises of men being shredded. Even with a rating he created, he still was (and is) determined see what he can get away with.
So, something happened in 1996 and that was Independence Day. Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin were masters of making crappy movies wrapped around awesome ad campaigns. Both it and the second grossing film of the year, Twister, featured massive special effects, with little story, wrapped around mostly B level, less paid actors (yes, Will Smith excluded). Both featured tons of violence wrapped around impossible physics, not seeing dead bodies, and for gods sake, no blood please. While the R rated The Rock cracked the top ten (with many of the same features of the other two), any sort of memorable action sequences were going to become the exception, not the rule.
In the late 90s, PG-13 entrenched itself as the rating movie makers use to try and get some quick bucks, forgoing any memorable content, featuring empty special effects and violence without real consequence.
The year featured the highest grossing movie of all time, Titanic (why it's cool). The next two highest grossing movies of the year were Men in Black and The Lost World. The only R rated action movie to crack the top 10 was Face/Off, which can also be called The Last Time John Woo Didnt Suck. Later, Ill cover why a sub-category of How PG-13 Killed Action Movies, is How PG-13 Made John Woo a Shitty Director.
Armageddon, and the last Emmerich/Devlin shit pile called Godzilla (in which they publicly confessed all they wanted to do was set a opening weekend record for grosses), filled out the decade. Out of the 5 years that concluded the Millennium (yes, Im counting 2000), we got Rush Hour, The Mummy, and X-Men.
Further dragging things down, a horror director figured out how to make a PG-13 rated horror movie; which meant no real violence, no real danger to the main characters, and everything wrapped up at the end. That was Sixth Sense.
A once amazing action director did or was forced to, appeal to a mass audience by removing the exciting, visceral action sequences that were good enough for the largest populated country in the world, but not for us. That was Mission Impossible II and the director was John Woo.
If you can, try to remember a scene in that movie where a bad guy jeep ran into traffic and was hit by a semi. It exploded into flames, and, in true A-Team fashion (a TV show in the 80s that featured incredible car crashes about a team of hired mercenaries, where somehow no one ever died... it was like the scene in The Hulk where he threw the tanks and the guys crawled out to show you they were okay). The old John Woo would have pulled two stunt men out of the exploding windows with wires and showed their flaming bodies writhing on the ground until Ethan Hunt ran over them with his motorcycle.
And, look at that. The best two action movies of those years... maybe even of the whole decade... Matrix and Gladiator. Both rated R.
As my final note, another movie came out in 2000. Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. Rated 'R', Ryan opens with a war scene so horrific at the time, I saw grown men cry in the theater and G*d curse the parents who brought the 9 or 10 year old girl sitting a couple seats down from me.
I am convinced, absolutely, that only Steven Spielberg could have gotten that movie an 'R' rating. Again, by using careful camera angles, no music during the combat scenes and quick humor after horror (remember when the Jewish guy got hideously, slowly, stabbed to death by the German? Seconds later, outside, the Sgt.'s gun jammed and he and a German officer shot, then threw their guns at each other... that scene got the biggest laugh all of times I saw it in the theater). Any other director and that movie's rated NC-17.
Though, as a final jab to the MPAA, they really only use that rating for showing penises or two girls kissing on screen.
Next entry: why it matters. To me, anyway.
Man, I'm tired. It's been a long weekend without naps.
The year after PG-13 came into existance, not much changed... but the signs were already there. The MPAA had never been known for consistant rulings and PG-13 gave them a dumping ground. In 1985, there were 2 PG-13 movies in the top grossing films of the year. Cocoon, which was somehow more violent or sex laden than the PG rated Rocky IV or Jewel of the Nile; and, of course, the Spielberg directed The Color Purple.
86 was a banner year for the 'R' rating, with Platoon and Aliens, both well over the line in terms of violence. Oddly, the top grossing movie of the year was the only PG rated Top Gun (also recently featured on the ABC family channel, what with it's premarital sex, violent revenge, arrogent asshole main characters and homo eroticism); 5 others where PG-13, including the fairly tame Croc Dundee, and Ferris Bueller.
In the end of the 80s, the 'R' was still left for pure action movies (classics such as Die Hard, Beverly Hills Cops, and Lethal Weapon. 1989 was the change. Only one 'R' rated movie made it into the top ten and it was a sequel (Lethal Weapon 2). Everything else was PG or PG-13 (well, Little Mermaid excluded), including... you guessed it... a Spielberg directed film... wait for it... Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
The last in the series which spawned the whole thing in the first place.
So, lets talk a little about the first half of the 90s. There is a dramatic shift in the late 90s, which makes it seem almost like a different decade, but well get to that in a minute. In the early 90s, Hollywood started feeling its oats with PG-13. They realized they could tap a larger market, with kids, and, unfortunately, kids will go see just about anything.
While some very classic or at least exciting R movies came out in the early 90s (Total Recall, Die Hard 2, Basic Instinct, Few Good Men, Speed, True Lies, Pulp Fiction and Se7en), the PG-13 fare was limited to semi-vacuous yawners, usually wrapped around expensive licensed properties or star power (Kindergarten Cop, Dick Tracy, Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, Batman Returns, and The Bodyguard).
In my personal opinion, only two decent PG-13 action films came out in those 5 years and they were The Fugitive and (say it with me) the Spielberg directed Jurassic Park.
As a side note, Jurassic Park scared the crap out of me and most of the audience on the opening night I saw it. Spielberg, in his genius, didnt use music during some of the most intense scenes (such as the first Tyrannosaur attack). It has people being eaten, limbs, and horrible noises of men being shredded. Even with a rating he created, he still was (and is) determined see what he can get away with.
So, something happened in 1996 and that was Independence Day. Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin were masters of making crappy movies wrapped around awesome ad campaigns. Both it and the second grossing film of the year, Twister, featured massive special effects, with little story, wrapped around mostly B level, less paid actors (yes, Will Smith excluded). Both featured tons of violence wrapped around impossible physics, not seeing dead bodies, and for gods sake, no blood please. While the R rated The Rock cracked the top ten (with many of the same features of the other two), any sort of memorable action sequences were going to become the exception, not the rule.
In the late 90s, PG-13 entrenched itself as the rating movie makers use to try and get some quick bucks, forgoing any memorable content, featuring empty special effects and violence without real consequence.
The year featured the highest grossing movie of all time, Titanic (why it's cool). The next two highest grossing movies of the year were Men in Black and The Lost World. The only R rated action movie to crack the top 10 was Face/Off, which can also be called The Last Time John Woo Didnt Suck. Later, Ill cover why a sub-category of How PG-13 Killed Action Movies, is How PG-13 Made John Woo a Shitty Director.
Armageddon, and the last Emmerich/Devlin shit pile called Godzilla (in which they publicly confessed all they wanted to do was set a opening weekend record for grosses), filled out the decade. Out of the 5 years that concluded the Millennium (yes, Im counting 2000), we got Rush Hour, The Mummy, and X-Men.
Further dragging things down, a horror director figured out how to make a PG-13 rated horror movie; which meant no real violence, no real danger to the main characters, and everything wrapped up at the end. That was Sixth Sense.
A once amazing action director did or was forced to, appeal to a mass audience by removing the exciting, visceral action sequences that were good enough for the largest populated country in the world, but not for us. That was Mission Impossible II and the director was John Woo.
If you can, try to remember a scene in that movie where a bad guy jeep ran into traffic and was hit by a semi. It exploded into flames, and, in true A-Team fashion (a TV show in the 80s that featured incredible car crashes about a team of hired mercenaries, where somehow no one ever died... it was like the scene in The Hulk where he threw the tanks and the guys crawled out to show you they were okay). The old John Woo would have pulled two stunt men out of the exploding windows with wires and showed their flaming bodies writhing on the ground until Ethan Hunt ran over them with his motorcycle.
And, look at that. The best two action movies of those years... maybe even of the whole decade... Matrix and Gladiator. Both rated R.
As my final note, another movie came out in 2000. Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. Rated 'R', Ryan opens with a war scene so horrific at the time, I saw grown men cry in the theater and G*d curse the parents who brought the 9 or 10 year old girl sitting a couple seats down from me.
I am convinced, absolutely, that only Steven Spielberg could have gotten that movie an 'R' rating. Again, by using careful camera angles, no music during the combat scenes and quick humor after horror (remember when the Jewish guy got hideously, slowly, stabbed to death by the German? Seconds later, outside, the Sgt.'s gun jammed and he and a German officer shot, then threw their guns at each other... that scene got the biggest laugh all of times I saw it in the theater). Any other director and that movie's rated NC-17.
Though, as a final jab to the MPAA, they really only use that rating for showing penises or two girls kissing on screen.
Next entry: why it matters. To me, anyway.
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Okay, so I have an interview tomorrow, and I've decided I can't read your journal (properly) until after that. I want to enjoy it, not feel guilty that I should be doing something else!