Deadpool Should be rated…?
I’ve been laughing at all the memes going around about folks wanting Deadpool to have a PG-13 version. I was hanging in there with the comics crowd who were applauding the decision to make it rated R.
I get it. They want violence. They want swearing. They want their hero to be the deadly smart ass everyone knows Deadpool to be.
At this point, my mind was like yeah, rated R just like all those comic books. Wait. What?
I was never stopped from picking up a comic off a spinner rack and buying it when I was younger. I remember some titles like Heavy Metal being marked “Mature,” but never remember being stopped from buying them. Even in those titles, I don’t remember too much over the top R rated level of violence and content.
So, this got me to thinking. Maybe the other side is right. Maybe there should be a PG-13 version of Deadpool.
I mean he is a super hero. Marvel is putting their name on it. The commercials and trailers are playing up the humor. Maybe it should be accessible to kids who buy action figures and comics.
Wait. What? Kids don’t buy comics and action figures anymore do they?
Remember up above when I said I bought my comics on a spinner rack? Those aren’t really around any more. Which made me think, you can’t really buy comics outside of a comic shop or online anymore. So, do you really have a PG-13 crowd currently buying comics freely any more? Probably not.
So, maybe rated R is okay. Comics today have matured, so the readers obviously have as well, right?
But then, I thought, “Deadpool is the closest we’ve seen to a spandex hero ripped from the pages of comic art.” His red and black logo is everywhere. His outfit screams kid friendly superhero.
I was in the shower while all of these thoughts were running through my head. I near spun myself around and slipped and fell. Alas, I didn’t so you are reading this now.
My head said slow down. What about Punisher?
Sigh.
I would have been in the R rated camp. And I read Punisher comics back in the day.
The way Daredevil and Jessica Jones were brought to Netflix, the mature rating made sense. Folks weren’t complaining about DD being mature, were they? Of course, those are on pay channels.
I look at shows like Breaking Bad and Vikings on standard cable and I think they pulled off a lot of very entertaining content of questionable subject and manage to color inside the lines.
So I would put forth, a PG-13 Deadpool movie would be possible. But, it would have to be written and staged that way from the beginning. So maybe by some more creative writing, they could have got there. I would contend his 4th wall breaking would have allowed this kind of creativity easily.
As for cutting a film intended to be rated R to PG-13, I’m not a fan. I’m reminded of the theatrical cut of Die Hard 4. (You, hush! I like 80 percent of it.) If John Mclane can’t say his signature line, something isn’t working right. So, I have to, in the end, agree with the R rated folks.