A while back when fans were anxious over the fate of future 'Deadpool' sequels now that they had fallen under Marvel/Disney's banner were assured that the upcoming film would be keeping it's 'R' rating and things seemed to calm down. That's all been uprooted with the recent report that Marvel's upcoming 'Blade' and 'Punisher' reboot films may not be following the same path.
Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige was quoted at a recent event regarding the films:
"Other than Deadpool, which has already established itself as a certain genre and a certain rating, that we already said we would not mess with when we started working on Deadpool - which we have - other than that, we haven't encountered a story or a storyline or a character's journey that a PG-13, or the tone, or the ratings we've been using up to this point has prevented us... We've told all the stories that we wanted to with the tonality and the rating we have now."
Now I must remind you that this so far is heresay with no confirmed yes or no on these two projects, but the quote does seem to imply enough that fans and the internet exploded, with furious responses on various social media and online videos. The argument of the rating and certain comic properties has been ongoing for a while now. While some argue that a harsher rating would hurt profits as comic books are still seen by many as a strictly younger demographic, there's more than enough proof out there to the contrary.
2019's 'Joker' became the highest-grossing R rated film of all time, beating out Marvel's own 'Deadpool' and even 'The Matrix' as well as going on to win an Academy Award for Best Actor for Joaquin Phoenix. Even the upcoming 'Zack Snyder's Justice League' has been so far met with high expectation and excitement despite sporting an R sticker.
There's also 2018's 'Venom' to consider as well which also was met with skepticism due to its PG-13 rating despite the character's more vicious qualities. The film would go on to be one of the biggest hits that year, ranking with 'Star Wars' & 'Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom' but many critics and fans alike did point out the film's more watered down elements weren't in its favor.
But unlike the character of Venom, Blade and The Punisher are simply not family friendly characters nor have they ever been. The world of Blade is one of horror, violence, and bloodshed on nearly every page and if the film trilogy wasn't enough to convince people out there...
The Punisher is the more baffling of the two if this turns out to be a legit choice in production. For those unaware of the character, it's quite simple: He deliberately and brutally kills villains without any hesitation, sometimes torturing them or getting the same treatment to himself. His backstory, which is of his entire family being mercilessly gunned down by mobsters in a park is too graphic to even consider showing in a PG-13 film. You can just see this comic panel I got in a random search for the character...
It's time to think more logically with some of this stuff and make a story that remains faithful to the source material. We don't have to water down mature comic books anymore, three of the highest grossing R films are comic properties. Marvel & DC Comics are bigger than they have ever been and everyone knows their name even non-comic book fans. They will come to the movie if you just make it well and respect the source material. We'll have to see how this story develops down the line but I wouldn't expect the fans to calm down anytime soon.
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Source: CinemaBlend, We've Got This Covered, MovieWeb, Marvel Studios
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