You’ve gotta love some of the gymnastics that go into making sure a film keeps its rating. Famously, Kill Bill had to turn its whole House of Blue Leaves fight scene black-and-white in order to avoid an NC-17 rating, but in a world where PG-13 allows younger audiences to see a film without an adult, filmmakers have to be even more creative in reducing the amount of blood on screen.
Such is the case with the Jurassic Park franchise. Despite the number of human casualties the films have, the amount of actual blood has always been minimal, allowing them to maintain that coveted PG-13 rating — a rating that allowed yours truly to consume the film at the tender age of five (though, to be honest, it wasn’t too long after that when I saw my first R-rated film — and in case you’re wondering, it was Under Siege 2: Dark Territory).
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But what specific action did director J.A. Bayona take for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom? Here’s what he had to say:
“You know what I’m learning, when you do these kinds of movies, you know, when it needs to be PG-13, there are certain red lines that you cannot cross. For example, we knew that we couldn’t show much human blood. So for example, there’s a moment when you can see a dinosaur biting the arm off a man, and we designed the scene in order to make it very effective, but without showing any blood. It’s kind of fun when you do that, you try to find a way of making what you really want to do, in order to provoke that effective feeling, but without crossing the red line.”
I like this quote a lot. It’s easy enough to orchestrate horrific moments without actually showing a lot of blood (I point you to Eddie getting ripped in half in The Lost World: Jurassic Park), but there’s something magical about filmmaking when a director can shoot around the horrors for maximum effect.
My mind goes to Scarface, where we never actually see the chainsaw doing the dirty work. For some reason, the result is more effective and more in keeping with what keeps the medium so magical, in my opinion. Granted, Scarface had plenty of blood, but it shot around the actual gore. With that in mind, I look forward to seeing that in action when I see Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom tonight.
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SOURCE: CinemaBlend