Another MPAA story for you guys, this time with relation to the new Mark Wahlberg video-game adaptation 'Max Payne'.
This time the director (John Moore) is pissed because the board have given his film an R rating. Now, normally this wouldn't be a problem, but it seems that Moore was actually aiming for a PG-13 rating to give the largest number of people possible the opportunity to see his movie in theatres. His specific complaint is that the MPAA is far too inconsistant with the ratings they dole out. In an interview with
Das Gamer he said:
The MPAA changes their rules willy-nilly and it depends on who’s seeing your actual movie at the time. It’s very difficult to get a hold on what’s acceptable. The only thing you can use is current standards. So I go and see The Dark Knight and I say, “Gee, that’s pretty gnarly for PG-13,” but I felt good about Max Payne after coming out of the theater. I thought Max wasn’t going to have a problem. And that’s not the case. They’re coming down on us pretty hard.
It seems as if the MPAA are coming down hard on Max Payne because of the controversy surrounding the PG-13 rating of The Dark Knight. They came under alot of fire for going easy on that film and I don't think they want to be seen going easy again so soon afterwards. A simple way to solve this issue would be to publish a list of guidelines that would outline what had to be in the film for it to recieve a PG-13, R, NC-17 etc. and these kinds of things would not happen.
Apparently the reason given for the R rating was that it "feels R". With inexact reasoning such as that it basically gives the board carte blanche to rate films unfairly and abuse their power.
Source:
Slashfilm
February 17, 2008, 02:11:31 PM
