10 Trends That Are Killing Movies

3. Cutting Films For Ratings

How frustrating is it when a franchise you love gets a new entry, but that new entry has been cut down to ensure a 12A/PG-13 rating? The violent lineage of the prior entries is ruined, as in Die Hard 4.0, whereby Bruce Willis' John McClane wasn't even able to say his iconic phrase, "Yippie yay-ay, motherf**ker!", due to the rating, and the violence was considerably toned down too. At least that film has an Extended Cut on the DVD that restores all of the language and some violence, but something like The Hunger Games, which had its wings clipped in production, isn't quite so lucky. The film, with its violent narrative of children killing children, isn't exactly suited to a 12A rating, but they somehow managed to do it, by having the camera shake uncontrollably, masking the savage violence and giving us all headaches at the same time. This alone is proof that the film should have been given a 15 rating, but alas, it's all about the money at the end of the day, and they knew this would have been the death knell for the worldwide cume. Instead, we get an inferior, clunky-looking product that doesn't begin to fulfil its potential.