8 Times Superhero Movies Pushed The Boundaries Of PG-13
"How 'bout a magic trick?"
These days it's rare to see an R/18 rated superhero movie. There are exceptions of course (Watchmen, Kick-Ass, the Punisher films), but for the most part studios will always cater to the widest demographic possible in order to bring in the most coin possible - and that means a relatively family friendly PG-13.
Obviously that's a very smart financial strategy. Most superhero properties don't really require the R rated treatment anyway - though arguments have been made for more violent characters such as Wolverine and Batman over the years - but since the massive success of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, the temptation is always there to try to make everything a tad more edgy.
For this reason, superhero film-makers and writers are usually quite happy to work in the confines of a PG-13 world, but every now and again they'll slip in a scene or a moment that pushes the boundary of that rating. It won't always be particularly graphic or explicit, but will still usually makes audiences wonder how the heck they managed to get away with it.
Let's take a look at the 8 best examples of this. Some are blatant, others a bit more subtle, but all had to have the censors' fingers twitching.
8. Fox's X-Men F-Bomb Party - Various
The MPPA's PG-13 guidelines do allow for a single use of "one of the harsher sexually-derived words", (though somehow it's hard to imagine Hugh Jackman calling anyone a c**t) and Fox took full advantage of this with some hilarious examples of superhero swearing in their X-Men movies.
It began with Matthew Vaughn's X-Men: First Class when Wolverine told Xavier and Magneto to "go F-themselves", then we had an "F-you pretty boy" in the Wolverine, and the most recent example was Xavier returning the insult to Logan in X-Men: Days Of Future Past with a nice, straight to the point "F-off".
Though technically within their rights, Fox still took a chance allowing their superhero characters to drop F-bombs, and writers must be only too happy to see where they can slip them in to future movie scripts. Expect more mutant F'ing and blinding in X-Men: Apocalypse next year.