Rated 'R' for Non-Stop Violence

One of my favorite little surprises in life is reading the MPAA ratings of movies....you know, those G, PG, PG-13, R ratings. I was a little sad I was not the first to report on the wording of these ratings even though they've been a continual running joke between one of my brothers and I (I'll get to that later). Another website posted an article on the subject just a week ago (as I was looking for what the rating system is called), and now I am sad :'(

Anyway, I'll trudge forward and write this anyway.

When Resident Evil 3: Extinction came out in 2007, my second oldest brother and I went to go see it. I remember watching the trailer for it on TV and the rating caught my eye: "Rated 'R' for Non-Stop Violence"

If you haven't figured that out, that is probably the coolest friggin rating ever. It's the kind of thing you see and it makes you go "HELL YEAH! NON-STOP VIOLENCE! THIS IS GONNA BE AWESOME!" It conjures up images of intense dialouge between two characters while in the background of the shot two dudes are kung-fu fighting. Or in this case, zombies are kung-fu fighting.

(this is what Google Image Search came up with on "Kung Fu Zombie"...non-stop violence?)

Needless to say, I felt a tad bit slighted when I went to watch the movie and the cool black guy died. Oh, and also when there were actually STOPS in the violence. I felt betrayed. I felt lied to. I was promised perpetual violence and the movie DID NOT DELIVER. I guess my movie going expectations are a tad too high.

One movie that DID deliver, however, was The Lord of the Rings: the Return of the King. Despite the fact that I'm already a massive nerd for all things Tolkien I love these movies dearly (yes, I even forgive the displacement of Tom Bombadil) and so, upon the 27th time watching RoTK, I looked on the back of the box and found the rating.

"Rated PG-13 for intense epic battle sequences and frightening images."

Yes. Intense Epic Battle. Some genius in the MPAA writing department added the word EPIC(probably a LoTR geek, too) and thus made the rating x infinite cooler. It's like its own little marketing device.

That's about all I have to comment on. I think I'm going to look up as to where I can obtain my copy of Kung Fu Zombie.