Why Rated R?


I'm just very curious...If this movie is rated PG in Canada, why is it rated R here? If it's rated R for a good reason, I can assume that Canada's system has SCREWED UP again.

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It's quite violent.

However if it was a borderline case, two sets of censors might well come to different conclusions. Don't get too excited about it.

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Thanks. But, I actually wanted a detailed content review.

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Basically, you have a problem in how ratings are administered. The MPAA will give a film a rating on an almost arbitrary basis. Quite often, it will require cuts to get a desired rating, but will not elaborate on what needs to be cut and why. In the end, the MPAA felt this movie was too violent for a PG rating, even though most war fims of the era (and previous decade) had just as much graphic violence.

Far too often, the ratings are used as a form of economic censorship by the MPAA. Films that are disliked are often given arbitrary rating to limit their audience. This either forces the studio and director to make enough changes to get a new rating, or take the smaller potential box office. Some of this was changed in the 80's with the creation of PG-13 and NC-17 ratings; but, they are still applied with little rhyme or reason.

In this case, I suspect the Canadian reviewers had fewer political problems with the film than the MPAA did. The film also has a rather subversive, anti-corporate message; one which the pro-corporate MPAA might take issue with. So, I suspect it wasn't any one or two scees; but, rather, the combined violence and the political message.

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Yeah but still nobody answered his question. How violent is the movie?

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I've got a problem, please help!

I'm 14 and a HUGE James Caan fan. I bought Rollerball, knowing very well that my father wants to watch all rated R movies before I get to keep them, especially since we watched For The Boys together, fair enough.
But if the only reason why he is holding it is because there is violence, he is getting way to overprotective.
Is that the only reason it is rated R? No sexuality reasons, just violence and language???!!!

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As far as I can see, the only reason for the R rating is the violence. And the violence isn't even that graphic, at least i think so. There is some brief male nudity, very brief, and all you see is them from behind. Hope this helps. Good luck with your dad.

I just realized, I don't care.

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A bunch of fairly non-graphic violence and one or two men's butts for a second or two in a steamy shower. That's basically it.

One problem for you is that the shower scene is at the beginning of the film. Your father may not have "made it" past that point? It's not a terribly sexy film.

If your dad's a right-winger he may very well have a problem with the film's apparent politics. It's about a future corporatocracy. The evil "gubmint" is actually a bunch of massive corporations. If dad watches Fox News regularly, that's downright subversive!

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This movie was probably very violent for its time. But for now, I would say that movies like the Kill Bills and Sin City have more graphic violence. What is scary about this particular movie is the fans and their complete devotion to the game. But to answer your question, if the movie came out tomorrow, it could most likely have a PG-13 rating. As for the amount of violence, it just depends on what you can handle. But there was nothing really gory. Hope this helps.

I just realized, I don't care.

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It's a violent movie, but it's not a solid "R" by today's standards. As far as intensity, I would definitely put the violence of Lord of the Rings (pg-13) a notch higher than Rollerball. There's a couple parts that imply gore, but usually we don't really see what happens. (example, the rollerball fires and nails a guy in the head. Or when Jonathan breaks the guys neck towards the end, it mostly happens off camera.) You don't see exactly what happens. To put it simply, the violence that is going on is more disturbing than what you actually see onscreen. ...If that makes sense.
Like someone said before, there is some brief male nudity. There's a conversation in the locker room and you see a guy's butt in the backround for like 2 seconds. I hate it when they have naked guys in movies, but this was so brief I didn't really care. There's no sexual stuff, not really any innuendo's or anything. There's no drug use... except they take these little "pills" from time to time. I think they were the "modern cigarette" or something.
Hardly any Language, if any at all. I sure don't remember much.

I would rate it PG-13.

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I'd say it is a soft R. It should not have a PG-13 rating and probably would not have one nowadays. The most violent part is when a guy is sliding down the ground smearing blood on the rink from his face. However, there is a lot of brutal fighting; it is more brutal than any PG-13 movies nowadays. LOTR is violent, but it is battle violence and not brutal and cold blooded as Rollerball.
There is a brief view of a guy's penis also.

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The easiest explanation would be that there was no PG-13 in 1975, so they had to give it an R due to the violence. The movie doesn't feature massive amounts of blood or anything, but does portray savage beatings -- some to death.

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Just thought I'd put my 2 cents in on this thread - from what I remember, when the M.P.A.A. gave Rollerball it's 'R' rating, Norman Jewison & United Artists had put in an appeal to get the film downgraded to 'PG' - their argument was that the violence in their film wasn't as graphic as the violence in Jaws (which did get a 'PG" from the board - if anyone remembers, Universal also put in the "May Be Too Intense For Children" tag
on the posters & newspaper ads). The M.P.A.A. denied the appeal because (GET THIS !!!!) the violence in Jaws was between "Man & Beast", and said violence in Rollerball was between "humans"!
I belive that the board also told Jewison & U.A.
that if they could re-edit their film & tone down the violence, they would get their 'PG'. Obviously, they refused that request.
Throughout the years, the ratings board, in my opinion, have made some very bizarre decisions on how they give a film it's rating based on content - especially when it comes to language. In particular, a certain 4-letter word (starts with F & rhymes with duck). A few cases in point:
"Billy Jack", "The Front", "All The President's Men", and "The Kids Are Alright". All these films, when submitted to the board, automatically
received an 'R' because the F word was used at least once (or in the case of TKAA, twice, and ATPM, several times). On appeal, the people involved with these films (the filmmakers, studios, etc.) sucessfully got the board to downgrade the rating to 'PG'.
ON THE OTHER HAND - take Woody Allen & his film Manhattan. When submitted to the board, like the films mentioned above, it got an automatic 'R' due to the F word used once (and by Meryl Streep to boot !). Allen made an appeal to get a 'PG', his main argument being that the board gave "President's Men" the same rating despite the several times the word was used in that film.
The board DENIED his appeal, but said if he would remove the word, he would get his 'PG'. Allen refused.
So why was Manhattan denied the 'PG', unlike the other films ? Because, in his film, the word was used in a sexual context ! How biased is that ???
Sexual context or not, the F word is still the F word, as far as I'm concerned. For the record, I, myself, have no problem with the word - to me, it's a part of everyday language.
One more example of M.P.A.A. weirdness (and concerning another sexual context-type word)-
This one concerns Scorsese's The Last Waltz with The Band - early in that film, Robbie Robertson talks about the band joining up with Ronnie Hawkins & Hawkins telling them that "they'll get more p*ssy than Frank Sinatry!" When submitted to the board, the film got an automatic 'R' just for that line ! But fortunately, Scorsese appealed for a 'PG' and was successful.

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[deleted]

It's my knowledge that the Rollerball that is now able to be purchased today on both NTSC VHS and DVD is NOT the authentic version of this movie. This was brought to my attention by my father who had seen the original and mentioned to me after we had finished watching it that there was almost no blood in this "version" of the movie.

I sat down and watched the movie again, and I noticed many awkward cuts. Often cutting away from what would seem to be violence or a bloodier nature.

I have been longing to get a PAL version of this movie as I would assume if the film HAD been altered in the US it would most likely be unaltered in Europe with all of the artistic integrity protection over there.

Has anyone else noticed or heard of this?

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I own a copy of this movie on DVD and I just recently watched it with the director's commentary. This was nothing that suggested this was an editted version. He even says he wanted to cut down on the blood (if you pardon the pun).

To answer the over all question for this post: As others have mentioned, the MPAA is a bit more strict with their ratings and there are a lot of inconsistencies. Take "Airplane" for instance. There is a scene with a close-up of a woman's breast right in front of the camera and lots of sexual jokes. So how did it get a PG rating? Likewise, "A Few Good Men" is rated R for language (however, there was a recent article stating we are cursing more than before, so R ratings for language may not be such a bad thing after all).

Lastly, the Canadian review board (for home videos) was established in 1995, so the ratings tend to be more progessive than the MPAA which has been around since 1968.

Canadian Rating System for Home Videos:
http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/resources/ratings_classification_systems/video_ratings/can_home_video_ratings.cfm

MPAA:
http://www.mpaa.org/FilmRatings.asp

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[deleted]

Yes, but your question is 16 years old and you are probably dead, so fuck off.

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It is quite violent - Sure, there are plenty of MORE violent movies out there, but back in the '70s, they threw R ratings at movies more easily - and guess what? An R rating was not considered the kiss of death that it is today.

This would possibly be a PG-13 today, but I'd hate to think they'd cut some of the more brutal scenes out just to get a lighter rating.

I think in the '70s, they just said *beep* it - this is an R movie. We aren't going to dumb it down or lighten it up so a bunch of 14 year olds can come see it without their parents.

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Film rating standards regarding violence were different pre-Taxi Driver and post-Taxi Driver. Rollerball was one year pre-Taxi Driver, when the standards were more strict. It showed a bunch of guys getting brutally killed on screen, and in those days that was enough. On the other hand you have something like Planet of Apes; Charlton Heston gets shot point blank in the neck and falls off a cliff, one of his friends gets shot to death and stuffed like an animal... and it got a G rating. Same rating as any Disney kiddie flick. Go figure.

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One of the stunt men who was in the movie posts on Facebook, occasionally he shows some very cool behind-the-scenes stuff. A while back he claimed someone sent him a file of the Rollerball rough cut which was almost FOUR HOURS long. He said the last game with NY was originally much longer and more graphically violent. He listed listed a few examples of what had to be cut out to get the R rating.

The ones I remember are-

An unconscious skater being run over by multiple bikers until it looks like his pelvis is almost separated from his torso.

A biker crashing face-first into the handrail and his face being reduced to "red goo."

A skater getting slammed backward into the barrier between the track and the center bullpen, folding him over it, and afterward a nice close-up of his compound fractured spine.

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I assume it was rated R for violence.

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It was considered extremely violent for the time. It also had a potent anti-corporate, anti-fascist theme which probably peeved a lot of powers that be.

So it got an R.

I believe it was the anti-corporatist message that gave it the R. Witness the travesty of the remake which got rid of the corporatist future theme and turned the film into a baby mash about extreme sports.

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A movie like this made today would get a PG-13 rating. Yeah, there was a lot of sports violence in this film, but it wasn't graphic. The bare butt shower scene was very brief. I also don't remember a single curse word in this film.

I think this film was given an R rating because the ratings board took issue with the film's message.

Another possibility could be how the women were depicted in this film. The film seemed to suggest that the women depicted in "Rollerball" were for hire, even though there was no sexual activity involved.

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The film seemed to suggest that the women depicted in "Rollerball" were for hire, even though there was no sexual activity involved.

You mean "there was no sexual activity *shown*". That's entirely different than saying that there was no sexual activity involved. Though not explicitly shown on screen, I always thought that it was pretty clear that sex was involved between the players (at least the stars) and the women that the corporation provided for them.

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I'm quite shocked at some/most in this thread who think it isn't that graphic/violent. and one even saying it should've been a PG back then like Jaws and would be a PG13 today. Rollerball is one of the most brutal films of all time. Its horrific! Its basically a SF horror movie. Back then it could only ever be R rated and today it absolutely would not be PG13! (even the lame remake was R). In additional to the brutal violence theres a deeply unnerving (adult/R rated) feel throughout the movie about humanity and who we are and where we're going (or what could easily happen) that's totally inappropriate for kids (unless you want to give them nightmares)

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Pussy.

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