Is Fox Really Planning to Go PG-13 on 'Die Hard 4'?
Filed under: Action, RumorMonger, 20th Century Fox, Remakes and Sequels
A few months back Cinematical heard a few murmurs that Fox's Live Free or Die Hard might (might!) be angling for a PG-13 rating, but the Fox publicity department informed our contact that there was "no story here," which is a phrase that could be taken numerous ways. (Those crafty publicists!) Now we hear from Bruce Willis (in a Vanity Fair magazine article, as quoted by AICN) that, yep, the studio very well could (could!) be moving forward with the PG-13 plan.Now, I'm not going to unravel and fly off on a nerdly tangent (kinda like AICN's Vern did, albeit very entertainingly), but good lord is this a bad idea! Turning a well-established "hard R" action series into something a little cuddlier for the teenage crowd -- pure silliness. The target audience for Die Hard 4 is ... me: A thirty-(koff)-year-old movie nerd who saw all three of the Die Hard flicks during their original theatrical run and is more than enthusiastically prepared to re-welcome John McClane back to the multiplexes. I'm the guy who made your series such a smash, Fox people, and if you decide to trim the flick down, edit out the intensity, soften the blows, and neuter the flick for fifteen-year-olds who'll always see ANY movie they want, regardless of MPAA rating ... I simply won't go see it. And this is coming from a guy who was excited to see Perfect freakin' Stranger because Bruce Willis was in it.
I'm guessing someone at Fox will come to their senses sooner or later. I mean really: Not every damn summer flick has to be tailor-made for the teenagers. I love the kids and all, but isn't 89% of the Hollywood fare made for them in the first place? (97% in the summer.) Can't us semi-grown-up action freaks have at least one movie this summer? Then again, Return of the King was also PG-13, and I don't hear anyone whining about how weak those action scenes were ... No! No, I must stop trying to see the other side of the argument! No PG-13 Die Hard movies! That wretched PG-13 monster already ruined my beloved horror genre! It can't get John McClane too!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-03-2007 @ 12:29PM
scott said...
yippie-kai-yay-motherfunker!
i'm with ya, scott, what a load of bullshit.
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5-03-2007 @ 1:49PM
dave said...
I agree 100%. It may have Bruce Willis as John McClane, but without gratuitous cursing and violence it is not a Die Hard movie.
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5-03-2007 @ 1:13PM
Rick said...
I agree!!! How dare the studio disgrace the House of McClane by pandering to the kids! Teens are already getting action from Spidey and Transformers.
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5-03-2007 @ 1:25PM
AJ MacReady said...
Scott:
You say true, gunslinger. (see? BIG geek here, too.) If Fox makes this flick into a wussy-ass PG-13 flick I may just physically explode. I mean, Christ, they did the SAME thing with AVP and it appears they realized their mistake there, as I heard the sequel to that is fully R rated in all its gory glory. I am also a 30 year old Die Hard fan who demands an action flick for adults! And how old were today's teenagers when the first flick came out - friggin' 5?!? They probably don't even know just HOW much ass Bruce has kicked in his career! Or why he is THE MAN!
Okay, breathe. . .breathe, whew. I can only say to Fox: You make me sad.
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5-03-2007 @ 2:54PM
Jonathan said...
Theaters don't keep kids out of R rated action flicks, because the parents take them anyways. I saw six year old kids in the same row as me during '300'.
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5-03-2007 @ 3:03PM
Rich Drees said...
Don't you understand?! FOX HAS to make this PG-13, otherwise they won'y be able to flog an "Unrated Director's Cut" DVD to us a year from now!!!
Don't question your corpoerate overlords!
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5-03-2007 @ 10:00PM
Jeanine said...
Hey i am only 15 myself and a big Bruce Willis fan... But i agree i mean no matter if the rating is PG13 or R i go and see any movie i want and so do all other teens... I wouldn't want them to brake the chain of awsome Die Hard flicks by making this one PG-13 thats gay... Bruce Willis doesn't deserve that rating for his great action packed flicks... i say
YIPPI-KI-YAY- MOTHERFUCKER!!!!
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5-03-2007 @ 4:56PM
Riz said...
Guys, let's not forget they did the same thing with the Aliens and Predator franchises. Remember the cuddly mashup that is Aliens VS Predator. It was rated PG-13!!!!!!!!
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5-03-2007 @ 10:52PM
Pranav said...
RE: Jonathan
6-year olds during 300 or unaccompanied 10-year olds during Grindhouse ... which has loads of titties in the trailers and quite a few F-words. It doesn't matter to them. Times have changed ... so must the MPAA ... but I'm a pawn ... we need to "rattle their cage"!
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5-04-2007 @ 7:50AM
Morgan K Freeberg said...
I love the kids and all, but isn't 89% of the Hollywood fare made for them in the first place? (97% in the summer.) Can't us semi-grown-up action freaks have at least one movie this summer?
Bingo. I've been yammering about this for years, alone, and it's been like having a freakin' itch you can't scratch.
Not just with regard to diminished MPAA ratings either. For longer than any one among them has been alive, the under-fifteen crowd has been destroying the movie industry, bit by bit. You could make the industrialist argument "it must make commercial sense, for if it did not then they wouldn't do it." We are long past the point where sensible people must suspect things are more complicated than that in Tinseltown.
One word? I'll give you two words: Joke you!
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5-05-2007 @ 12:39AM
Benjamin Heckendorn said...
This movie is going to suck any way you slice it, but I was planning to watch it regardless. Now if it's PG-13? No thanks. Watch Die Hard 1 or 2 and tell me if it'd be the same without the endless violence and profanity. I thought "300", being quite average yet rated R and making serious dough, would have changed Hollywood's mind on this sort of thing. Guess not.
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