Terminator 4 Gunning For Children!

Posted by Robert Fure (robert@filmschoolrejects.com) on May 5, 2008

But sadly, not in an awesome shooting children way, like we saw in Terminator 2 and Terminator 3. In a marketing, PG-13 rating kind of way. I know what you’re thinking: Fuck this. But hold on, just one second friends. I, the Angriest of Angries, will defend the PG-13 rating to you below. But first, let’s examine the facts.

The Terminator franchise features some of the highest grossing R-Rated films of all time. Clearly, people see these movies en mass without a PG-13 rating, so why change it? Well, Halcyon, the company that currently possesses the rights to the franchise, is aiming for truly epic toy marketing. I’m assuming this means action figures, figurines, and heck, maybe even a happy meal toy. Before you flip your lid, remember that Terminator 2: Judgement Day had a lot of marketing behind it. I remember playing with my T-800s and T-1000s and making the exoskeletons jump kick GI Joes. So an epic toy line is not necessarily a bad thing, especially considering I’m a mid-twenties 12 year old who loves putting toys on my DVD storage units. A new video game is also slated to open with the film, which they promise will not suck. Yeah, we’ll see.

Halcyon co-founder Derek Anderson says they haven’t discussed an R-Rating with the other studios involved and that nothing will be forced. They’re aiming to make the best possible movie to reach all audiences. Studio bullshit right? Right.

But let’s think about this for a second. The PG-13 rating generally sucks. Horror films are massive failures because of a lack of blood and violence and gritty things. Against people. That’s the key. If you kill aliens or robots, a la Aliens vs Predator or Star Wars you’re allowed to get away with a lot of stuff. Cursing has never been a huge part of the franchise and since this takes place in the future, we can assume and hope that we’re going to see massive people vs machine battles. So I’m sure we’ll see a fair share of humans get killed in a bloodless manner, which is pretty lame, but fairly normal for Hollywood anyways. But hopefully the machines will have utter hell and violence sowed upon them. So I’m not necessarily put off from the PG-13 rating for a Terminator movie that takes place in the future, because the MPAA has a long history of letting violence against non-humans slide.

PG-13 veteran (Batman Begins) Christian Bale is signed on for the film and that can be nothing less awesome. The Terminator himself may even be Josh Brolin. The point I’m trying to make here is that there is a lot of good surrounding this. Great actors. The future we’ve always wanted to see. Giant Robots. A massive merchandising campaign for us toy whores. New video games. So while I’m sure many of you are initially going to be upset, just consider what was discussed here. Maybe the film will still keep its balls even as a PG-13 movie. I don’t think this future film is one to be thrown away based on its rating right off the bat. Plenty of Science Fiction/Fantasy films have secured PG-13 ratings, even with nearly epic amounts of violence. Hellboy, Lord of the Rings, Iron Man, and Pirates of the Caribbean as well as the new Batman franchise are stuffing lots of great action into a PG-13 rating. I for one, still am holding out hope.

Warner Bros will release Terminator: Salvation in theaters in May 22, 2009. Set in the post-Apocalyptical warzone of 2029, John Conor leads the human forces against their robot oppressors.

Source: Variety

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