Dismembered limbs, exploding eyeballs, and one very uncomfortable torture scene.
How these movies managed to avoid an R rating is anyone's guess.
"The Dark Knight" is an amazing film, and widely considered to be one of the best superhero
movies of all time.
Christopher Nolan's gritty installment in the Batman franchise is brilliantly done,
and the Joker was one of Heath Ledger's best roles, helping to drive Batman to a darker,
more complex understanding of himself and the nature of good and evil.
"And here we go."
It's a little surprising, then, that the film didn't score an R rating.
"The Dark Knight" doesn't shy away from violence, even if it isn't particularly bloody.
Case in point?
The infamous pencil trick.
Even Wally Pfister, the film's cinematographer, is surprised that didn't earn "The Dark Knight"
an R rating.
He told Vulture:
"It's kind of shocking that 'The Dark Knight' ended up being PG-13.
[...] Somehow, [Nolan] always had some magic with the MPAA.
Lo and behold, he has the pencil and I'm like, 'You are not getting the PG-13 with that.
There's no way this is going in.
He's driving this pencil through a guy's head!'
And I was wrong."
So how'd they manage to avoid the R rating?
By using the pencil trick as a joke.
According to Pfister:
"I thought, If it has the right amount of levity, we’ll sell this and it won’t come
off as being violent but it’ll come off as being a magic trick and it’ll come off
as being a punchline.
And it was!"
"Ta-da!"
"Taken," a 2008 action-thriller starring Liam Neeson, was a box office star that earned
over $226 million worldwide, launched countless internet memes, and firmly ingrained itself
in popular culture.
It might seem as though the film would be prime R-rated material, but it actually managed
to pull in a PG-13 rating.
"Taken" could have easily been rated R. It has shocking violence, including an alarming
torture scene that had to be heavily edited for the PG-13 version.
"Wake up!
I need you to be focused!"
The extended "harder cut" features even more graphic violence in this scene: Neeson's Bryan
Mills stabs a man with two metal nails so he can electrocute him.
"Taken" also deals with human trafficking, showing moments of hard drug use and implied
sexual assault with several female characters.
Realistic and extreme portrayals of violence are not acceptable in the MPAA PG-13 rating,
and gushing blood is what usually pushes it into R territory.
But even with all the violent hand-to-hand combat scenes and bullets flying everywhere,
"Taken" managed to pull off the more financially lucrative PG-13 rating, probably because they
kept most of the blood and gore to a minimum.
The found footage horror genre has always been compelling; who doesn't love a freaky
dash of realism in their scary movie?
"Cloverfield," the first in a multi-film franchise, premiered in 2008, seemingly just another
teen monster movie with too many jump cuts.
However, "Cloverfield" was a massive box office hit, bringing in over $172 million worldwide,
and landing on a few "Best Horror Films of the Decade" lists.
Yet, this surprisingly frightening film features more than a few scenes of shocking gore; the
gruesome nature of the movie probably should have earned it a higher rating.
One scene, in particular, stands out, as Lizzy Caplan's Marlena begins bleeding from the
eyes and then, quite literally, explodes.
The film's monster, which isn't shown to the audience until almost halfway through, is
the size of a city building, meaning that its favorite thing to do is eat people.
Without any concern for our delicate viewer sensibilities, the monster crunches away through
a few humans.
Usually, this much gore would be enough to put the brakes on a PG-13 rating; however,
producer J.J.
Abrams somehow managed to keep the teen-friendly rating.
Live-action motion picture capture became incredibly popular during the early 2000s.
But when a cinematic adaptation of the ancient English epic poem "Beowulf" was released in
2007, only three other films had used the technology.
"Beowulf" starred Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, and Anthony Hopkins — or, more accurately,
CGI versions of them.
Even though the film is entirely CGI, it's incredibly realistic… for the most part.
So when critics and viewers left the cinema, they left wondering, "Was that Angelina Jolie
in the nude or just her character?"
It's a scene that Jolie later admitted made her feel exposed, despite its animated classification.
In fact, the actor told reporters at the premiere that the film's MPAA rating surprised her, saying:
"It's remarkable it has the rating it has.
It's quite an extraordinary film, and some of it shocked me."
"Beowulf" is incredibly violent, more so than its original poem: spears, arms, heads, blood,
and dismembered limbs rushed at the audience, because it was also shot in 3D.
The film was so shocking to audiences that in the UK, where it was given a "12A" rating,
the British Board of Film Classification received more complaints about "Beowulf" than any other
movie that year.
Not only does the film feature plenty of nudity — and the occasional incest joke — but
the amount of blood that spurts out of bodies, along with various floating organs, is overwhelmingly
gratuitous, animated or not.
Going into a movie about a giant ape on an island filled with other giant monsters, you
have to expect at least a little bit of monster mayhem. 2017's "Kong: Skull Island" doesn’t
disappoint when it comes to creature gore.
Seeing a few soldiers get eaten and thrown around, or a lizard forcibly losing its tongue
shouldn't come as a surprise.
What is surprising, however, is just how graphic it all is when it happens.
So much of the film is wanton violence, monster dismemberment, and the over-the-top display
of blood arcing through the jungle.
And while a giant spider impaling a man isn't going to keep audiences from the theater,
it should maybe come with a harder rating than PG-13.
"Whoa whoa whoa whoa…
no, no no, no need for that, come on now."
For director Jordan Vogt-Roberts, however, the violence in the film makes sense.
He's cited "Apocalypse Now" as one of his main influences, while also packing "Skull
Island" full of not-so-subtle references to other Vietnam classics.
Regardless, the sight of a man's arm being ripped off usually remains in "Rated R" territory.
Maybe it's its borderline cartoonishness that gives "Kong: Skull Island" a pass.
Some might be surprised to see the blockbuster Bond film "Casino Royale" on this list, but
there are more than a few scenes that call its PG-13 rating into question.
In 2006, "Casino Royale" felt like a groundbreaking new take on James Bond: It was grittier and
more emotional with a Bond struggling with the violence inherent in his role, a self-awareness
not seen before in the usually carefree womanizer.
It was also a box office smash, earning over $605 million worldwide.
With the darker themes came more graphic and explicit scenes of violence, particularly
in the film's intense portrayal of torture.
Towards the end of the film, Bond is captured by Le Chiffre and tortured in a particularly
memorable scene.
And, while we won't get into specifics, in order to get its PG-13 rating, Bond's torture,
along with several other fight scenes, had to be cut down.
But should you come across the extended edition of the film, be prepared for Bond's howls
of pain to carry on for longer, Le Chiffre to make some unsavory comments about Bond's
physique, and a little more blood in the fight scenes.
Much like Bond's escape from Le Chiffre's torture, "Casino Royale" barely made it out
without an R rating.
Sam Raimi, a noted horror and noir aficionado, wrote and directed the 2011 film, "Drag Me
to Hell."
This campy supernatural horror film was mainly marketed as a teen flick, filled with young
actors like Alison Lohman and Justin Long, shock-value special effects, and dark humor.
And for the most part, "Drag Me to Hell" delivers on that score.
It also delivers on the gore, and many of the violent scenes in the film are shockingly bloody.
The most famous involves Mrs. Ganush, an old woman hellbent on revenge after being denied
an extension on her mortgage loan, and Christine, the young bank teller who denied it.
When Mrs. Ganush shoves her arm down Christine's throat — literally, Christine manages to
overpower her using an anvil.
What happens next is equal parts gross and comedic: the anvil crushes Mrs. Ganush's head,
causing her eyes to explode and land in Christine's mouth.
While the MPAA allows for depictions of violence in PG-13 movies, the line is drawn at "both
realistic and extreme or persistent."
Since arms down throats and exploding eyes aren't exactly realistic depictions of violence,
it makes sense that "Drag Me to Hell" was able to drag itself out of the clutches of
an R rating.
That doesn't make this scene — or the several others depicting animal sacrifice — any
easier to sit through, though.
"No.
No, of course not."