Venom Film Gets A PG-13 Rating And Fans Aren’t Happy
Mike Sanders / 2 months ago
Venom Film Gets A PG-13 Rating And Fans Aren’t Happy
The Venom character is certainly one of the more darker characters within the Marvel Universe. The character itself, as I understand it, is an alien creature who came to earth and initially latched onto Spiderman, while Spiderman was able to rid himself of this parasite, Venom still roams the Earth looking for a new host.
Before any Marvel fans correct me, that’s the abridged history.
With a new film on the way, given the characters dark nature, many believed that to be true ‘canon’ the film would have to carry an 18 or R rating. In a report via Polygon though, the film has apparently been watered-down to a PG-13 rating.
Why Is it PG-13?
The news has come as a bigger blow to many fans who were hoping to see something a lot more graphic in terms of the content. There is, however, an explanation for this decision. It is believed that in the future, the studio might be planning to make a Spiderman VS Venom movie. As such, both franchises have to be within a similar ‘audience’ demographic for it to work.
In fairness, it’s a reasonable answer. Despite that though, some will still see this as a betrayal of the content.
#Venom is officially rated PG-13. Hearing from studio sources the reason is so that Venom and Spider-Man can face off at some point down the line. If the movie is R, it’s hard to do that. pic.twitter.com/dBZzgY18k3
— Erik Davis (@ErikDavis) September 13, 2018
When Is It Out?
Venom will release in cinemas on October 5th. It will, therefore, not be too long before we get to see for ourselves whether they have done the brand any justice or not. Playing Devil’s advocate, the trailer looks pretty decent though. To water him down so much though, for many fans, would be tantamount to mistaking him as part of the DC Universe.
What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!
Just looking at the trailer, if that’s what PG-13 got to, then we’ve got terribly desensitised.
According to Wikipedia, PG-13 is defined as “Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13. Parents are urged to be cautious. Some material may be inappropriate for pre-teenagers.” R is defined as “Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian. Contains some adult material. Parents are urged to learn more about the film before taking their young children with them.”
I’d definitely say it’s closer to the latter rather than the former. I don’t think under-17s need to be accompanied by adults, but I’d also say that ‘some material may be inappropriate’ just doesn’t cut it here. Seems very violent, and even if Venom just talks about eating a guy’s limbs and face and having him go down the street like a turd, and not showing it, that’s not an image that I’d want any young kid to imagine.
There are quite a few PG-13 movies which I consider okay for younger kids, including those with some action and violence, such as some Spiderman movies. They typically don’t have disturbing visuals and have some positive messages. This doesn’t seem like one of those movies.
In this respect, I feel that PG-13 is a disservice both to parents (who’d think it’s rather tame) and to fans who want more than this. On the other hand, I really don’t have that much sympathy for those who require gore to enjoy what seems to me like a pretty chilling movie as is.
(Of course, the movie may not be as bad on this front as the trailer makes it seem, but just assuming these scenes are in there, that’s bad enough for PG-13.)
Just wanted to add that personally I’d probably end up watching this movie (on TV) at some point. It looks interesting enough. However I won’t get my wife and kids to watch it.
PG-13 has quite a wide range of content. It’s not really a good indicator of much. I went with my wife to Ghost in the Shell, which is PG-13 (checked just now), and that was way too dark for her. I think we need a better classification system.