Today in Tedium: In the fall of 1968, the film industry changed forever. The studios, with the help of a hard-nosed Washington insider, figured out how to expand the parameters of film and avoid government censorship in one fell swoop. Jack Valenti, in one of the first moves he made as head of the Motion Picture Association of America, instituted an industry-wide ratings system, which replaced a self-censorship regime called the Hays Code. Ultimately, Valenti’s scheme fostered a stronger film industry. Much has been written about these ratings, but one particular rating has surprisingly faded into the ether: The safe-for-everyone G rating. As Sherwood noted this past week, there have been essentially no G-rated movies in recent years. (I spotted just one new G-rated theatrical release that made money at the box office in 2024, an IMAX documentary on the Blue Angels flight crew.) I would use a stronger profanity here usually, but I must ask, what the heck happened? Today’s Tedium ponders why the “G” no longer lives up to its name. — Ernie @ Tedium
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Head
The name of a 1968 arthouse-inspired film, featuring The Monkees. The film, released just as the MPAA’s ratings system officially took effect, was one of the first to receive a G rating. That fact does an excellent job of highlighting how differently G ratings worked early on. The movie, far edgier than modern G-rated movies, was an attempt to thin out the prefab band’s audience. As director Bob Rafelson said at the time of the film’s release: “I don’t want people to like the film. I want them to feel it. Let ’em squirm. That way it really gets them into it. I want them physically involved, not mentally.” Doesn’t sound like what most people expect from modern G-rated fare.
The rating card that ran with The Monkees’ 1968 film, Head. The design has changed somewhat since then.
How G-rated films went from general to extremely specific
I find ratings systems to be deeply interesting, as they are usually the work of content-based industries trying to show that they are willing to play ball with concerned political figures.
And that definitely describes what happened with the modern-day Motion Picture Association’s approach to the film ratings system.
Usually, though, when problems crop up with this system, it usually comes in the extremes and the edge-pushers. Films like Midnight Cowboy, Showgirls, Henry & June, and Pink Flamingos come to mind when we talk about the former MPAA’s ratings.
But less discussed is the G-rated system, which initially represented films that in the Hays Code era would have gone through without changes. But as the system began to firm up, that standard eventually evolved into a self-selecting system, where essentially “G-rated” means the film is specifically for kids, rather than just being safe for everyone.
Looking at MPAA ratings from the early days of the system can create some head-scratching choices. Some very popular films in the late 1960s and early 1970s earned G ratings despite not fitting the modern G-rated mold.
To highlight how dramatic the change was, it’s worth noting that one early film to receive the G rating was 2001: A Space Odyssey, a Stanley Kubrick film that, if released today, would have most certainly been a PG-13 title. But because norms had not been formalized around MPAA ratings, it led to wiggle room that treated the iconic film as one safe for 8-year-olds to consume.
Despite the importance of this new system, early guidance was confusing and haphazard. To give you an idea, here were the initial ratings options in the fall of 1968:
- G, for general audiences
- M, for more mature audiences
- R, for restricted audiences
- X, no entry for children under the age of 18
The latter rating has gained notoriety over the years, but initially, the X rating was intended by Valenti to be a “leper colony” of films too offensive for the general public. Just one problem: Almost immediately, films began to take advantage of the rating’s artistic freedom, giving it a practical use case along with the “leper colony” reputation.
M was intended to take a similar role to PG-13, but in practice, its similarity in nomenclature to R and X ended up confusing audiences, which led to some quick changes—first to the GP rating, later changed to PG.
When explaining why the MPAA changed GP to PG, Valenti pointed to consumer confusion.
“The reason is very simple,” Valenti told the Associated Press. “It was the view of a number of people in the industry, particularly exhibitors, that to some persons ‘GP’ meant ‘General Public’—not ‘Parental Guidance Suggested.’”
(Put another way: PG’s predecessors, at different times, could be misread as equivalent to an R rating and equivalent to a G rating. Surprisingly, they didn’t have this perfected right away.)
Eventually, the trade group got the ratings nailed down, further expanding them in 1984 with the addition of PG-13, which made room for the increasing number of action-oriented blockbusters from that era. Later, the NC-17 rating helped create an arthouse home for explicit subject matter that wasn’t pornographic. That rating is still rare: Per my analysis of the FilmRatings.com, the MPA’s modern-day clearinghouse of rated films, the NC-17 rating has only been used 92 times, compared to 157 times for M and 115 times for GP. That means the latter ratings, which together existed for less than five years, produced many more rated films than NC-17 has over a 35-year period. (The X rating, meanwhile, saw frequent use for both pornography and grindhouse fare in the 1970s, which meant it saw many more total uses. Notably: In 1980 and 1981, there were more X-rated films than G-rated films, per the MPAA database, though 1976 was the biggest year for that controversial rating.)
That expansion in ratings options, mixed with the many successful animated films that hit the box office in the 1990s, helped solidify the G rating as one for films specifically for kids, rather than merely being ones with broadly accessible subject matter. The audiences may have been general, but the content itself became very specific.
Gradually, the G rating, once the most popular rating for new films, got sidelined. In 1968, 181 movies received a G rating—a level that fell to around 25 per year in the 1980s and 1990s, then picked up to around 40 per year in the late 2000s as children’s entertainment options expanded. But in 2024, the MPA handed out just five G ratings—two of which were short subjects, and another two were documentaries. What happened?
The trailer for Beyond And Back. Given the G rating, you may be surprised at the amount of violence in the trailer alone.
The five weirdest examples of G-rated films
- Beyond And Back. This 1978 documentary-style film about near-death experiences was created by a company that specialized in Christian theological works, specifically marketing the film in small towns to avoid criticism for its underlying message. One problem: It became surprisingly successful, which put it on Roger Ebert’s radar—and he named it one of his “most hated” movies.
- Dark Star. John Carpenter, the director of Escape From New York, The Thing, and Halloween, would on the surface be an unlikely choice to direct a G-rated film, but this low-budget riff on fellow G-rated oddity 2001: A Space Odyssey, a student project he helped develop at the University of Southern California, was toned down significantly by its distributor to get the desired G rating. The film later became a cult classic, as both Carpenter and his cowriter, Dan O’Bannon (best known for writing Alien) gained notoriety.
- The Andromeda Strain. A classic example of the MPAA’s laissez-faire ratings system at the beginning of its history, this classic 1971 sci-fi film has violence, nudity, drug use, and mild profanity, and it’s about an alien organism that kills people. Despite all that, it still managed to pull off a G rating. Sure, why not?
- The Straight Story. What would happen if one of our greatest directors created a great film about an old man who rode a lawn mower across state lines to see his ailing brother? You would have The Straight Story, a 1999 David Lynch film that earned a G rating, essentially because the story didn’t require any of the stuff that would have pushed it into even PG territory—which meant the film, built for the arthouses, ended up getting picked up by Disney. “Forget the G rating—this road movie is as weird as David Lynch gets,” a 1999 Salon review claimed. The lead actor, Richard Farnsworth, acted through terminal cancer and died soon after the film’s release, but not before getting an Oscar nomination for the film.
- Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Not exactly the most-loved blockbuster—though Trekkies have begun to reappraise the glacially paced film—but it is nonetheless interesting that a film of this nature was rated G. But what’s weird is what happened later on, when the director’s cut was released—its rating got upgraded to a PG even though it was the same film with some enhanced visuals and audio. Did a soundtrack change lead the MPAA censors to reconsider?
17
The number of G-rated films films, among the top 20 by domestic box office gross, that were produced by either Disney or Pixar, according to Box Office Mojo. (Pixar absolutely dominates the G rating, by the way: Nine of the top 10 films on the list are Pixar films.) The most popular live-action film on the list is Gone With the Wind, at number 14, while the most popular animated non-Disney film is The Polar Express. The 20th-ranked The Sound of Music is an interesting case: While distributed by Twentieth Century Fox, Disney acquired the film through its 2019 purchase of the studio. (So it’s technically 18 films out of 20 owned by Disney.)
This was the most popular G-rated film of 2018. It made 0.75% as much as the most popular G-rated film of 2019, Toy Story 4.
The odd state of the G rating in the modern day: One year, a box-office behemoth; the next, a nonentity
It’s possible that—barring another Pixar sequel or two or an expansion in Paw Patrol’s popularity to adults—Toy Story 4, released in 2019, might be the last hurrah of the G rating as we know it today.
Looking at the box office database at The Numbers tells a pretty interesting story when it comes to G-rated films. See, in 2019, the Pixar sequel became the highest-grossing G-rated movie ever, at nearly $1.1 billion worldwide. But in 2018, the category made just $8.3 million, mostly from an IMAX film about pandas. And in 2020, when the world went to hell, the Russian film Barboskins at the Cottage, built around a franchise American parents might know better as The Barkers, scored less than $2 million at the box office worldwide—creating a pretty wild roller coaster of results.
Clearly, the rating has become disconnected from its original intent. If Disney or Pixar wanted, they could give their animated movies PG ratings from now on, and nobody would bat an eye. (Pixar has done just that for many of its non-sequel films.) PG has effectively become the new G, for reasons related to box office viability and sheer logistics, and we’ve normalized the idea of six-year-olds watching films with mild adult content. And ironically, it might be Pixar’s fault. That studio, despite mostly releasing its own films with G ratings, has built a reputation for animated films that appeal to both kids and adults, with the adult humor often intended to keep adults interested as well. Other studios followed suit, albeit with slightly more aggressive ratings.
The peak year for G-rated films, per The Numbers, came in 2008, when Wall-E did a decent $700 million worldwide, but there were also numerous G-rated options that gave viewers options. Not only was there also a popular Dr. Seuss movie in Horton Hears a Who, but the Disney Channel machine had created at least three separate movies that year that scored more than $50 million each, including a Hannah Montana concert film and High School Musical 3. (The other G-rated Disney film, College Road Trip, notably stars Martin Lawrence, who is responsible for the only NC-17 concert film, which his studio eventually released without a rating. What a wild career that guy has had.)
We are a long way from that level of G-rated diversity in the release schedule, and odds are it’s because of two things: the aforementioned desire to make family films palatable to everyone, and the rise of streaming to replace the film experience in many cases. It’s a reflection of the contractions in the entertainment industry, sure, but it also shows a shift in audience.
At this point, the G rating probably needs a rethink, because it no longer serves its role as a tentpole for the whole family.
In some ways, the film rating system has come to represent a bell curve, with general audiences on one side and adults-only fare on the other. And financially, it more or less works out that way, with the PG-13 rating drawing larger collective worldwide box office grosses than movies based on the PG or R ratings, compared to cumulative totals from The Numbers. (For example, in 2023, PG-13 films drew $10 billion in revenues, thanks in part to the success of Barbie; by comparison, PG films drew $5.2 billion and R-rated $4.6 billion.)
But the intriguing thing is that, if you base it on the number of literal releases each year, the center point of that bell curve isn’t actually the perceived center point of PG-13. It’s actually the R rating. Based on a scan of data from the MPA’s FilmRatings.com site, more R-rated movies are made each year than any other rating, and it’s been that way for a long time. (To put actual numbers to this: 297 R rated movies in 2024, compared to 70 PG movies and 125 PG-13 films.) One imagines this is likely in part because independent productions tend to favor flexibility in their storytelling, and the looser rating lets them lean into profanity, sex, or violence.
If the G rating loses its cultural cachet, it may speak to cultural differences or financial realities as much as anything else. A 3D-animated film simply requires more resources to build than a horror movie with practical effects. Perhaps that’s why we’re more likely to see a horror movie based on Winnie the Pooh from an indie director than an actual attempt to create the modern equivalent of Winnie the Pooh. Budget and reach ultimately limit who can create G-rated films in many cases, and can limit what an indie movie’s target audience can be.
We live in a world where we started with one set of expectations of what a G-rated movie should be, but ended up with another. For something targeting such a general audience, a G rating feels awful niche.
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