R-Rated Tentpoles

I haven't done the statistics, but having been a fan of movies (and of their box-office numbers, which are available on several websites) for two decades now I think I can say with some certainty that as a general rule the most lucrative movies are the ones rated PG-13. The rating, which, as I understand it, was first devised in the United States by its film classification board as a way of rating movies that weren't quite suitable small children but which were suitable for young people. For some reason, films that receive this rating are quite often the perfect "four-quadrant" movies, i.e. movies that please men and women, old and young people alike, and therefore make the most money. There are exceptions to this rule but in general a PG-13 rating, whether by design or not, seems integral to the financial success of a commercially inclined movie. The problem is that not all action movies can be told within the parameters of a PG-13 rating. In fact, a lot of them shouldn't be. Ridley Scott's Gladiator, for example, would probably not have been able to adequately capture the peril of the arena had it been constrained by a PG-13 rating. The first Die Hard would not have been nearly as effective in planting the audience right in the nail-biting peril of the situation had it not shown how violent the criminals against whom Bruce Willis' character was facing off were. The PG-13 rated fourth installment of the Die Hard series was not that bad, but it felt distinctly neutered compared to its predecessors. R-rated comedies like The Hangover and American Pie are not uncommon because of how relatively cheap they are to produce and therefore how easy it is for studios to recover their investment, but in general studios seem leery of spending large amounts of money on R movies. It's refreshing, therefore, to see at least one movie studio, 20th Century Fox, infamous for creating a PG-13 Die Hard and for micro-managing their movies, is releasing not just one but TWO "R" rated big-budget action tentpoles this year,namely Prometheus and, in a couple of weeks, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. That Fox was willing to fork over a reported $120 million for Prometheus is particularly remarkable considering how badly their Alien vs. Predator sequel did back in 2007, but it's made even more remarkable by the fact that even though director Ridley Scott himself prepared a "PG-13 cut" for studio heads, Fox went ahead with the gorier, scarier "R" version, despite knowing that this could curtail potential box-office. Sure, I may have had issues with the actual quality of the film, but I have to commend Fox for their willingness to stick their necks out for a change and to spend some real money on what is effectively a bloody horror movie. Speaking of horror movies, it's similarly impressive that Fox has positioned the unabashedly bloody, R-rated Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter as one of its tentpoles for the summer of 2012. I haven't read the book (though I've been meaning to) but the premise and trailers alone promise a thoroughly blood-soaked affair. The gore isn't what's making me keen to see it (the historical fiction aspect is), but again, I find myself applauding a studio that's quite notorious for trimming out "adult content" to keep its movies box-office friendly for its decision to adapt a famously violent work and getting Timur Bekmambetov, a director famous for his violent movies like Wanted and Night Watch, to adapt it. Now I'm not saying violence, profanity, drug references, nudity, sexuality or whatever else qualifies a movie for an "R" rating make for a better film, but sometimes they're necessary for proper storytelling. Tom Hooper's Academy Award winning film The King's Speech, as I understand it, landed an "R" rating solely for the fact that King George, Colin Firth's character, uttered "fuck" and other colorful words several times over to help him conquer his speech impediment. There was no nudity, violence, or even drug reference; just a string of bad words which were integral not only to the story of the film but an actual part of the history on which it was based. So often the rating system (the American one, I should emphasize, which doesn't necessarily apply to the rest of us outside the United States of America), can be pretty stupid. But at the end of the day it's nice to see film executives, even notoriously profit-oriented ones, putting storytelling integrity over the bottom line.