Whether you have read the books or not, we all know what Fifty Shades of Grey is about. It’s a highly advertised book between the raunchy content and creepy but attractive main character. The book will soon be made into a much-awaited movie, with the original rating of X. This restricts all people under the age of 18 into the theater.
The movie has now been changed to an R rating by the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America). This allows people who are over the age of 17 to take someone, under that age in and watch the movie. Some view this change as a marketing tactic to get people into the theatres. While this may be so, there are so many ways that a product this popular can be seen, so the issue of the rating is not as important as everyone is making it out to be.
With the rating being changed, people are questioning if the mature scenes have been taken out or if they just plain do not care who sees the scenes so long as it makes money. According to Variety.com, an early draft of the script was toned down through rewrites to make the movie less racy, so that it would secure an R (and not a NC-17) rating. However, the rating concerns most people into thinking that the morality of the media is messed up for changing this rating into something that allows anyone over the age of 18 to take a 5 year old in, if they truly wanted to.
This sexually explicit movie is very popular to the public and praised for being a New York Times best-selling piece of fiction. Even with the sex-crazed scenes portrayed in this story, some people are saying just that. That this is a story. It’s not true, and these are fictional characters with fictional actions.
The movie is pre-selling tickets on Fandango. They have sold more tickets since the movie got the new R rating then they have sold in 15 years. This speculates the idea that the MPAA did change the rating to get more people into the theater and watching the movie.
Even if the rating never changed, the film would have appeared in stores in a matter of months. This giving people the ability to purchase the hard copy and watch it on their own time.
Regardless of the rating, people are going to watch it. The people who are 18 and under probably would have waited for the movie to come out on DVD and just bought it. Now they can ask their friend who is 18 to take them. Give or take a few people, the previous X rating wouldn’t have stopped people from seeing this movie.