Good Bad Flicks, on how the movie industry’s push for PG-13 ratings is hurting cinema as an art form. Many movies that are clearly meant to be rated R get watered down in order to achieve the less restrictive rating of PG-13. This is done to maximize their potential audience, but often results in a poor movie that ends up doing badly at the box office, because the original vision was destroyed in pursuit of a meaningless rating.

I couldn’t agree more, and I think it’s ridiculous that ratings can have such a big influence on a movie’s potential success. Our ratings system in Spain is merely informative and as far as I know, access to a movie theater is never restricted, no matter the rating of the movie.¹ You could take your kid to watch The Wolf of Wall Street, and no one would stop you.

Of course, the fact that you can doesn’t mean that you should. After all, it is a parent’s responsibility to keep an eye on what her kid watches. But these decisions are the parents' to make, not some random movie executive’s, and certainly not for the sole purpose of making a killing.

Via Connor McClure.