Disney’s live-action “Mulan” hits theaters next month, and it’s coming with some noticeable changes.
The wise-cracking dragon Mushu and the many musical numbers from the beloved 1998 film are gone in this reboot. But one of the biggest changes of all is the PG-13 rating.
“Mulan” is the first of Disney’s live-action remakes (a long list that so far includes everything from “The Lion King” to “Aladdin” to “Dumbo”) to be rated PG-13. The rating is for “sequences of violence,” which isn’t too surprising since it’s a movie about war.
But this marks a turn for Disney, as the company’s darker and more violent remakes (think Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” or the recent “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil”) have still managed to stay in PG territory.
The PG rating has been the sweet spot for family-oriented films over the last few years — especially as the G rating has all but disappeared. But at the same time, PG-13 movies have dominated the box office recently. Disney’s two all-time highest-grossing films are both rated PG-13: “Avengers: Endgame” and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
While it may seem like Disney is shooting itself in the foot by transforming a children’s movie into a PG-13 war epic, it’s a calculated risk for the company. More and more, PG-13 movies are becoming the Hollywood default — and it’s paying off for movie studios.
These movies see the most box office success because they can reach the widest audience — and that doesn’t just include teens and adults. Studios use toys and other merchandise to market superheroes, Jedis and more to young children — all to promote movies with a PG-13 rating.
At the end of the day, it’s up to the parents to decide what films they allow their children to watch. But is the way movie studios and toy companies are marketing influencing the choices parents make? And are those choices turning PG-13 films into the new default for kids’ movies?
‘If they want the toy, they usually want to see the movie’
The PG-13 rating may be the most profitable for movie studios, but it can make things confusing for parents, according to Susan Linn, a lecturer on psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
Seeing toys marketed to children as young as preschoolers can cause parents to think, “Oh well, how bad can it be?” Linn told the Deseret News.
Linn has been involved in the conversation about media and advertising’s effects on children since 2000, when she founded the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. The “advocacy is grounded in the overwhelming evidence that child-targeted marketing —and the excessive screen time it encourages — undermines kids’ healthy development,” according to the organization’s website,
After the first live-action “Transformers” movie starring Shia LaBeouf was released in 2007, Linn’s organization issued a complaint against Dreamworks and Hasbro to the Federal Trade Commission. The group argued that the filmmakers and toymakers were involved in “irresponsible” marketing of the PG-13 film to preschoolers, The New York Times reported.
Young children “are as susceptible or more susceptible to media messages” as adults, Linn told the Deseret News. “They tend to believe what they see. They don’t have the same kind of defenses, certainly, that adults have.”
A 2009 report from the United States Federal Trade Commission found that “movie studios intentionally market PG-13 movies to children under 13, and the movie industry does not have explicit standards in place to restrict this practice.”
Despite the FTC’s recommendations that the movie industry take steps to reduce the marketing of adult (specifically violent) content to children — not much seems to have changed.
Toys and merchandise stemming from violent PG-13 films are still commonplace. Disney has already released toys based on the new live-action “Mulan” that are labeled for ages 3 and up. The new movie, though, can’t be seen by anyone younger than 13, at least according to its rating.
As Paul Glitter, an executive at Marvel, told USA Today in 2008, “Especially for kids, they’ll see the toys before they’ll see the movie ads. If they want the toy, they usually want to see the movie.”
The rise of PG-13
The PG-13 rating was introduced by the MPAA in 1984, after parents were concerned by the content in PG-rated films like “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and “Gremlins,” according to Time magazine.
“The ratings have never been stable categories,” Filipa Antunes, author of “Children Beware! Childhood, Horror and the PG-13 Rating,” told the Deseret News. “Their meaning has always depended on the historical moment.”
“In the 1970s there was no need for PG-13 because young adolescence was not acknowledged as separate from childhood or linked to a different level of maturity,” continued Antunes, who is a humanities lecturer at England’s University of East Anglia. “Things have changed now.”
Audience perceptions of movie ratings have had an effect on the way films are marketed.
“Whether or not the perceptions are accurate, a PG rating indicates to the market that it’s a ‘family’ movie,” according to Vox. “A G rating seems firmly planted in ‘for young kids only’ territory; and an R rating, by default, tends to restrict who’s in the audience.”
But a PG-13 rating is often viewed as being open to many ages.
“A PG-13 rating works like a broader signal for audiences: This is a movie for teens and grown-ups, but it’s not too serious, or too graphic, or the kind of movie you can’t just send your teenager off to see by themselves,” Vox said.
Which is why PG-13 movies are so popular in today’s studios: A film that can market itself to the widest audience is likely to bring in the most money.
But there’s another influence leading to the rise of PG-13 movies — American demographics. Hollywood no longer targets the family, Antunes told the Deseret News.
“What we see today in Hollywood’s emphasis on PG-13 is that young children and families, who have traditionally been the market for PG and G films, are no longer a key demographic for cinema releases,” Antunes said.
The author said there’s been a shift in American families since the 1980s and 1990s. PG-rated family films (such as “Home Alone,” “Matilda,” “The Parent Trap” and others) were more popular in the ’90s because children and families were a larger part of America’s population.
These days, Antunes said, fewer films are targeted to children and families because “childless young adults are a much larger demographic.”
What parents can do
American parents are experiencing confusion over PG-13 movies and whether they’re appropriate for their children. In a 2011 poll from online movie ticketing service Fandango, 75% of parents said they assumed that PG-13 movies were acceptable for their children to watch. In the same poll, 78% said they believed that PG-13 movies contained more adult content than ever.
The live-action “Mulan” hits theaters March 27. Concerned parents can do several things to make sure their children are viewing content that is appropriate for them.
“It’s important for parents to pay careful attention to these ratings and not do nothing, not fall into the trap of assuming that because it’s Disney, it’s automatically OK for your child to watch,” Melissa Henson, program director for the Parents Television Council, told the Deseret News. “If it’s PG-13, it’s PG-13 for a reason.”
Henson advises parents to pre-screen content before allowing their children to watch. If that’s not possible, she suggests going online and “doing your research.”
“There’s a lot of places we can go to find a very thorough analysis of the kind of content that’s going to show up in that movie so that you can make an informed decision about whether or not to take your child,” Henson said.
A 2017 study on the effects of media violence on youth behavior published in Pediatrics advises parents to think of their children’s entertainment choices in the same way as choices in a healthy food diet, rather than simply asking whether a media choice is “good or bad for children.”
“It is more helpful to think in terms of a healthy media diet that incorporates similar properties to a healthy food diet,” according to the study. “Moderation in amount, consuming more of the helpful and less of the harmful content, and having regard for the age of the consumer.”