The Truth About R-rated Comic Book Films

After 5 years of actively being on Twitter, I’ve clearly cultivated my timeline and my followings so that I don’t see a lot of the inane detritus that passes for debate and valid arguments over comic book movies anymore.

At least that’s the case with this business about Zack Snyder’s Justice League being rated R.

If you’ve followed me over the years on this blog, Twitter or the podcasts, you know my stance on R-rated comic book movies. They don’t scare me and if you’re a parent……do your job.

Let me clarify that last one. When I was a kid, I was allowed to watch R-rated movies under two conditions: Understanding that all the violence I was seeing wasn’t real, and never repeating any of the language that was said. As long as I followed those rules, I could watch Coming to America, Die Hard and movies of that ilk.

It wasn’t difficult for my parents to watch R-rated movies with me because they explained to me what was going on and allowed me to understand the rules for watching them. Now, not every child is going to be like that and I’m not suggesting parents allow them to watch R-rated movies, but the point is that you know your kids and you’re the boss, so it’s your decision. If you want to shelter them from something like this, that’s your business. Same if you want to allow them to watch it. No one should be telling you how to raise your kids in that respect.

So the flip side of that is, don’t tell us how to watch and enjoy our movies. If you’re that disappointed you can’t show Justice League to your children, there’s a severely neutered, Frankensteined PG-13 version that was released in November 2017 that you can show them to your hearts content, though you might want to skip the part where The Flash lands awkwardly on Wonder Woman’s chest, or when Martha Kent talks about Lois Lane being “thirsty.” You know, if you’re really worried about your children.

Seriously though, we know why anyone is complaining about ZSJL being rated R, right? It’s not because of the children, that’s a shield. Oh maybe you have some families that were hoping they’d be able to share the joy of a live action Justice League film with their son or daughter, but that’s just a symptom of a bigger issue underneath that we’re going to talk about here.

Since 2008(yes, you know where I’m going with this), there have been at least 56 R-rated movies based on comic books released to the public, some of which are animated. Many of them you’ve never heard of, or maybe you have, but let’s stick to live action from the big names we know. Films like Wanted, Kick-Ass, Punisher: War Zone, Watchmen, Dredd, Logan, Kingsman, Hellboy and of course Deadpool, were all released as R-rated comic book films without much complaint or protest.

Why? Because the expectations for those films aren’t the same as ones involving major DC Comics heroes. If Logan curses and goes true Berserker on a bunch of henchman to bloody effect, that’s pretty much expected. If Deadpool drops a thousand F-bombs in the first act of talking to the audience, someone will ask why it wasn’t a thousand and one. Even if Watchmen gives you a full frontal on a naked male blue superhero, it is what it is, which to be clear is the subject of humor, memes and jokes until the end of time.

The reality is, it’s not Superman, Batman or Wonder Woman, so most of the would-be complainers couldn’t care less about it. They’re not on the same pedestal, no matter how big of a fanbase Wolverine has.

But the second you put any one of the Trinity in an R-rated film? That’s when all hell breaks loose, because the expectations are completely different.

Yes, this is a clear cut case of nostalgia fostering fan entitlement. Again. We’ve seen it so much with Superman since 2013, and then suddenly after decades of turning thugs into antimatter with a roundhouse kick, blowing up goons in a chemical factory and openly shredding them with cannon fire during a high speed truck chase, it wasn’t okay for Batman to kill anyone on screen anymore in 2016. Wonder Woman is allowed to kill and go darker with her stories, but her films have to remain accessible for girls as a role model, an argument that was twisted three ways from Sunday to attack Birds of Prey(And The Fantabulous Emancipation Of One Harley Quinn) for being Rated R, because somehow a psychopathic, unhinged criminally obsessed doctor turned murderous gun moll is a role model for young women. You know I’m not kidding, people seriously argued that last year.

At the end of the day, the people upset that ZSJL is rated R are just extending the “World’s Finest” argument from BvS all over again. They want the version of these characters they grew up with as children that were suitable for family audiences for the most part. They remember watching Superman ‘78 as a child and want their kids to have the same experience they did, without any evolution or updates to the character portrayal or depth at all, and when it comes to the Justice League, there’s no question a lot of the complainers want live action Superfriends instead, so they don’t have to find a babysitter, or in this case take the kids into the other room, while they watch the film in an adult setting.

And no, it doesn’t help that they have the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a shining example of “avoiding an R-rating” across the aisle. That’s the first thing a lot of them point to with this. Never mind the open kills and collateral damage all over that franchise in spades. So long as there’s little to no blood and a good dose of one-liners and banter in the middle of it all, it’s perfectly fine for audiences of all ages to see billions snapped out of existence in an act of universal genocide, among other things.

Marvel fans don’t want to hear this, but the perception is different here too. The Avengers have been the talk of the town since 2008. Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman have been the talk of the town since TV was still only in black and white. Expectations just aren’t the same across the board here, and now you have a generation that has been raised on the “risk averse on the surface” model of comic book movies, meaning in the next decade or so when someone decides to make an R-rated Captain America or Thor movie, this argument will happen again. Iron Man might be able to get away with an R-rated reboot because you know, “language.”

We’re not assuming that these people haven’t read the comics either, though many of them probably haven’t, but whether they did or not, comics are not the same medium as film because it’s not live action or in motion. There’s a realism with actual humans on screen that doesn’t translate, which is why you see so many people argue about their favorite character being desecrated on screen, even though that character already did the exact same things in the comics or even the animated films at one point. It’s like movies and TV make it “real,” so it has to be the way they want it to be, not how the comics ever portrayed it.

So that’s the truth behind this whining about ZSJL getting an R rating. It’s less about “the children” and more about “the selfish adults who want to live like they are children again.” Sure it doesn’t help matters that it’s Zack Snyder as well and it just gives them more reason to illogically use him as their whipping boy, but that’s the whole reason they started disliking him in the first place, because he refuses to do exactly what they want him to with their favorite characters, no matter how respectful of the comics his storytelling actually is.

This is just something to keep in mind as you see these arguments pop up now, and you’ll surely see them again the next time these major characters are attached to a live action project that isn’t at most PG13. They’re just projecting their own expectations and demands on the rest of us……for the umpteenth time.