The PG-13 Rating was Steven Spielberg’s Idea
The familiar Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) rating system as we know it today was originally created in 1968, but with a slightly different hierarchy:
G - General Audiences
M - Mature Audiences
R - Restricted
X - Adults only
Two years later, M became GP, for ‘General Patronage,’ and two years after that, was rebranded again to the modern PG, for ‘Parental Guidance.’
That first rebrand essentially defined the kinds of movies it was meant to cover: anything that was too adult for little kids to see in a dark theater by themselves, but not too violent or graphic to prevent them from seeing it entirely. How obviously broad that criteria was made it very difficult to define exactly how far a PG movie was allowed to go, so while movies like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) and Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Grease (1978) were understandably given that rating, as they probably be would now, so too were Jaws (1975), Rocky (1976), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Airplane! (1980), and Poltergeist (1982).
It was the controversy that followed the premiere of that last one - which then as now is considered a horror movie - that originally started the intra-industry debate over whether or not there should be a rating between PG and R for movies with elements of horror and violence that were perfectly fine for a 15 year old kid to see, but not a 6-year-old, regardless of whether or not there’s a parent in the room with them.
The need for one became absolutely apparent, though, in 1984 following the release of Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which even for modern audiences is a pretty tough watch. Initially, the MPAA very sensibly hit it with an R rating, primarily thanks to a few scenes in particular that you wouldn’t want, under any circumstances, your 9-year-old seeing, most notably one where the main antagonist, a Thugee high priest, sacrifices one of his disciples by cutting out his heart, and another where Indy is forced to drink brainwashing black blood that nearly leads to his strangling his notoriously over-the-top female companion to death. There’s also child slavery, man-eating crocodiles, and a death trap filled with spikes, impaled corpses, and unsettlingly large poisonous insects.
Hard to argue with slapping that sort of movie with an R rating, but Spielberg and George Lucas, who wrote the script, were then two of Hollywood’s most influential filmmakers, and neither of them believed the committee’s decision to be fair. They appealed, and without making any major changes to the script ended up, pretty much just on reputation alone, the PG rating they were after.
It turned out to be a massive box office success, but it was nevertheless the subject of a ton of criticism from angry parents who felt duped and misled by the lax rating, as well as Paramount’s marketing campaign, which obviously didn’t feature any of the movie’s more graphic material. Still, that wasn’t enough to prompt a change to the system, although it would very soon prove to be the penultimate straw, as it were.
What would turn out to be the last one, Gremlins, was released just a few weeks later, and also with Spielberg’s prestigious name attached to it, albeit as a producer rather than a director. His involvement in the project, as well as the cuddly and whimsical appearance of the title creatures also inevitably misled audiences who, because of the similarly tame theatrical trailers that ran in the weeks leading up to the premiere, went into it under the impression that it would be a slightly more mature version of his earlier megahit ET. It was certainly not that, and drew almost identical criticism from parents who didn’t expect the sort of graphic violence - murder by decapitation, for instance - that features throughout the whole of the movie.
That led many in the industry, particularly boundary-pushers like Spielberg, to believe that a change finally had to be made. In his own words, from a 2008 interview with Vanity Fair:
‘Yes, yes, yes. I guess Temple of Doom ushered in the PG-13 rating. The story of that was, I had come under criticism, personal criticism, for both Temple of Doom and, you know, Gremlins,in the same year. I remember calling Jack Valenti [then the president of the Motion Picture Association] and suggesting to him that we need a rating between R and PG, because so many films were falling into a netherworld, you know, of unfairness. Unfair that certain kids were exposed to Jaws, but also unfair that certain films were restricted, that kids who were 13, 14, 15 should be allowed to see. I suggested, “Let’s call it PG-13 or PG-14, depending on how you want to design the slide rule,” and Jack came back to me and said, “We’ve determined that PG-13 would be the right age for that temperature of movie.” So I’ve always been very proud that I had something to do with that rating…’
A reluctant Jack Valenti, who’d led the effort to create the original system, and generally believed it still worked fine despite all the recent outcry, formally authorized the creation of the PG-13 rating on July 1, 1984.
The today obscure romantic comedy The Flamingo Kid was the first movie given the new rating, but because its premiere ended up being delayed by a few months, Red Dawn, starring starring Patrick Swayze, Lea Thompson, and a very young Charlie Sheen, became the first commercially released PG-13 movie when it hit theaters on August 1, 1984.
In the nearly 41 years since then, Spielberg’s made good use of what’s perhaps his greatest contribution to the industry. Exactly half of the movies he’s directed in that time have been rated PG-13, most notably:
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
Jurassic Park (1993)
Minority Report (2002)
Catch Me if You Can (2002)
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
West Side Story (2021)
The MPAA rating hierarchy as it stands today has remained unchanged since 1997, when X was replaced with NC-17. 1969’s Midnight Cowboy remains the only movie with either of those ratings to win the Oscar for Best Picture…
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