Friday, October 7, 2016

A Letter to the Movie Industry (Or a gripe about the movies of today)



So, there's a lot of movies out there today. They premiere all the time. But I've noticed something, something kind of big.
A lot of movies that come out aren't exactly wholesome or family friendly. And those things are really important to me, the opportunity to watch a movie with my family and feel good about it.
I search "2016 Movies" on Google and I looked up the ratings (as in G, PG, PG-13, and R) for each movie listed there (which were not all the movies of 2016). The results: no G rated movies, which is, very sadly, not that surprising; 11 PG movies; 25 PG-13 films; lastly, 13 were R rated (which, in my personal opinion, are 13 films too many).
So I thought I'd go back a few years (specifically 2012) to see if we had better movies, in a rating sense. I would like to say we did, but I was really surprised to find this out: no G rated movies (sad but again not that surprising, which is just sad); only 6 PG movies; 17 PG-13 films; and the killer, 23 R rated. Why???
So, I guess, we're doing a little bit better…maybe since, I'm sure those weren't the only 2012 movies and I didn't list the ratings for all the 2016 ones.
Honestly though, why do we have so many R rated movies? I mean, this is really sad. We went from Gone With the Wind being banned from several states because Rhett Butler says, "I don't give a darn" (except he didn't say 'darn') at the end of the movie, to this.
Personally, I don't think we should even have R rated movies. I mean, if you "can only be 18 or older" to watch it, then why make it?!
I believe in movies that are family friendly, which seem to be almost obsolete these days. I mean, really, we don't need all the language in a movie to make it cool and you really don't need the sexual references hidden in the film to make it funny. In my opinion, those things just make it, I don't know, less cool.
Look, something happening today is that kids see movies they probably shouldn't. There are some kids who've seen PG-13 movies and they are not 13 years old. (Just so you know, so you don't think I'm a perfect-go-by-the-rating type person, I saw some PG-13 movies before I was thirteen, they were Harry Potter films, but they were screened first.) I know, the PG-13 films are the cool ones (I agree to a point) but please realize that these movies were rated for a reason.
Kids are impressionable. There are messages being sent to the audience and sometimes those messages aren't that great.


There are great movies out there, I'm not saying every movie is a terrible one. I'm just saying that movies have a rating for a reason. And you know what, the reason we have so many PG-13 and R rated movies is because we support them by watching them.
Movies do not need to be riddled with swearing, nudity, immodesty, sexual innuendos, and other trash to make them amazing movies.
In fact, the better movies, the ones that fill you with feeling and leave you thinking and send you a positive message, those are the best ones. All the trash and other garbage in movies, they kill those feelings. You really don't need to say swear after every word to get your point across.
That's why I'm always super appreciative of people who make wholesome movies without swearing and with great lessons.
Donald Trump says he wants to make America great again. I say we should make America great again in media. I think that's one great way to make America and the rest of the world great. 

Everyone loves watching a movie now and then, why not make it a great movie?

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