Star Trek and Terminator Salvation are PG-13

Published by Jeff Leins on: April 6th, 2009

It should come as no surprise that two of this summer’s biggest blockbusters have earned audience-friendly PG-13 ratings.

Paramount officially announced last week the new Star Trek reboot will be rated PG-13 for “sci-fi action and violence and brief sexual content.”  I don’t think anyone was expected an adult rating for a Trek movie, especially considering none of the previous ten movies received higher than PG-13.  In fact, most (80%) were PG.

Update: Early reviews from the Australian premiere and a secret Austin screening of Star Trek last night have been overwhelmingly positive.

But there was still hope for a grittier Terminator, especially considering McG mentioned at both WonderCon and Comic-Con that he was fighting with Warner Bros to get an R rating.  The director has made a habit of telling the fans what they want to hear, including that the studio gave him consent to make the movie without applying a rating restriction.  (He also said James Cameron gave him his blessing to make T4 before later retracting the claim.)  One scene in particular McG (and the male fans) wanted was a topless shot of Moon Bloodgood in the rain.

It looks like that has been nixed because it received an official PG-13 rating.  The news comes from a small icon on the Pizza Hut tie-in website.  You’ll notice in the bottom left hand corner the obvious symbol, which signifies no bare breasts and slightly tamer action sequences.

Harry Knowles from AICN is under the impression that the science fiction fantasy reality may mean more breaks on the violence, but that’s glass half full thinking.  Die Hard 4 was PG-13 and it was noticeably neutered.  What’re studios going to do, though?  PG-13 means a helluva lot more people can see your gigantic movie than an R rating.  WB learned their lesson with Watchmen.  Terminator had almost zero shot at being R.