super-structure

Speaking of summer movie thrills, I’m cautiously optimistic about Terminator: Salvation, which opens next week. Director "McG" — of Charlies Angel’s money grab remake fame " makes a good case for going with a PG-13 rating:

“It just became clear that the things that would take it to an R or an NC-17 would be: There goes the arm, and now the blood is squirting on my face,” McG said in a group interview last Friday in Beverly Hills, Calif. “That wasn’t in service of the character or the story. The elements that would have taken it to R just ended up feeling gratuitous in the editing room. There’s a topless scene with Moon Bloodgood. I was trying to echo that scene in Witness where Kelly McGillis turns and says, ‘I’m not ashamed’ to Harrison Ford. But it just felt like, ‘Oh, there’s the genre stunt of the good-looking girl taking her top off.’ And it felt counterproductive in the spirit of what we were looking to achieve on a storytelling level, so way to go.”

I am in full favor of cutting gratuitous violence and nudity if it can open the film to a wider audience, make the movie a greater success, and ensure that good science fiction gets attention it deserves.