The MPA is a mystery. Very few of us, filmmakers included, don’t really understand how the ratings board operates, and why they find certain things offensive enough to warrant a PG-13, an R, or even an NC-17. You won’t believe the insane rule that they have when it comes to rating sex scenes. That rule basically came into play recently when Ana De Armas’ Marilyn Monroe movie, Blonde, bore the complicated NC-17 rating. But did you also know that the MPA could award R ratings simply because they felt weird about the kind of movie that a filmmaker was trying to make? This is what Zack Snyder shared recently following a screening of his Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which had to work overtime to get down to the friendlier PG-13 rating.
Snyder recently presided over a three-day celebration of his DC Movies, lovingly dubbed SnyderCon by the attendees. A Q-and-A session followed the Batman v Superman screening (which I was lucky enough to host), and the conversation came around to the R rating that BvS kept getting. You just won’t believe why. Snyder’s visual effects artist, John “D.J.” DesJardin, joined the post-screening panel and reminisced about the creative team’s fight to trim the film down to meet the MPA’s standards. As he recalled:
