Children’s Movies Push the Boundaries of PG

As it attempts to halt the year’s box office slide, Hollywood is bringing out the howitzer for the holidays -- the turbocharged children’s film.

For the last five years, PG-13 has ruled the box office; it’s the imprimatur of the top-grossing films of the year. Now, kids’ films, PG-rated and amped up with computer graphics, are trying to catch up.

The gentle fantasy of C.S. Lewis’ “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” with its snowy landscapes and talking animals, gives way to a fight-to-the-death battle between loyal Narnians and the ghoul-filled army of the White Witch.

In “Zathura: A Space Adventure,” giant man-eating alien lizards menace a defenseless 6-year-old; “The Legend of Zorro” includes the brutal shooting of a priest; and even the G-rated “Chicken Little” has aliens who vaporize a vulnerable town.

While the intensity of children’s films is clearly changing, the ratings are not, leaving parents to figure out on their own what’s too terrifying for the smallest moviegoers.

The Motion Picture Assn. of America’s system of assessing films for age-appropriateness hasn’t been overhauled since PG-13 was invented 20 years ago after films such as “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and “Gremlins” were deemed too frightening for PG.

“The line between what’s a family movie and what’s a general-audience movie has been blurring for years now,” said Nina Jacobson, president of Walt Disney’s Buena Vista Motion Picture Group. “Many families went to see ‘Spider-Man’ together or ‘[The] Lord of the Rings.’ That goes in the other direction too; the [computer-animated] movies are also playing as general-audience entertainment.”

Jacobson said “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” was “intense” in parts and “appropriate for 7 and up, but it depends on the kid. It’s up to the parent to decide what’s right.”

The ratings system has long been the key tool for just such decisions. PG used to be the mark of the family movie, the seal of approval from the MPAA. But this year, an industrywide penchant for dark fantasy, coupled with cutting-edge computer graphics that can generate fantastic creatures in believable and often horrifying detail, is stretching the boundaries of what constitutes a family movie.

The studios all say they’re following the rules, and the MPAA says its own surveys suggest parents think the ratings are “appropriate and informative.”

But in the last two years, Harvard and UCLA have released studies on “ratings creep”: the increasing nebulousness of the lines between PG-13 and R. Now the “creep” maybe be creeping into what separates PG from PG-13.

“The Lord of the Rings” was able to hold to PG-13 because most of the creatures killed were not human. “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” managed to keep its even child-friendlier rating by staging an enormous battle that is “99.9% bloodless but still very powerful,” said Jacobson. “Nobody’s head gets chopped off.”

A Narnia sequence in which creatures catch fire was removed to avoid the PG-13 rating that “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” got -- putting it in the same rating category of such strictly adult fare as “War of the Worlds” and “Mr. & Mrs. Smith.”

In the case of the Potter and Narnia books, filmmakers argue that their first loyalty is to the text -- but turning words into images may make the stories too intense for their original audience.

“When it comes to the impact of fright reaction, there is no question -- images stick in the psyche much longer,” said Peter Vorderer, head of the USC Annenberg School for Communication’s entertainment program.

Jeff Blake, Sony’s vice chairman of marketing and distribution, says that at least in the case of “Zathura,” it’s an extension of Hollywood tradition. The theme of the PG-rated film is “very much like some of the classics, like ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ ” he said. Blake draws parallels between Dorothy’s journey and “Zathura’s” story of two boys alone in a house suddenly propelled into space, complete with a terminator-like robot and a black hole that sucks all humans into its vortex. “It’s based on a classic situation but told very much in the [style] of 2005,” he said.

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As a group, family films are among the most lucrative in the industry, particularly for the DVD aftermarket, because successive generations will buy the films. But the pressure to keep adults and teens interested often pushes the maturity level of the narrative and imagery over the heads of young children -- the visual references to “War of the Worlds” in “Chicken Little” are clearly not intended for 5-year-olds.

At the same time, the wild success of “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,” Disney’s first PG-13 hit, and “The Lord of the Rings” contributes to the conventional wisdom that today’s kids, raised on TV and video games, are more visually sophisticated than their forebears. Children are often taken to the movies before they can walk. In fact, some theaters will no longer allow kids under the age of 5 in PG-13 movies, not to protect young psyches, but because their behavior can be disruptive.

Critics nonetheless are increasingly concerned about the effect of these intense experiences on those too young to appreciate the difference between fantasy and reality.

“A lot of these movies are going to be seen by 4- and 5-year-olds who will be horrified because their brains are simply not prepared to process the images,” said Joanne Cantor, a professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has conducted thousands of interviews about the effect of visual images on the brain. “Until they’re 6 or 7, children’s brains record fear of an image the same way they would if it had actually happened to them. And once their brains have recorded that fear, there really isn’t anything parents can do to take it away.”

In a way, the quality of these movies is part of the problem. Ten years ago, a talking lion or a kid-eating alien looked fake enough for parents to point out that what was happening was just a story. Now the difference between what children see at the movies and on the Discovery Channel is negligible, at least in a visual sense.

“The main reason these films are more intense is that the tools of the trade are becoming more refined.... Filmmakers are just trying to tell the most vivid version of the story and make it cool,” said Jacobson, who also supervised “Pirates of the Caribbean.” “You have to make sure to create boundaries to make it appropriate for a young audience.”

Steve Kloves, screenwriter for all four “Harry Potter” movies, said he expected all along to get a PG-13 for the upcoming “Goblet of Fire.” “When Lord Voldemort is finally revealed, after eight hours of cinematic threat, you can’t just have Wallace Shawn show up. It can’t be just snakes and smoke. It has to be something pretty terrifying.”

As a parent of a 10- and 13-year-old, Kloves says adults often overestimate what will frighten children, but he does see some danger in a computer-graphics ethos of “if we can, we should.”

“It’s important that the studios not lose sight of who kids are and how they react to things,” Kloves says. “Some of the computer jockeys lose what is magical by focusing on what is possible.”

In the case of “Harry Potter,” Dawn Taubin, president of domestic marketing for Warner Bros., pointed out that the studio opted for the new PG-13 rating in order to be true to the book, in which Harry and his friends have become teenagers. “We have seen the franchise trending toward teens and adults and away from families,” Taubin said. “With the first movie, 67% of the audience was families -- parents and children under the age of 12.... With ‘The Prisoner of Azkaban,’ that figure was 40%.”

Others suggest that the intense new films are a reflection of the tough times in which we live and can provide a safe empowerment fantasy for children. Quoting “Narnia” author Lewis, the film’s producer, Mark Johnson, said: “Since it is likely they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least hear of brave knights and heroic courage; otherwise, you’re making their destiny not brighter but darker.”

At the beginning of “Narnia,” the Pevensie children are sent out of London to the countryside to escape the bombs of World War II. “They’re completely disempowered, and all of a sudden they find themselves in a fantasy world where they’re looked upon as the saviors and they end up winning the day,” Johnson said.

Child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim famously argued for the importance of violence in fairy tales. But Cantor, who also is the author of “ ‘Mommy, I’m Scared’: How TV and Movies Frighten Children and What We Can Do to Protect Them,” pointed out that Bettelheim was talking about the spoken and written word, not witches and wraiths and giant cobras rearing up on movie screens, hissing in Dolby sound.

In her many years of research on the influence of movies on kids, Cantor still can’t get over the lasting imprint of two films: “Jaws” and “Poltergeist.”

Both were rated PG because, at the time, there was no PG-13. “Jaws,” she said, was thought to be OK “because people couldn’t imitate the violence” and “Poltergeist” because Steven Spielberg successfully fought an R rating.

“To this day,” Cantor said, “there are people who don’t swim in the ocean ... because they saw ‘Jaws’ when their brains were too young” to process the disturbing images in a healthy way. The same goes, she said, “for adults who saw ‘Poltergeist’ when they were too young, who are afraid of clowns, or who can’t sleep with a tree outside the window. It sounds funny. But if you think about it, it really isn’t.”

In the end, it all comes down to box office. Whether or not it unleashed hidden terrors among the population, “Jaws” did spectacular business, had three sequels and spawned a genre of man-eating fauna flicks.

The gorgeous spectacle and stirring theatrics of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” will no doubt raise the bar for computer-generated imagery and pave the way for Peter Jackson’s “King Kong” in December -- which is rated PG-13.

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BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX

An overview of movie ratings

Excerpts from “What the Ratings Mean,” on the Motion Picture Assn. of America website

G: General audiences -- all ages admitted.

This is a film which contains nothing in theme, language, nudity and sex, violence, drug use, etc., which would, in the view of the Rating Board, be offensive to parents whose younger children view the film. The G rating is not a “certificate of approval,” nor does it signify a children’s film.

PG: Parental guidance suggested. Some material may not be suitable for children.

This is a film which clearly needs to be examined or inquired into by parents before they let their children attend.... The theme of a PG-rated film may itself call for parental guidance. There may be some profanity, violence or brief nudity ... but no drug use content.

PG-13: Parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

A PG-13 film is one which, in the view of the Rating Board, leaps beyond the boundaries of the PG rating in theme, violence, nudity, sensuality, language, or other contents but does not quite fit within the restricted R category.... In effect, the PG-13 cautions parents with more stringency than usual to give special attention to this film before they allow their 12-year-olds and younger to attend.

R: Restricted -- under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

This film definitely contains some adult material-- hard language, or tough violence, or nudity within sensual scenes, or drug abuse or other elements, or a combination of some of the above.

NC-17: No one 17 and under admitted.

This is a film that most parents will consider patently too adult for youngsters under 17.

Source: Motion Picture Assn. of America

Full text available at www.mpaa.org/movieratings/about/index.htm