Why are there no more G-rated films?
Lee Unkrich, the director of Toy Story 3 and Coco, explains that "people just accepted that PG" is the new G
Film Features toy story
It’s hard to imagine a world without G-rated movies, but we’re getting there. Since the rating system was instituted in 1968, beloved films like Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, Babe, The Muppet Movie, Chicken Run, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Lion King, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and even Planet Of The Apes, along with plenty of animated features, have all carried G ratings.
Over the past two decades, however, the PG rating has increasingly gained favor among studios, filmmakers, and audiences, in part because longtime G-ratings powerhouse Disney and Pixar shifted their emphasis to PG films, starting with The Incredibles in 2004. Most of their subsequent films, including Coco, Soul, and Elemental, have carried a PG rating.
Writer/director Lee Unkrich spent 25 years at Pixar, where he co-directed Toy Story 2 and Finding Nemo, and directed Toy Story 3 and Coco. During a recent Zoom call he explained that, for a long time, Pixar felt beholden to an “expectation” that the company’s movies needed to be rated G. “We wanted them to be for everybody, from the littlest kids to great-grandparents,” Unkrich said, “and that’s what we did for many, many films.”
An Incredibles change at Pixar
Everything changed when Brad Bird pitched The Incredibles. “John loved it and wanted Brad to be at the studio,” Unkrich said, referring to longtime Pixar boss John Lasseter. “So, we made The Incredibles. But I think all of us understood from day one that that was not going to be a G-rated film, because it was going to have so much intense action and explosions, and the kinds of things we hadn’t had in a Pixar film up to that point. Everyone just held hands and said, ‘Alright, we’re gonna have the first PG-rated Pixar film.’ Of course, it was huge and popular, and it didn’t seem to matter that it wasn’t rated G.
How did the G rating fall so out of vogue that, as Unkrich notes, “it didn’t seem to matter” to even Pixar that their films would carry a PG? The reasons are plentiful, according to Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore, including a societal shift in thinking about what’s appropriate for small children, and the idea that G-rated films are burdened with the stigma of being uncool for teens and young adults. “Over time, as people became more accustomed to edgier fare, audiences wanted a little more edge to their movies,” he said. “And G became a tougher sell. Shrek was a turning point. Parents thought, ‘Wow, will this be OK for my kids? It’s PG.’ It’s so ironic that a slightly more restrictive rating, the PG versus G, in the modern era, opened those films up to a broader audience.”
It’s worth noting, however, that G movies still make big bucks. Pixar’s Toy Story 4, for instance, grossed $1 billion worldwide in 2019, while Paramount/Nickelodeon’s PAW Patrol: The Movie, which cost a relatively inexpensive $26 million to make, grossed $144 million worldwide in 2021. Still, PG seems like the safer bet for most titles, because it allows family films to go a bit darker and even drop in sly, wink-wink references for teens and adults.
Toy Story 3 incinerates the G-rating
But old habits die hard, especially in animated films. For Unkrich, “even after The Incredibles, there still was this unspoken [thought that], ‘We really want the movies to be rated G.’” The Toy Story 2 co-director, whose current project is an epic 2,200-page book about a memorable R-rated movie, called Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, continues: “In fact, I remember when I was making Toy Story 3, when we were finishing it up, I was 1,000 percent convinced that it was going to get a PG.”
How could it not with the infamous incinerator scene?
“I know! I know,” Unkrich acknowledged. “I remember there being conversations within the studio and with Disney just to prepare everyone that it was likely going to get a PG because of the intensity at the end of the film. At that point, a Disney executive who I’d rather not name, said, ‘Well, PG is the new G.’ That was a phrase I subsequently heard a lot. There was a point of transition where people just accepted that PG (replaced G). I don’t think parents, except maybe (those with) little kids, looked at a PG rating and gave it a second thought. I think they just thought, ‘If it’s not R, then it’s OK for my kids.”
G is the “light beer of ratings”
Bringing the G-rating saga full circle means boldly going to Robert Wise’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture. In 1979, the much-maligned first big-screen adventure of the Enterprise crew received a G despite a decent amount of violence and some interstellar sex between the characters played by Persis Khambatta and Stephen Collins. If you watch The Director’s Edition today, it’s rated PG.
“It was another strike against the film, being rated G,” said David C. Fein, producer of Star Trek: The Motion Picture—The Director’s Edition. “In 2000, we submitted the Director’s Edition for re-rating. It came back with the PG I expected, partially due to our sensibility change.”
But, Dergarabedian hastens to add, the G rating still means something … just something different. “It’s now more identified with concert films, documentaries, and nature documentaries like Monkey Kingdom and Bears,” he said. “You still see G-rated features like Toy Story 4, PAW Patrol, and The Peanuts Movie. Some of them do fantastic business at the box office. So, I think there’s always going to be a place for the G rating. If you’re particularly sensitive about what you’re going to see in a movie theater, or you’re looking after your kids, or for yourself, a G is a signifier that ‘Pretty much nothing in here is going to offend or scare anybody, no language, no drug references, no sexual situations.’ It’s like the light beer of ratings.”
92 Comments
I think part of it has to do with the ratings themselves changing over the years. Notably movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark and even Jaws were rated “PG” as there was nothing higher at the time and those movies actually pushed for a more “adult” rating to be available in the system.But also, looking at the list of G rated movies up top, I’m not sure any of them would actually be G if released today. Star Trek, 2001 and Planet of the Apes all have adult themes, and Planet of the Apes would be at least PG-13 under today’s system. Movies like Lion King and Toy Story 3 have pretty intense thematic elements and deal with death in ways that would probably push a PG rating. The boat scene alone would definitely cause Willy Wonka to be PG-13 by today’s standards.
or what about those PG films that snuck in nudity like Barbarella ..ooh wasn’t Andromeda Strain a G movie ?? surprised that was left out of this article.
It seems Splash is still rated PG, even after Disney+ removed its edit. The bath in the original Clash of the Titans held a lot of anticipation for young ones.
Airplane! (rated PG) has a scene in it where a no name, faceless, topless woman walks right in the shot and blocks the rest of the movie just to shake her boobs on camera.
Barbarella was before letter ratings and was “suggested for mature audiences.”
Yep, Airplane has full boobs and got a PG rating
I was too young to grok what was going on in the teleporter scene when I first saw Star Trek. Thank God.I feel like the boat ride in Willy Wonka doesn’t quite live up to its reputation. I was more scared of the fizzy lifting drink scene.
Yeah, I think if Willy Wonka were re-rated today, they’d slap a PG on it for “intense sequences” and call it a day.
Oh dude I forgot about the transporter scene–that’s an automatic PG right there.
I have to think the violence (and grotesque deaths of Belloq and Toht) would 100% push Raiders into PG-13. Jaws as well. It also does seem that anything that depicts death is now going to get a PG, which could oddly push movies like Bambi into that territory (how many AVC commenters were traumatized as children by his mother being shot?). The Toy Story movies are an interesting case since yet they have some intense scenes but nothing graphic.In the end it doesn’t really matter. A parent is going to be taking the small child to see the movie, it’s not like a 5 year-old is going to wander up to the counter and push his money across for a PG movie like a 19 year-old trying to nonchalantly buy a drink at a bar. And most parents think PG is going to be fine.
The rating system now includes things like “thematic elements” so even though there’s nothing particularly graphic, Toy Story definitely leans toward PG territory, especially in 3 when you see all the toys heading towards an incinerator and they all just silently accept their fate. Shit, I was a grown man when I saw that and thought “holy crap” to myself at that scene.Raiders, if rated today, would probably be PG-13. Jaws I feel would certainly be R. There are some pretty gory deaths, dismembered limbs, etc.
I think Jaws would be on the edge. PG-13 seems to allow for a fair bit of violence.
From what I recall there was some kerfluffle about 20 years ago about certain movies “getting away” with being PG-13 due to their influence, with the MPAA giving a favorable PG-13 to movies like Return of the King that featured pretty high levels of violence and gore (including catapulted severed heads), while other, tamer movies from smaller studios got slapped with R.
The impetus for this conversation really arose from the big theater chains starting to crack down on minors going to R-rated movies. I believe I remember AMC making a big deal—like, it was reported on the news and such—that they would start carding at the door for R-rated movies when Hannibal came out in 2001. I worked at AMC from 2005-2009 and we still carded at the door for popular R-rated movies during at least the opening weekend.This not only led to the “ratings creep” for major studios and tentpole films that you described, but also to the absolute glut of PG-13 horror and comedy movies throughout the 2000s. An R rating would significantly hamper box office potential, so studios were doing everything they could to get their big movies down to PG-13, especially if it targeted a teenaged audience. The advent of DVD also allowed them to more easily market “unrated versions” for home video that were, in most cases, versions of the movie that were originally given an R rating.
I remember Starship Troopers being a big part of this, even though it was earlier. That movie was HEAVILY marketed towards kids, with multiple toylines and commercials focusing on the action and sci fi stuff. But the actual movie was super violent and gruesome, plus has a fair bit of nudity and sexuality. I remember I was in high school (at least 15 years old) and my friends and I couldn’t get in to see it. They had signs up in the concession booth saying there would be no admittance to Starship Troopers without a guardian.
Robocop and Alien had toylines. Robocop and Rambo had animated series. Have to go back over a decade before Starship Troopers to see where this all started.
That’s all true, but there wasn’t quite the backlash on those movies when it came to theaters really cracking down on letting people see them. I was too young when Robocop and Alien came out, but I believe Alien had one figure released at the time, and the marketing for the movie was not geared as much toward children. Robocop may have been, like Starship Troopers it’s a Paul Verhoeven movie with a kid-friendly premise that ends up being a very adult film. But the existence of animated tie-ins kinda reinforces that, at the time of those movies, it wasn’t seen as such a big deal to market adult movies to kids. The thing that stuck out to me about Starship Troopers was just how much of a backlash there was to it, with theaters being extremely restrictive about letting anyone under 17 see it without a guardian. I’m pretty sure there were even news stories that pushed back against the kid-friendly marketing, hammering home that it wasn’t a kids movie.
‘Hellraiser’ was the first movie I went to where the theater was strict about not letting in anybody under 17, so I didn’t get to go since I was only 16. Before that, the only time anybody even questioned me was ‘Up The Creek’ when I was 13. And all that theater dude said was, “Are you parents okay with you seeing the movie?” and he took my word for it when I said, “yes”
I remember we had the Alien board game growing up.
It really does make one boggle at the thinking of major studios when they want a toy/merch bonanza…directed by Verhoeven.
Hannibal? It was nice of AMC to protect teens from disappointment.
The MPAA is way more permissive of violence over sex. Although it’s been probably almost 20 years since the documentary came out, This Movie Is Not Yet Rated shows the ridiculousness of the MPAA’s rating system.
About Jaws….didn’t the article above mention that nature documentaries are rated G?
Between the flesh-melting, the evisceration by propeller, and Indy flat-out shooting a dude, Raiders definitely earned not being a G.Also, no G movie should ever contain Nazis.
‘We can’t put Nazis in a G film!’‘No, no, no. We’re calling them Gnazis! With a silent g.’‘Genius!’
This highlights why the simplistic rating system based on age is not all that useful. It’s more important to include a couple of keywords that indicate why the film received a certain rating. Did something get an R for a couple of extra F-bombs or a graphic rape scene? Come to think of it, it’s insane that both of those things can bring about the same rating.
We’ve needed a rating between PG-13 and R for a very long time. Or, at the very least a recalibration of what defines PG-13. IMO, we need to go back to the pre-PG-13 definition of PG and reserve PG-13 for what we might call “soft R” films. The King’s Speech should’ve been the catalyst for such a change, but instead the studio just released a sanitized PG-13 version that basically everyone, audiences and critics alike, absolutely clowned on. Hell, Fox even turned it into a huge meta-joke with Once Upon a Deadpool, which appeared to be a direct response to that.Also, to the MPA(A)’s credit, they have implemented ratings descriptors on all ratings for about 20 years, and have had them for R-rated films since 1990. They’re more clearly listed these days but they’ve been around for a long time.
TIL Space Odyssey, my all-time favourite film, was rated “G” at release. Definitely would not get that rating today, given all the violence/death/psychedelia.
The psychedelia in 2001 is not drug-related so would probably get a pass, but yeah the violence and deaths wouldn’t.
That’s definitely right. G-rated movie transformed over time from meaning “ movie without significant problematic content” to meaning “movie for young children.” I don’t think the MPAA even gives seriously consideration to whether a movie about, and directed towards, adults should be rated G these days.
My husband and I currently showing our daughter classic movies we loved growing up. Most of the PG movies would not be considered PG today.
What you’re missing, and pretty much everyone else here is missing, is that PG-13 wasn’t a thing until 1984. The MPAA did a mix up on how they rate movies due to highly violent movies that had been marketed towards a younger audience. Movies like Gremlins and Temple of Doom were PG rated because they didn’t have very much to justify an R rating but much more violent than Toy Story 3. Red Dawn was the first big PG-13 movie.
Because our cultural and societal baseline now is crassness.
Pixar should go for a hard R next time
Or NC-17. Although there have been animated movies like 1972’s “Fritz the Cat” that were that (or rather X as the rating was called then).
Full penetration.
torn between Adult Toy Story and HORN-E for this one
Finding DildoFrotatouilleThe Give-HeadiblesA Butt’s Life (Yup, that’s the one.)
In many ways Mad TV was ahead of its time, and in many more ways it was behind its time. Either way, it brought us this.
this is our new friend buzzy, when he is happy, he buzzes , and makes other people very happy, YAY.
BALL-E was right there
I was wondering how they’d handle the teenage version of Inside Out.
(Randy Newman singing voice) You’ve got a friend in me. You’ve literally got a friend in me. Now here’s your other friend, and I think we agree. I’m about to have two friends in me!
Wall-E, after 30 minutes of silently exploring a desolate world, sees Eve and strains to speak after years of silence:“Fuck.”
Toy Story 5: Meet the new toys in Andy’s mom’s dresser drawer
Planet of the Apes had naked Heston butt and pulled a G. I remember tons of PG films from the ‘70s and ‘80s that had (albeit brief) nudity too, although not anything sensual. But then Temple of Doom and Gremlins pushed the PG envelope, PG-13 came along, and it feels like people’s sensibilities moved up to adjust to it.
“You maniacs! You neutered the G rating! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!”
Funny enough, the MPAA originally gave Poltergeist an R rating.
I would argue that the face peeling scene in Poltergeist still should rank an R rating.
I don’t think that rises to the level of restricting that movie to 17 and older though. PG 13 yes, but not R.
When watching older movies in my household (three teenagers), we’ve always referred to them as “’80s PG”. You might get some bad words like shit, bitch, a couple f-bombs plus maybe a boob flash, but still not an R like it would be today.Whereas today’s PG-13 movies, it seems like you can have all the sexual innuendo (without being visual or using the word fuck more than once) and maybe some violence that shows intestines, brains, impalement, etc. And God forbid someone smokes in a movie.I know I’m old but it doesn’t seem to make sense.
That’s a good way to describe it. It’s all part of the deliberate and gradual pussification of America!
There was a movie called “This Film is Not Yet Rated” about the secrecy and unaccountability of the MPA(A). One of the throughlines is that the MPAA just got increasingly drunk on PTA-energy and started slapping harsher ratings on foreign movies and nudity and gay kissing etc that made it harder to market films but also convinced audiences that the ratings were decreasingly relevant to their interests and threshold sensitivities.Which is how Joker eventually makes a billion at the box office with a R rating.
This is the problem with Marvel since Endgame. Like, I was watching GotG3 and they drop a tactical F-bomb…but it’s like, if my kid watched that movie they’d absolutely repeat that because of how it was placed.And it’s like, yeah, I can teach my kid when and how to use swears, but there’s also part of me that doesn’t need him dropping f-bombs when he starts first grade in a few weeks.
With box office revenues on an overall downward trend, I wonder how much longer ratings are even going to matter, or if they even still do. Seems like now that everything ends up on streaming, the ratings have a negligible effect on total lifespan revenue. Especially now that millennials have been having kids for a while now just show them all the movies they loved growing up, plus any new entries to their favorite franchises, regardless of rating.
I’m wondering this too, as Red Band trailers (which almost felt forbidden back in my day) become more commonplace when going to the cinema.
Nothing as easy and breezy as an “Issue Investigation” article that solves the question with… outside quotes from a total of two people. Right, Ian?
Ratings inflation strikes again!
I noticed the next Paw Patrol movie is rated PG. I also read that movie executives see it as the next Watership Down, but I could be making that up.
I think it’s also that we’ve all looked the other way for way to long on the police brutality wrought by the Paw Patrol.
It’s going to be the Wrath of Khan of Paw Patrol. Like that classic Star Trek film it will be a sequel to an episode, in this case ‘Paw-lice Bru-tail-ity’ which dealt with the German Shepherd police dog shooting an unarmed Black Lab in the back.
We’ve swallowed a lot of propaganda put out by the Paw Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association.
Pawpaganda!
I read somewhere recently that for Transformers the movie from 1986 they decided to have a character say “shit” because that would guarantee them a PG rating. Which they wanted since movie theaters had more slots throughout the day for PG movies so they could make more money.
I left a similar comment above before seeing yours. It’s true!
Also Ultra Magnus saying “damn” (the horror). There was a cut scene (that means edited out, Gamers) where he also says “shit,” too.
Transformers the Movie got a G rating in Australia back in 1986 back when we were made of sterner stuff. Just learned it got rerated to PG in 2005.(I saw it and Aliens on my own as a preteen back in 1986.)
Pretty sure they cut “shit” out of the Australian version until the first DVD release by Madman, though.We also got a fancy Star Wars style opening scrawl, and assurance Optimus Prime would return. At least that was the version my Aunty taped off the TV when it premiered.
It was so parents could see the characters which were also toys in stores.
You have to consider the purpose of the rating system in the context of how movies were seen when the rating system was created in 1968. Back then, movies were seen in theaters. Any movie that eventually turned up on TV was going to cut to the equivalent of a G rating or shown late at night. There was no cable, no rental, no streaming. Very small (pre-school age) children were not going to see movies alone. Now the rating system is meant to serve as an indicator of whether a parent can set their kid up in front of the TV and go take a nap.All that said, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) is rated freakin’ PG. Violence, gore, nudity, drugs, smoking, alcohol use, and TERRIFYING content. I saw it without my parents in the theatre in 1978 at the age of 11. Didn’t sleep for weeks. No guidance was offered beyond “turn off your damn light and go to sleep.” (Edit: It’s a masterpiece, one of my favorites, but not appropriate for an 11 year old.)
Not to mention the scene in the beginning where Sutherland’s health inspector character finds a rat turd in a restaurant kitchen that the chef claims is merely a spilled caper. This introduced me to the concept of health inspectors and the possibility that restaurant food that I might eat might have been prepared in an unsanitary environment, which I found as scary as the pod people.
Studios working on kids movies
I usually assume if something is rated G that as an adult, I probably won’t like it because it has less depth. So I think PG has in some ways also made some adults assume it’s “better.”
1980’s “The Nude Bomb,” the “Get Smart” theatrical movie disaster, was initially rated G despite some cartoonish gunplay. The producers though that was the kiss of death so they went back and added a couple of “Shits” to ensure a PG. The ironic part was that despite the title, there was no nudity at all except for a distant shot of Max, Chief and 34 running away after their clothes disappeared as part of the fallout from the Nude Bomb. (Yes, the movie was as bad as that quick scene description makes it sound.)
However, the desk chase sequence is pretty fun.
Of course it had a few cute moments, and the plot did feel like something a comedic Bond villain would dream up. But fans loved Max and 99 together, and her absence was insurmountable.
I remember my parents let me watch Annie Hall when I was like 10 because it was rated PG. I still thinks that’s funny.
On the plus side, ten year olds are Allen’s target audience.
Annie Hall remains woefully overrated in my eyes, and my opinion isn’t based in any way on Woody Allen’s, um, “mishaps.”
I was a kid when the ratings system went into use and because I was also a dorky kid who read a lot of newspapers and magazines at a young age I distinctly remember that the G rating developed a stigma almost overnight, particularly for adult movies. Studios and directors almost immediately began lobbying to have their films’ ratings changed from G to PG then PG-13 when that was introduced a few years later. A G rating was synonymous with Disney fare circa “The Apple Dumpling Gang” era and nobody, adult or kid, wanted to touch a G movie with a ten-foot pole. It was actually something kids joked about at the time, how the religious family across the street wouldn’t let their kids see anything other than G rated movies (and boy was that a scarlet letter).
Wow it’s almost like movie ratings are a bunch of subjective garbage, created by religious extremists and shoehorned into the film industry as an unbelievably audacious scam.
It is part of the problem we have that nudity and sex is considered vastly worse than violence. Parents keep kids from media with nudity and sex but let them be exposed to as much violence as possible. We are a country of messed up violent puritanical prudes with gun fetishes.
My wife’s mom use to self edit movies for them along these lines. So she saw all the decapitations and brutal deaths in Conan but didn’t see the Witch fuck scene until she rewatched it with me as an adult. Her brother still thinks that is perfectly normal.
There is or was a service like that. they would edit and censor movies for those pearl clutching super puritanical folks out there. It also reminds me of a comedy from I think the 90’s one of those rando teen comedies. There is a character getting sick in the back seat the OG line was something like “I’m gonna puke all over the place” for the TV edit however it was changed to “I’m gonna piss all over the place” I am not sure in what world that was a more appropriate change.
You have to scrub a movie of potentially objectionable content – not just the obvious shit, but things like “peril” – pretty hard to get a G these days, so it’s no wonder it’s fallen into a “for babies, I guess” abyss.
I always enjoy a good discussion on how arbitrary the MPA’s system can be.One film seldom discussed is Big. Despite having pretty adult content and tone, and even and F bomb, it garnered a PG rating in 1988, four years after PG-13 was created. Some would argue it’s because Big is a kids’ movie, but I contest that assertion. Big is much more adult-oriented than it is some whimsical kid fantasy.
Another fun one: the producers of the 1986 Transformers deliberately included a few light curses and even blasphemy to make sure they got a PG rating.
G-ratings are like honeybees. Innocuous, maybe even taken for granted, but if they’re gone, it will signal our doom…
I just remembered watching The Goonies in class in 6th grade (probably a last-day-before-a-break party). The teacher had to leap up to fast forward the closeup of the repaired statuette. She did nothing about Mouth’s Spanish translations though.
I wasn’t even a teenager when I went on my own to see both Aliens and Predator as there was effectively no age restriction in Australia for either of them at the time … and it was awesome!
The studios are adding a little something for daddy. Bring out the girls!