Why is the 1977 Star Wars film not rated G?

"Have you heard Vaders voice thats the scariest in the world..."


\\looks at the board where he's posting\\


Nope, never heard his voice before.

 

"The MPAA originally rated the film G, but studio execs had it changed to PG before release because it might turn off teenagers from seeing it, considering it a "kids' movie". "

That sounds like the reasoning for "E.T.". This was why Spielberg put the word "penis" in the film - to go from a PG to a PG-13 rating.

 

don't forget that E.T. was naked

 

I agree with John. I believe that in the 60s there were three ratings: G, R and X or maybe it was only two with them being G and R. I believe the 70's saw the increase of at least if not two new ratings the PG and X (if X was not around in the 60s).

So that could one reason why ANH got the rating it did.

 

In the UK it has always been rated "U", the UK's equivalent of "G".

Very interesting!

 

Plus, the rating system in the 70's was stricter then than it is now

I thought it was the other way around. I've seen some PG movies from then that could easily be PG-13 or R now.

 

I'm sure many will disagree with me but a G rating means it's suitable for anyone or the audience I like to focus on is preschoolers. SW, any one of them, is NOT suitable for 3, 4 and 5 year olds. My son is 4 and I consider SW too violent for little minds that still have difficulty telling the difference between fact and fiction, especially fiction that can look SO real these days.

Being a parent of a young child, it worries me how much violence and crude language is available to young children (I mean in general). When he gets a little older we will sit down and be able to watch all 6 ep's (on DVD I hope) but not just yet. I don't let him sit in front of the TV and watch a program or go to the movies and watch a film that I haven't fully reviewed first (God bless the internet for this) and it's a job more parents need to take more seriously.

 

Because it had the highest death count in the saga.

 

Well, the Alderaan deaths are "off-screen".

Is that a factor in ratings?

And FWIW, I also think that ESB and ROTJ could be "scarier" for very young children than ANH.

p.s. Has anyone mentioned Owen and Beru's bodies at the "Burning Homestead"? a brief shot, but unsettling nonetheless.

 

The "PG" rating was around in the 60s, except it was termed "GP" for "General Public". There were many gory horror films that secured the "GP" rating in the 60s, rather than the "R" one would expect. That the rating standards were simply different would explain why "Planet o' th' Apes" was given a "G" even with a great deal of violence, nudity and foul language (including Heston's infamous "'G-d' you all to Hell" line at the end.

In the early 80s (pre-PG13), several films had violence and nudity in them but still secured a "PG" rating: "Clash of the Titans", "Dragonslayer", "Sheena Queen o' th' Jungle" and "Beastmaster" to name a few. It wasn't until the "ultra-violence" of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (nevertheless seen as a "kid's movie") that the MPAA instituted the "PG13" rating.

As to STAR WARS, my bet would be the bloody arm of Walrus Person--and of course the charred corpses of the Lars'--that ultimately gave the film its "PG". Also, by 1977, the standards had changed so that anything more violent than say, Disney's "Cinderella" was given a "PG".

As to TPM, two versions were shot of Maul's death scene so that in case the MPAA gave it a "PG13", Lucas could resubmit the film with a less violent death for the villain. But the MPAA passed it without comment, and we can now revel in the two bloodless halves of the Sith Lord bouncing their way down the endless chasm.

 

"I'm sure many will disagree with me but a G rating means it's suitable for anyone or the audience I like to focus on is preschoolers. SW, any one of them, is NOT suitable for 3, 4 and 5 year olds. My son is 4 and I consider SW too violent for little minds that still have difficulty telling the difference between fact and fiction, especially fiction that can look SO real these days. "

I was 5 when I saw Star Wars and I turned out okay. Of course it probably has something to do with my parents making sure I was raised to understand the difference between a projection on a screen and reality. If you kids have a hard time with that you can't blame the movie. As a matter of fact I bet you let your kid watch Disney movies, which contain more sex and about the same amount of violence compared to Star Wars.

 

I thought Temple of Doom was the one that brought about the PG-13 rating.

g

 

IIRC Red Dawn was the first PG-13 movie. You know the one with the highschool kids fighting the invading Soviets and Cubans? However, it's been so long I'm not sure.

 

Yeah, I thought "Temple of Doom" brought about the PG-13 rating.

Also, like some previous posters said, ANH had some mild swear words thrown in to keep it from G-rating territory. There is more swearing in that movie than the other two. I think ESB has one "Hell" from that potty-mouth scoundrel Han, and all ROTJ has in it is the word 'poodoo'.

Things I think could be too intense for young children in the Star Wars trilogy:

Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen's dead bodies.
The implied torture of the Princess.
The Wampa.
The Rancor.
Luke losing his hand.
The scene in the cave (that unearthly Vader coming at Luke--the effect being all the more enhanced by the scene being slowed down--gave me and many others nightmares back in the day)

Kids always love Jabba. It's because he looks like a big pile of poop. Kids love poop, they find it amusing. Lucas knew what he was doing.

 

"Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen's dead bodies. "
No worse than Bambi's mother getting shot

The implied torture of the Princess.
No worse than the implied physical abuse in Cinderella

"The Wampa."
No worse than the dragon the witch turns into in Sleeping Beauty

"The Rancor"
No worse than the Octopus Queen in The Little Mermaid

"Luke losing his hand."
No worse than all the innocents getting drowned at the beginning of Atlantis.

All of the movies I mentioned are rated G and are regarded as wonderful family movies for kiddies. How is Star Wars anymore violent?

 

I won't defend Disney movies because some are over the top for their intended audience but the difference between cartoons and other movies (I'm not picking on any particular one) is that kids can perceive at a very early age that cartoons are not real, telling a preschooler that what is on the screen isn't real doesn't always solve the problem. Children have a problem with "the monster under the bed" for an example, do you think the parents telling the child that monsters really don't exist suddenly makes the problem go away? Young children have very complex minds that soak up eveything around them.

As for my original comment, Yes, for preschoolers SW IS too violent.

 

"I thought Temple of Doom was the one that brought about the PG-13 rating."

I believe you are right. However, E.T. was the biggest "test" of the PG-13 rating after it was passed.

 

No worse than Bambi's mother getting shot

We don't see Bambi's mother's smouldering, charred corpse burnt to a crisp next to another huge pile of dead bodies, do we?

 

The Octopus Queen in The Little Mermaid didn't eat anybody alive, if memory serves.

 

"No worse than Bambi's mother getting shot

We don't see Bambi's mother's smouldering, charred corpse burnt to a crisp next to another huge pile of dead bodies, do we?"

Nope but based on Sithlover's example of "monsters under the bed" we don't have to see the gore to have the violence affect us. Kids know the monsters under the bed aren't real, they can't see them, but are just as scared. The same with Bambi's mother. You don't see the violence but it's there. Shot and killed,cleaned, cooked, and eaten. Just like Owen and Beru but I don't think the stormptroopers ate them.

My point is violence is part of life whether you like it or not. Hiding your kids from it will not help them when confronted by it.

Sithlover, if your preschoolers can't tell the difference between a movie and the real world it has nothing to do with the content of the movie but with the quality of the parenting.

 

Does that mean we should stop telling children there's a Santa Claus or an Easter bunny?

 

"Luke losing his hand."
No worse than all the innocents getting drowned at the beginning of Atlantis.
As memory serves, Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire (starring Michael J Fox) was rated PG.

I can't believe nobody has mentioned the fires burning in the chests of the imperials that Luke and Co. blasted in the detention block (they were edited out for the Special Edition of ANH - blast!).

 

How could ET be the test for pg13 when it was released in 82, a full score of months BEFORE PG13 came into being?

Also, in the US there was a "M" rating in the late 60s ... on its first release 2001 was rated M for Mature, though it went to G on reissue. I used to have newspaper clippings that had this designation in the movie section. M became PG about the time GP became G as I recall (I was only 10 in 1970, so the details aren't clear in memory.)

Although IMDB is usually full of crap, I think the deliberately going for PG on SW remark is correct ... at least one ILM guy I interviewed a number of years back said the same thing, that GL did not want to turn off teenagers by having a G rated movie (and it was shrewd, because "G" to a teenager in that era basically meant BENJI or Don Knotts in a Disney movie, something no selfrespecting teen would go see.)

By the same token, to show how STUPID the people at Paramount were (and probably still are), they did everything they coud to ensure that STAR TREK THE MOTION PICTURE be rated G in 1979. I think that probably DID alienate some folks who were thinking about seeing it, figuring if it is rated G, it is aiming too low (or as Harlan Ellison put it in his review (paraphrased), it is rated G, we are trying to please everybody.) It could be that the sequence with a guard getting killed on the bridge was dropped to ensure the G rating ... there were pictures of the scene used for publicity pre-release, and the scene is in the novelization, but it was not in the final cut (and they didn't even put it in when they cheaply redid the movie for DVD a couple years ago, supposedly because they couldn't find the footage.)

And that TREK movie 'climaxes' with a human having a sort of physical union with a machine in order to create a new life form ... that was a G rated movie? Probably the censors were asleep by that point in the film.

 

For starters ObiwanJohn, I used the monster under the bed idea to show that your simple solution of telling young children the difference between fact and fiction doesn't always work. Yes, violence is a part of life that children must learn, like it or not so the question is what kind of images and how much at what age. Real images of real people being tourtured for no obvious reason (Han in ESB), chared human remains, bloodied arms being cut off and so on are too extreme for preschoolers who are the ones getting caught up in this whole "G" rating discussion. Not to mention we are talking not about voilence and children but violence as a form of entertainment FOR children. So, once again I stand by my original comment. SW is NOT a G movie, nor should it be IMHO.

As for you claiming that a preschooler's ability to seperate fact and fiction are based on my parenting or lack thereof only leads me to believe you have no children and if you do, in my opinion, you have a lot to learn my friend. That said, you have your opinion and I have mine and how I raise my child will certianly not be based on your opinion.

This will be my last post in this thread because it is starting to get a little out of hand, I have stated my opinion and why I feel that way, ObiwanJohn, if you feel that is not good enough, please feel free to PM my because I would have no problem discussing this further with you but just not in this thread. That goes for everyone here actually because I can be very passionate about children and what some poeple allow them to do and see. My child will see SW and I can't wait until then but for now I think I have to.

 

I saw ANH and ROTJ when I was about 4 years old. I didn't find it extreme, my parents let me watch it on my own, and I didn't turn out to be some ultra-violent psycho or anything. Of course since it is a "U" in the UK, (only Attack of the Clones has ever been made a PG in the UK classification system) that could have been why, but myself and my friends have never been affected at all. We see Star Wars as entertainment, not a reflection of violence in real life.

(Although I guess in this modern politically-correct day and age we're supposed to think more about the affect of movies on kids)