Australian release of Bumblebee a modified PG cut like UK?

[reillyd]

My ticket at the cinema today said PG (and all the trailers were the same kid friendly ones I saw with Into the Spiderverse) even though it was M when I booked the ticket last weekend.

I can think of only two things that might have been edited to reduce the rating, neither of which are missed.

Does it involve the squashy death of fleshlings? Because I'd pay good money to see the Witwickys become toejam

[griffin]

Looks like Paramount in Australia were really wanting a PG rating for the Bumblebee Movie... submitting it twice, and then appealing the decision to have it overturned from M to PG.


quoted from here

The original version (114 minutes in duration) was classified on 20 November 2018 as M, Action violence;

and a modified version of the film (of the same duration) was classified on 4 December 2018, also as M, Action violence.

On 11 December 2018, upon application by Paramount Pictures, the Classification Review Board, which is separate and independent from the Classification Board, reviewed the modified version of the film and classified it PG, Mild science fiction violence and mild themes. Some scenes may scare young children.

I don't see why Paramount went to so much trouble... if anything, it will hurt their ticket sales as less late teens and adults will want to see it if they think it is just a family movie with a PG instead of M. It's why the 1986 Movie had swear words added in, to bump it up from G to PG, so that it would increase ticket sales.
Even if they wanted it to have more of a family appeal, an M rating wouldn't have stopped parents taking their kids... the first five wouldn't have been making 500 million to 1 billion each if it wasn't for the kids and families going to see it and then buying the "kids" toys as souvenirs.

[hYpNoS]

Looks like Paramount in Australia were really wanting a PG rating for the Bumblebee Movie... submitting it twice, and then appealing the decision to have it overturned from M to PG.


quoted from here




I don't see why Paramount went to so much trouble... if anything, it will hurt their ticket sales as less late teens and adults will want to see it if they think it is just a family movie with a PG instead of M. It's why the 1986 Movie had swear words added in, to bump it up from G to PG, so that it would increase ticket sales.
Even if they wanted it to have more of a family appeal, an M rating wouldn't have stopped parents taking their kids... the first five wouldn't have been making 500 million to 1 billion each if it wasn't for the kids and families going to see it and then buying the "kids" toys as souvenirs.

Times changed, before it was about being edgy and cool, now its just getting as many people in the door, and they keep...pushing bumblebee as a kids fav so M would potentially block parents from seeing it with their little ones...maybe.

[Dan]

Looking past my own interests as an adult Transformers fan, I gotta say there is something broken if an adventure movie based on a toy franchise has difficulty getting a PG rating. The problem could be in the content but it could also be with how strictly that content is judged.

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

Around Christmas time, that PG rating could help them a lot, especally when competing against other kids movies.

Having a trawl of the classification website, you can see that although the running time is the same, (114 min), something might have been cut, as the M rating has a very mild rating of drug use and sex.
These are just themes, so it could include someone drinking a beer on screen and not the act of sex, but kissing etc.

The PG only has mild impact for themes, violence and language.

Or, it could well be that they just appealed on the grounds that the "impact" those three sections that pegged it for an M rating are so minor that they are not worth worrying about.

Chances are the movie was initially viewed as being at the upper end of the PG and very very lower end of the M, so got slapped with the M to err on the side of caution for the classification board.

[GoktimusPrime]

The most graphic thing I saw in the movie was (spoiler) Cliffjumper being cleaved in twain by Dropkick. Also the way that Sector 7 agents roughly handled Charlie and Memo was pretty rough too, especially when Jack Burns pushes Charlie to the ground, which triggered Bumblebee into a frenzied rage attack (/spoiler). Although I suspect that the bot on bot violence is more permissible under the PG rating due to robots counting as just property damage and not violence towards people or animals as far as censors are concerned. Transformers has always had an extraordinary level of violence for a kids' cartoon. Just ask Waspinator.