Maybe McG Gets It After All

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.