Logan director James Mangold has been quite outspoken lately. First, he criticized post-credits scenes in films, calling them “really f*cking embarrassing.” Now, he’s wading into cinema’s PG-rating and how it ties into the violence that’s actually being depicted on-screen.
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Mangold believes that the entire ratings process is flawed because it depends on the character’s agony as opposed to the sheer volume of death and violence that may actually be happening on a wider scale within the film.
“I have a lot of misgivings about violence and PG ratings,” the director said in an interview with The Credits. “A PG film might show hundreds of people dying, falling off buildings, getting mowed down by rapid fire guns, but you don’t feel the deaths because the ratings system dictates the amount of agony being played by the actor. In a weird way, that makes violence more palatable because when we excise the upsetting bits, we de-sensitize ourselves to death to the point where it’s almost like shooting ducks at a carnival.”
Usually, these kinds of movies get a PG-13 rating as opposed to a PG rating (as per Man of Steel), but it’s something that clearly weighed on Mangold’s mind when he unleashed Hugh Jackman’s Oscar-nominated final run as Wolverine in a very gory and bloody fashion for Fox.
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“We wrote a movie about a character struggling with the PTSD from three lifetimes of mayhem and violence, so it was important to feel the toll all that bloodshed has taken on Logan’s soul,” Mangold said about Logan’s R-rating, which he admitted allowed “the freedom to make a more sophisticated movie.” Well, if Mangold has any future plans to do another comic book movie, he’ll have quite a lot of things to factor in given his recent spate of comments.