Prometheus rated O -

[Fone_Bone_2001]

I prefer Church Authority. I am tired of the vagueness that permeates ideas about right and wrong. We live in a culture where what was Rated R 10 years ago is now, what? PG-13?

Peace,
Ed

I don’t like vagueness about morality, either. We also, however, have to be consistent and rational in how we apply moral norms. The depiction of evil isn’t necessarily immoral itself… I truly think that what matters is how evil is portrayed.

In terms of secular MPAA ratings, I’ll grant you that they might be something to pay attention to, as at the very least, consistent standards govern those ratings.

Still, I honestly don’t care what a movie is rated or how that has shifted, since those ratings themselves don’t automatically reflect the reasons behind them.

For instance, a movie might be rated R for violence alone. Or for sexual content alone. Or even for language alone. Frost/Nixon, a great film with absolutely no violence or sexual content depicted, is rated R simply because the “f” word is used more than once.

PG-13 is no more consistent: maybe it’s rated PG-13 because of Lord of the Rings-style action alone. Or maybe it’s some kind of comedy replete with sexual references, nudity, drug references, etc. You just don’t know. To use those ratings well, you have to look up the reason they were given.

Because of that, I just cut out the middle man and go straight to that website I linked to that will tell me the content without applying arbitrarily age-based ratings.

 

[colliric]

I’m a little confused…NC 17 is worse than R.

Oh sorry, in my country “R18+” is actually the highest standard rating so I guess that’s the equilivent rating for NC17, however alot of films that were rated NC 17 in your country were actually rated MA15+(Or on tv AV15+) in my country(which I guess is the equlivent of your R rating as the second highest rating). In fact most of them are.
Examples: American Pie, Scream, etc. So you can understand my confusion.

In Australia the rating system goes like this:
G - General(The Lion King, Bambi)
PG - Parental Guidence Recommended(Star Wars, Toy Story, Shrek)
M15+ - Recommended for Mature Audiences 15 years and older(Alien, Spiderman, The Silence Of The Lambs, etc)
MA15± Restricted to Mature Audiences 15 years and older, under 15s must be accompanied by parent or guardian over the age of 18(all 4 Scream films, Prometheus, American Pie, There’s Something about Mary).
R18+ AND X18+ - Restricted to Mature Audiences 18 years and older. X rating indicates pornography.(Pulp Fiction, Resevoir Dogs, etc)

 

[edwest2]

No, it’s not that bad. What was once R rated 10 years ago is mostly NC-17(in your country) these days, or MA15+ in mine.

I agree It’s shameful rating standards have laxed, but please don’t exaggerate it.

Thank you the correction, but please keep in mind, morality in general, in the media, continues to decline. Which is why I see only one or two movies a year. I think Catholics need to hew closer to Church teaching.

Peace,
Ed

 

[MrZoom]

Oh sorry, in my country “R18+” is actually the highest standard rating so I guess that’s the equilivent rating for NC17, however alot of films that were rated NC 17 in your country were actually rated MA15+(Or on tv AV15+) in my country(which I guess is the equlivent of your R rating as the second highest rating). In fact most of them are.
Examples: American Pie, Scream, etc. So you can understand my confusion.

In Australia the rating system goes like this:
G - General(The Lion King, Bambi)
PG - Parental Guidence Recommended(Star Wars, Toy Story, Shrek)
M15+ - Recommended for Mature Audiences 15 years and older(Alien, Spiderman, The Silence Of The Lambs, etc)
MA15± Restricted to Mature Audiences 15 years and older, under 15s must be accompanied by parent or guardian over the age of 18(all 4 Scream films, Prometheus, American Pie, There’s Something about Mary).
R18+ AND X18+ - Restricted to Mature Audiences 18 years and older. X rating indicates pornography.(Pulp Fiction, Resevoir Dogs, etc)

Your PG and G ratings are essentially the same as in the US, and your R18+ is roughly equivalent to our NC-17. There is no “official” rating for porn films, though the porn industry has self-applied the X rating, and multiples thereof, for the last few decades.

Your middle two ratings have no exact equivalent in the US. M15+ would be close to our PG-13, but the age cutoff here is 13. Similarly, MA15+ is close to our R, but the age cutoff here is higher, 17.

I should add, also, that the two R18 films you mentioned got R ratings here, so it was possible for those under 17 to get in with an adult.

 

[7_Sorrows]

Prometheus was a terrible film and should be rated O, not because of the anti religious message, but because it was very badly written and directed. The story and characters were unconvincing and the plot was highly illogical despite the fantastic premise. Even if you accepted the premise that aliens created us, the filmmakers did a very bad job making that believable. Who cares if the special effects were amazing, the story seemed like it was written by 8th graders, so the effects were a waste of time and millions of dollars.

Nobody should take this film seriously.

i wouldn’t say that it was a terrible film, but i would say that it was poorly written and that at times the story and some of the characters were unconvincing. with all of the money poured into this movie, i was disappointed in the little time they must have spent on the storyline and development of characters. it seemed some of the scenes they through in there as though they had to and just came off as silly instead of scary. there were some good moments and i did think the actor who played David did a good job with his role.
i couldn’t understand why the role of the “old man” had to be brought into the film. that could have been left out as far as i was concerned.

 

[MrZoom]

Oh sorry, in my country “R18+” is actually the highest standard rating so I guess that’s the equilivent rating for NC17, however alot of films that were rated NC 17 in your country were actually rated MA15+(Or on tv AV15+) in my country(which I guess is the equlivent of your R rating as the second highest rating). In fact most of them are.
Examples: American Pie, Scream, etc. So you can understand my confusion.

In Australia the rating system goes like this:
G - General(The Lion King, Bambi)
PG - Parental Guidence Recommended(Star Wars, Toy Story, Shrek)
M15+ - Recommended for Mature Audiences 15 years and older(Alien, Spiderman, The Silence Of The Lambs, etc)
MA15± Restricted to Mature Audiences 15 years and older, under 15s must be accompanied by parent or guardian over the age of 18(all 4 Scream films, Prometheus, American Pie, There’s Something about Mary).
R18+ AND X18+ - Restricted to Mature Audiences 18 years and older. X rating indicates pornography.(Pulp Fiction, Resevoir Dogs, etc)

Just noticed the M15+ list … two of those, Alien and Silence of the Lambs, got R ratings in the U.S.

So in some cases, you’re more restrictive than our MPAA is, and sometimes you’re less restrictive.

BTW, I see you listed Toy Story with a PG rating. IIRC, all three movies in that franchise got a G here.

 

[colliric]

Just noticed the M15+ list … two of those, Alien and Silence of the Lambs, got R ratings in the U.S.

So in some cases, you’re more restrictive than our MPAA is, and sometimes you’re less restrictive.

BTW, I see you listed Toy Story with a PG rating. IIRC, all three movies in that franchise got a G here.

Silence of the Lambs was the reason why they introduced the MA15+ rating, not being violent enough to warrant an R18 rating but being very violent and pushing the M rating to it’s limit, Originally the system just went from M to R18. The film, along with Batman Returns(for diffrent reasons, it got a PG rating originally when it should have been at least an M), sparked a classification debate that resulted in the MA15 rating being introduced.

However the film continues to be rated the original rating of M anyway as the Classification Office sees that as being consistent.

 

[MrZoom]

Silence of the Lambs was the reason why they introduced the MA15+ rating, not being violent enough to warrant an R18 rating but being very violent and pushing the M rating to it’s limit, Originally the system just went from M to R18. The film, along with Batman Returns(for diffrent reasons, it got a PG rating originally when it should have been at least an M), sparked a classification debate that resulted in the MA15 rating being introduced.

However the film continues to be rated the original rating of M anyway as the Classification Office sees that as being consistent.

Kind of how we got our PG-13 rating. The second Indiana Jones movie, Temple of Doom, got a PG rating in 1984 despite having a scene of a man having his heart ripped out. Apparently the MPAA didn’t think the scene was graphic enough for an R but there was such an outcry that it led to a new rating between PG and R.

Temple of Doom retained its plain PG rating, just like you said Silence of the Lambs continued to be classified M.

 

[smittee]

I am saddened by people who say do this but not that, and go ahead and ignore what any Catholic reviewer or the Bishops have to say. Personal choice is fine, but there still is such a thing as right and wrong. And if we ignore that then we become our own guides, with anything said by the Bishops or a Catholic reviewer as being second or third in line.

And we, as Catholics, better pay attention to what our leadership is saying. The world tends to side with the sick, disgusting and immoral…

We got a different review outcome over here (some spoilers): Catholic Church in Australia - Film Reviews 2012 - Prometheus

I read that review as saying:

• Prometheus tries to ask provocative questions, but doesn’t do it that well.
• Parents with teens might benefit knowing that it uses extreme violence to shock and the reviewer thinks the “MA” rating is lenient.

 

[colliric]

We got a different review outcome over here (some spoilers): Catholic Church in Australia - Film Reviews 2012 - Prometheus

I read that review as saying:

• Prometheus tries to ask provocative questions, but doesn’t do it that well.
• Parents with teens might benefit knowing that it uses extreme violence to shock and the reviewer thinks the “MA” rating is lenient.

Incorrect. The review was written before the film was released, and it was going to be rated M at the time. He thought the proposed “M” rating was lenient. Which it was, hence the review board revised it’s original rating(which the review actually mentiones, but at the time of writing the review the new rating was yet to be released, so he commented on the M rating).

 

[smittee]

Incorrect. The review was written before the film was released, and it was going to be rated M at the time. He thought the proposed “M” rating was lenient…

I did miss the change in classification from M back to MA.

Nonetheless, my point was not incorrect: our Australian reviewer warned parents about the level of violence, but did not give the opinion that Prometheus is morally offensive and to be avoided.