9 Films That Forced You To See The Wrong Version In The Cinema

4. The Blood Was Cut For A Family-Friendly Rating - The Hunger Games

Killing's pretty commonplace in modern cinemas. If a blockbuster doesn't have swathes of goons being retired permanently it'll stands out. And when it's faceless bad guys it's not much of an issue (assuming we're not dealing with Rambo level violence). It is, however, a little bit different when it's kids killing kids. One of the biggest problems with bringing The Hunger Games to the big screen was figuring out how to deal with all the teenage violence. Although Suzanne Collins' books tends to deal more with survival, there's too much killing to be ignored. Battle Royale, which is at the very least very similar to Katniss' adventure, went all in with the gore, but, wanting the lucrative PG-13/12A rating, this wasn't an option for The Hunger Games. In the end Gary Ross and co. went for some cleverly chosen shots, but even then it wasn't enough. In the UK the BBFC stated that as the film stood it would get a 15 rating, meaning a key chunk of the book's audience wouldn't be able to watch the film, so all of the blood (particularly at the start of the games) was digitally removed and some of the shots were artificially darkened to hide some of the worst moments. An uncut version eventually found its way onto Blu-Ray, but in cinemas fan were left wanting. The scene at the cornucopia is still haunting with its eery soundtrack, but it doesn't quite pack the same punch of realism as it could.