The sound you may have just heard faintly in the distance were pearls being clutched, as audiences of a certain generation decry the snowflakes that have blunted, softened, and regularly canceled the harder edges of the world they used to live in.
The latest to generate plenty of “back in my day…” talk hails from the United Kingdom, and the ratings board in particular. After the BBFC reviewed a slate of classics and reappraised them through a modern lens, many are no longer deemed suitable for children.
The Empire Strikes Back has been upgraded from U (as in Universal, all-ages) to a PG, while The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring has been bumped from a PG to a 12A, effectively the equivalent of a PG-13. Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark joins the first chapter in the Middle-Earth saga, which is almost certainly to do with the face-melting.
In the grand scheme of things, it changes absolutely nothing other than getting people up in arms about the kids these days being too soft for their own good, but let’s not pretend that we all spent a great deal of our younger lives watching movies that we weren’t supposed to. It’s a rite of passage for any fan of cinema, and the fact that the titles in question are 41, 40, and 20 years old, respectively, hardly means it’s a game-changer for the industry.
Published: Dec 21, 2021 10:39 am