When a movie is doing well in test screenings yet viewers consistently characterize it as “nice” in the written remarks at the bottom of answer cards, a particular type of discussion takes place in studio marketing departments. Not unexpected. Good. When the term appears quietly in a focus group summary, it might start a heated discussion about whether the film has a perception issue and whether there is anything that can be done to address it before the film’s release date.
Although the effort to get an R-rating for a movie that hasn’t quite earned one in any natural way is not new, it has been more intentional and publicly debated in recent years. The reasoning goes something like this: even while a PG-13 rating seems reasonable from a business standpoint, it has drawbacks. It is a warning indication. It implies that a movie has been polished to appeal to as many people as possible, with risks avoided and edges filed off. In contrast, an R-rating suggests that anything in the movie was deemed too much—too honest, too raw, or too mature—for unfettered viewing. A certain type of viewer finds value in the inferred quality, even if it is only loosely related to the real content.
Submissions are assessed by the Classification and Ratings Administration using standards that address language, violence, sexual material, and adult themes together. A movie can go from PG-13 to R without altering its core character if a single scene or a few strong words are purposefully inserted or kept from an edit that might have removed them. Studios are aware of this. Producers and ratings consultants discuss the specific features that are working, the expected response from the board, and the viability of an appeal in the event that the initial submission is returned with the incorrect letter. Both parties are aware of the true stakes involved in this negotiation, which is conducted in the language of content descriptors.
Here, the business past is important. Deadpool’s 2016 release disproved the notion that R-rated movies inevitably lost out on box office success. It opened to numbers that most PG-13 superhero movies would have been happy with, and it did so while being really, strongly limited. That success showed that people will happily attend something that feels like it was intended for them precisely rather than tuned for the maximum potential ticket base, rather than just that explicit content sells. Studios took note. In other situations, the R-rating began to resemble a positioning tool rather than a commercial ceiling.
However, there is actual friction in the existing approach. Even if a movie has two instances of a certain term that elevate it above the rating level, it does not become truly edgy. The ability of audiences to distinguish between a film that earned its restriction and one that obtained it is fairly good. There are two versions of this campaign: one that is successful, in which a somewhat harsher rating actually releases a movie from the wholesome-adjacent shelf it would otherwise be on, and the other that causes a slight backlash when the rating’s actual content falls short of its indicated promise. Until the evaluations start coming in, it’s still unknown what kind of outcome a particular campaign is aiming for.
As this dynamic develops, it seems that the R-rating has acquired a cultural significance that goes a little beyond what the CARA criteria were intended to carry. For some viewers, it now serves as a rough acronym for seriousness—for a movie that believes that grownups are capable of handling complexity. The ratings system was never designed to determine whether a studio that carefully calibrates its programming to get into that category is earning or borrowing that legitimacy.
