The Ratings Game

 Here’s a quick question for you. Go through your movie collection, Netflix watch history, or just your memory of the movies you watched recently and see what it was rated. I’ve done this and seen that the majority of movies I’ve seen and own are either rated PG-13 or R.

It’s not to surprising for me since I’m a martial arts/sci-fi/action/adventure/comedy junkie.

 The MPAA has determined the ratings of most of the movies in my collection as well as movies released in the US at large. These ratings carry a lot of power over a movie’s potential fate. The MPAA was started back in 1922 (originally named The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association of America) as a self-regulating body to prevent against government censorship of the industry. Originally as far creative freedoms went the Hayes code was extremely restrictive. It was replaced by the system we know today in 1968.

 Although the MPAA meant for the system to be as a guide to parents giving them an idea of the content in movies so they can determine what and what not to let their children watch. Consequently these ratings also affect what material is cut for a theatrical release. Not all ratings are created equal. According to the-numbers.com for the past 15 years PG-13 movies have been averaging around $42 million in the box office while a R movie has averaged around $15 million. This is a pretty telling stat in that ultimately a studio wants to at the least make its money back in the box office.

 There have been countless battles between a studio and the MPAA to get a favorable rating for a film. At times it has gotten pretty heated because a films financial viability in the box office is at stake. The most contested rating is NC-17 and that’s because no studio really wants to risk releasing a movie with that rating (they have only averaged $3.5 million at the box office). Not only that but most theaters won’t carry an NC-17 movie. So they are forced to go back and make cuts to get the movie an R rating.

 There has been a lot of controversy as to what the MPAA makes their determinations based off of. It’s so arbitrary that many in the industry consider the process ridiculous. Either way you look at though the MPAA is a powerful force in the industry.