Hunger Games trimmed by 7s to earn kid-friendly UK rating

The Hunger Games is a young adult novel about a grim future, in which teens are picked each year to fight to the death on TV. The subject matter, however, has earned the eagerly-awaited movie adaptation some ratings troubles. In the U.S., the MPAA issued it a PG-13 rating, for movies with material "inappropriate" for pre-teens. In the UK, the distributor cut 7 seconds of blood splatter to earn a "12" rating instead of the "15" first offered by censors there -- children under the rated age may not enter theaters unless accompanied by an adult.

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ciacontra

Battle…Royaluuuuuu!!!
ghostfacemillah

i’m genuinely excited about this movie, but i’m concerned how much of the action and gore will be off-camera, or just edited profusely to the point where what’s actually happening is unrecognizable.
- Lilah
  
  I agree. Some pivotal scenes involve gruesome deaths. I wonder how they will make it work.
Kibbee

Having read the books, I don’t think a little blood spatter will make the least bit of difference. Depending on the viewpoint of the people doing the ratings, the storyline is probably good for all people 12 or over (or there abouts), or only suited for adults. It’s quite a grim storyline. I mean, it isn’t much different than Running Man, which has an R rating. A little bit less swearing and sex probably, but the violence is all there.
- Gene Poole
  
  Think so? From what I can recall a large portion of the violence is ‘off camera’, or innocuous…ie, death by environment, explosions etc…It seems more hinted at than blatant.
  
  Running Man was quite graphic. witht he exception of the climax I don’t see them having to rearrange anything to get a 12 rating…
  
  Which I note you mention above…I just think a comparison between running man and hunger games, outside of the game concept, to be a little specious.
eldritch

I’ve never understood the way we rate cinema.

The implication is that letting kids see blood and gore is damaging. But what’s the alternative? Just digitally removing blood from a scene, making minor clippings, trying to make the violence seem less violent?

It’s not the goddamn blood, folks. It’s the, ya know, gunshots and stab wounds. You aren’t removing the violence – you’re just making it unrealistic. I was always amazed that Schwarzenegger films in which hundreds of people are blown away left and right, in which wanton mass murder is committed, were somehow made “safe for kids” and put on television by simply removing the blood.

Violence is a real thing. When you shoot someone, they bleed, typically quite a lot. They also don’t just fall over backwards and stop moving. They stagger, they go into shock. They take time to die. They beg, they plead, they panic, they cry, they moan in agony, they scream in horror. With fatal wounds they bleed out, pooling their life force on the floor over a surprisingly long number of minutes compared to what the movies would have you believe.

Is this really the better option? Showing kids acts of violence, telling them stories in which people are brutally killed, but depicting those killings as quick, clean, simple affairs, as emotionless and ordinary as making toast? Making violence seem fake and simple?

If your child can’t handle blood and violence, maybe you shouldn’t be giving them tales of killing to enjoy. The last thing any of us on this planet need is to underestimate the potential for cruelty and suffering within humanity.
- davidasposted
  
  This film may provide you with some insight about ratings in the U.S.:
  
  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0493459/
http://www.disoriented.net/ angusm

My new death metal band will be called Seven Seconds of Blood Spatter.
- eldritch
  
  …is it sad that I REALLY like that for some reason, and wish it was a real band?
  - http://www.disoriented.net/ angusm
    
    Give it a day or two … it will be.
    - Ipo
      
      And then rule #34 will be applied.
- technobach
  
  also, Seven Seconds of Blood Spatter dot tumblr dot com
- cellocgw
  
  With a warmup band called “Here’s Dexter” ?
- http://apebox.org/wordpress/ Jo Shields
  
  A bit too close to Seven Seconds of Love? Hm, that’d be quite a double-act.
chgoliz

One of my children is furious with me that we will be landing at the airport from a multi-generational family trip overseas with exactly enough time to make the midnight opening (if all goes perfectly on the flight…hah) and yet I will not let her derail the return home by detouring to drop her off at the cinema. Seeing it within 24 hours of its release is simply not good enough.

The rest of us have a bit more self control….as long as we get to see it during the first weekend, we’re fine with that.

This film better live up to the hype (and the book).
Lee Harris

This isn’t quite accurate. The 7 seconds haven’t been cut – blood has been digitally edited out of the frames. The length of the movie is exactly the same – it’l just be slightly less colourful. :-)
- eldritch
  
  That’s the real kicker, isn’t it?
  
  Probably the worst offense of this kind that I’ve personally seen was an episode of the anime Outlaw Star, cleaned up for American television broadcast.
  
  In said episode an assassin attacks the main character, but slips away as help arrives. The protagonist acts like it was no big deal, but suddenly staggers from an unseen wound. His ally grabs him to support him, then pulls away his hand in horror. The camera goes to dramatic close up off the ally’s hand – meant to be covered in blood, but edited clean. And it was BADLY edited – it’s a 1 or 2 second still shot, so the editor simply figured it was “good enough” to just digitally crop it out, but leave an obvious red outline around the edge of the splatter.
  
  The worst part is, it made the entire scene nonsensical. The blood is the entire reason the ally character pulls his hand away, and the entire reason for focusing on the hand, as well as establishing just how bad the wound really is.
  - http://nelc.livejournal.com/ NelC
    
    That reminds me of the remastered DVD of the James Bond movie Thunderball. You may recall the villain of the piece throwing a flunky who failed him into a pool full of sharks (no, no frigging laser beams, just plain sharks). In the original there’s a shot ending the scene looking up from the pool at the villain that goes red as the flunky’s blood fills the screen.
    
    In the remastered version, the pool stays the same colour and just goes a bit darker. I’m fairly sure it was just someone applying Autocorrect Colour on the scene without viewing it before and after, or understanding what the scene was about, though, not censorship, but who knows?
Lobster

You need to nick an artery just right to get a solid seven seconds of blood splatter.
chgoliz

Forgot to mention….

I don’t use it anymore — kids do grow up quickly — but there is an excellent movie review website for parents of young children: http://www.kids-in-mind.com/ (free site, but donations gratefully accepted).

They objectively detail every potential ‘concern’ in movies so that parents can decide if a movie is right for a particular child. And I do mean “objective”….there is no editorializing at all. A simple list of exactly what to expect, scene by scene. The detail is impressive.
- faithnomore
  
  I frequently consult a website called CommonSense Media http://www.commonsensemedia.org/ that does a similar sort of thing. In addition to sex/violence/language details, they also give ratings based on positive message, positive role models, consumerism and substance abuse, with a brief synopsis about the specific nature of such in each catagory (ie. is the “sex” excessive jiggling DDD cups in string bikinis, or is it an expression of affection in service to the story). The site also allows adult and kid readers to review and recommend an appropriate age limit for each movie. I always get a chuckle that nearly every kid recommends a far younger appropriate age than do adults for any given movie.
  - Bonobo
    
    I frequently use common sense media even though I have no kids. It gives you a pretty good idea of the tone and feeling of a movie which can help if you are on the fence about watching it.
    Also, since it has individual reviews I can laugh at the ‘appropriate for 2 year olds’ rating that one person gave Saw.
Tony Kennick

“children under the rated age may not enter theaters unless accompanied by an adult.” This applies to the 12A rating, the 15 rating is a strict limit accompanied or otherwise.
- Purplecat
  
  And there’s the real reason for the cut. the studio want the pull of an “age” rating, without actually excluding any paying customers.
  
  Interestingly, the 12A rating is the latest stage in the ongoing capitulation of the BBFC to studio gaming of the rating system. In the 80′s there was no rating between PG and 15. Then the huge chorus of whining about the 15 handed out to the 1989 version of Batman prompted the creation of the 12 rating, which was a limit, not an advisory rating. Further pressure around the 2002 Spider-Man, lead to the creation of the 12A certificate, which is advisory only. This suggests two things. One- the idea that comic characters are just for kids has never really gone away over here, and two- money and the MPAA rating system distorts the content of major studio films so much that it becomes impossible to operate a system that doesn’t copy it.
  - AlexG55
    
    There was a movement to replace 12 with 12A before Spiderman came out. Fellowship of the Ring (2001) had a PG rating with a special “advisory” that it was not recommended for children under 8. The other two LotR movies had 12A ratings.
Locobot

Fretting over blood spatter has me worried for this movie. There’s a scene with nudity in the book that is much more important to the character development. If it was done properly, with the full vulnerability and weight the scene should carry, it would certainly garner an R rating in the US.
- http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza
  
  DVD
Brad H.

It is [M] in Australia/New Zealand (recommended but not restricted for mature audiences) so it may have some balls (Scream had the same rating back in the day). The fact that it got PG-13 in the US though doesn’t make me totally confident though.

Whatever, I’ll probably watch Battle Royale afterwards.
garyg2

I’m not sure how I feel about THG in general. Haven’t read it yet so not getting into any major denounceations (yet ;)) but just feel… uneasy(?) about its themes and how they’ve been embraced by a generation.

Something like Battle Royale was obviously aimed at adults and was a smart critique on society yada yada… but THG is aimed at teens. Y’know, teens obsessed (I think I can use that word judging by my 16yo current state of anticipation) with teens killing teens.

So, maybe puzzled by the phenomena but not in any moral majority “ban it!” kind of way.
- dr_awkward
  
  Having devoured (heh, heh) all three books of The Hunger Games, let me say that anyone’s concerns about the violence should be quelled by the author bio at the end, which claims that Ms. Collins writes to explore the effects of violence on the young. Book 1 doesn’t really get into the PTSD (as there isn’t much “post” the trauma by the novel’s end), but if one reads the whole story arc, it makes sense.
- penguinchris
  
  I don’t feel that Battle Royale was “obviously” aimed at adults. There are books and movies about kids that are aimed at adults, but that one is ambiguous.
  
  Lots and lots of teenagers in Japan loved it both in book and movie form, and it prompted a lot of similarly themed stuff that despite any ratings is clearly aimed at the Japanese teenager market (Suicide Club being one example I can think of off the top of my head).
  
  I saw the film when I was maybe 16 (not long after it was released) and I loved it, understood its themes intimately, and was disturbed by the violence (as was intended). I suspect that Hunger Games is similar, but presumably not as depraved as Battle Royale, and that teens will understand it fine and aren’t just obsessed with teens killing teens.
  
  Having been a big Battle Royale fan, though, Hunger Games looks really stupid to me :)
dculberson

See also: Kill Bill with the Crazy 88 scene where in the US releases they switched to black and white to get past the censors. Silly.
Bliss

So, doing the math, this means we humans grow our blood splatter resistance levels at a rate of 2.33 seconds of blood splatter per year of life (7 seconds is the difference between rate 12 and 15).

This means that at my age, I could take 81.55 seconds of blood splatter. I could take one for science and put the scanners head explosion in a gif loop and chrono it to see what happens to me at 81.56 seconds (I better get a scientist minder and someone my age as control group).

Also, since when cinemas check your id they do not see how far you are from your previous/next birthday, this must mean the 2.33 seconds of blood splatter resistance are added to your brain the day of your birthday, so this means a baby under 12 months would disintegrate if it sees any blood splatter, but once it’s one year old it could resist 2.33 seconds of it before blowing.

We’re an interesting species
hostile_17

7 seconds… well, no point even watching it now then!