Seriously, how did "The Dark Knight" get away with a PG-13?

[Metal Mario]

Just to be clear from the start, I love The Dark Knight. Absolutely ****ing love it. So I'm not trying to badmouth it at all. I don't know why it took until my fifth viewing of the film for this to dawn upon me (maybe I had to have grown suitably jaded towards it before I could analyze it in this way), but damn, an R rating for this movie would have been an absolute no-brainer if it hadn't happened to star Batman. Seriously, this is not a movie that children should be watching. What with the Joker pontificating at length about slicing and dicing people with knives, and a main character being blown up on-screen, and Harvey Dent's face catching fire and burning in slow motion, and the cell phone exploding inside that schizophrenic dude......Warner Bros. must have thrown some serious bribe money at the ratings board in order to get them to come down to a PG-13, because this **** is intense. Believe me, I'm not one for censorship, and I'm not saying it should have been censored. I'm a writer, after all; if the First Amendment were a woman, I'd **** her every damn day of her life, and then cuddle afterwards.

But damn, dude. Seriously. If I was on the ratings board, I would have given it an R, no matter how many thick, juicy porterhouses Warner Bros. bought for me.

[Deku Tree]

Yeah, but were there boobs?

[Booyakasha]

A) A PG-13 rating doesn't exactly mean a movie is safe for children, either.
B) All of what you mentioned is implicit. The movie didn't graphically portray people getting exploded---just flashes of light. We don't see Harvey's face get melted off---the fire blurs everything out. Hearing the Joker talk about slicey-dicey isn't the same as seeing it happen.
C) Even if all that gross stuff had happened on-screen, it wouldn't necessarily have meant an R-rating. The Indiana Jones flicks have their share of dismemberment, face-melty, and head-explodey, and they're practically considered family entertainment.

[Metal Mario]

The Indiana Jones movies are much more humorous and cartoonish than The Dark Knight, however. Ironically, they're the ones that are more like traditional comic book fare, whereas The Dark Knight is much more like Heat.

A PG-13 rating doesn't exactly mean a movie is safe for children, either.

It means kids can get in without their parents' permission.

[Apiary Tazy]

If you don't see it happening, it's not as violent.

Like all those times a gun was fired, bombs were blown and karate chops thrown?

No blood or dead bodies were on screen. As such, it can barely pertain a PG-13 with lots of Nightmare Fuel.

If they couldn't get away with that, that Batman Cartoon wouldn't have even got off the ground.

Also, kids can get into R Rated Movies as well.

[Booyakasha]

If impressionable kids are getting into PG-13 movies without their parents' approval, that's clearly the parents' fault for being lazy and irresponsible. My parents didn't trust me to make my own entertainment decisions when I was a stupid little kid---they either vetted everything in advance, or decided it was an acceptible risk that the latest Disney film wouldn't be too terribly pornographic.

So 'explicit exploding Belloq' is more acceptible for young audiences than 'implicit exploding Joker henchman'? 'Mola Ram tearing guy's heart out' more than 'Joker talks about cutting people'? I'm not sold. Particularly when you take into account that, compared to adults, kids tend to be more visual and less abstract.

[Metal Mario]

Although Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom did serve as the entire basis for a re-evaluation of the movie ratings system and gave birth to the PG-13 rating. Clearly parents weren't all that enamored with the heart-tearing.

[CaptHayfever]

How about a movie that opens with potentially-unlawful attempted canine euthanasia?
Soon after, a woman is crushed to death, followed by a celebration of her demise & the subsequent onscreen disintegration of her body.
Later in this same film, two of the heroes temporarily fall victim to opium poisoning, a horrifying apparition screams at them, & the other two heroes are graphically dismembered.
Eventually, another woman is melted to nothingness (again onscreen) after attempting to kill a child and a dog and setting a man on fire, all of them pawns in the scheming plans of a con man with disassociative identity disorder.

This movie is rated G.

And remember, "I'm-a Luigi, number one!"

[t3hDarkness]

I'm a writer, after all; if the First Amendment were a woman, I'd **** her every damn day of her life, and then cuddle afterwards.

My goal is to use this line in casual conversation before the end of the day.

[Metal Mario]

How about a movie that opens with potentially-unlawful attempted canine euthanasia?
Soon after, a woman is crushed to death, followed by a celebration of her demise & the subsequent onscreen disintegration of her body.
Later in this same film, two of the heroes temporarily fall victim to opium poisoning, a horrifying apparition screams at them, & the other two heroes are graphically dismembered.
Eventually, another woman is melted to nothingness (again onscreen) after attempting to kill a child and a dog and setting a man on fire, all of them pawns in the scheming plans of a con man with disassociative identity disorder.

This movie is rated G.

I gotta ask what movie that is.

[glux]

phone exploding inside that schizophrenic dude

You can't be schizophrenic if there really IS something "burning inside" of you.

[Metal Mario]

Oh, oh, I just figured it out! It's The Wizard of Oz!

[Valigarmander]

How about a movie that opens with potentially-unlawful attempted canine euthanasia?
Soon after, a woman is crushed to death, followed by a celebration of her demise & the subsequent onscreen disintegration of her body.
Later in this same film, two of the heroes temporarily fall victim to opium poisoning, a horrifying apparition screams at them, & the other two heroes are graphically dismembered.
Eventually, another woman is melted to nothingness (again onscreen) after attempting to kill a child and a dog and setting a man on fire, all of them pawns in the scheming plans of a con man with disassociative identity disorder.

This movie is rated G.

And remember, "I'm-a Luigi, number one!"

Ha.

[heh]

no sex means it is safe for american children

[Kil'jaeden]

More like no nudity, sex or no. Explosions, fine. Dismemberment, stabbing, being torn up by a propeller, or burning, all good for family entertainment. Breasts, not good for children. In fact, children should not be in the same room as them.

Dark Knight doesn't really seem odd at PG-13. It seems that PG-13 gets away with a lot more nowadays. More than I remember before, anyway. Dark Knight's violence involves a lot of explosions and non lethal hand to hand. Some gunfire, but I do not recall many getting killed by it, and when it happens, no blood is shown. The things the Joker does are not explicitly shown. Explosions and hand to hand are clean forms of violence, as far as ratings goe. As long as you don't think about chunks of people flying, or burning to death, it's all very child friendly.

Anyway, the people who took their kids to see Dark Knight (I've heard some stories there) are still not as bad as the ones who took their kids to see Watchmen.

[Calamity Panfan]

An R rating wouldn't stop parents from taking their kids to see it. Remember the parents that brought their kids to Watchmen? And then complained about how they had to leave because of all the violence and the gore and the nudity?

[Deepfake]

MM's both touching on and avoiding the subject of delivery here, folks.

As in, the ratings system is based around language and graphical infractions. What happened with the Dark Knight that makes it seem so mature is that it was well done - it does not step outside the boundaries that most films do, however, and did not put in the cues to trip the censors for a higher rating. What it did was it very realistically depicted hostility and the inner functions of a nihilistic homicidal mastermind.

Heavy stuff for kids? Yeah, but most kids' entertainment has got crazy **** in it. It's just that it's also usually filled to the brim with bad acting, bad writing, and most of them all around flaunt logic. So when it's actually done well, we can see that the internal themes can be just as mature as the shallow crap the ratings boards are designed to pick up on as a catch-all.

Frankly, I say leave it with a PG-13 rating. Parents don't get that the parental guidance is literal, not just a suggestion - there's no license to breed and, frankly, most people aren't very observant. Their own fault, and kids will experience this crap one way or another, eventually. Cushioning them too much is just as bad for their mental health as shoving them out into the open world with no security.

[Erdawn Il Deus]

The rating board has no consideration for the level of maturity required to appreciate the plot and or dialogue devices. For them, if you see blood, it requires a higher rating - stupid violent movies like Pineapple Express, basically a comedy where the violence is ridiculous, is basically rated X because of the presence of drugs are other social gaffes, whereas The Fantastic Mr Fox, a movie of absolute brilliance and depth, being cartoony, is pimped to kids and not adults.

[abrocks22]

i felt the same way, but ratings are so arbitrary that they hardly make any sense anymore
the people rating the movie might not have felt as emotionally affected by the movie and therefore gave it a pg-13 rating instead of R. who knows?