UPDATED: Nolan Defends Dunkirk’s PG-13 Rating

UPDATED: Here is Christopher Nolan’s explanation on why he’s taking Dunkirk down the PG-13 route.

“All of my big blockbuster films have been PG-13. It’s a rating I feel comfortable working with totally. ‘Dunkirk’ is not a war film. It’s a survival story and first and foremost a suspense film.

So while there is a high level of intensity to it, it does not necessarily concern itself with the bloody aspects of combat, which have been so well done in so many films.

We were really trying to take a different approach and achieve intensity in a different way. I would really like lots of different types of people to get something out of the experience.”

‘Lots of different types of people’ in this instance apparently means 10 year olds.  Because, as we know, 10 year olds at this point no longer age, so if we were to make an R rated movie concerning the bloodiest war in human history then they wouldn’t be able to see it, even if they waited three years.  So the rest (and most) of the target demographics must compromise.

For once, I’d love it if one of these directors would simply have the balls to come out and say it; ‘We hope to make even more money this way’.  By the way, I was underage when my friends and I went to see Saving Private Ryan.  Technically, we weren’t allowed in, but we got in and the movie got our money.

And one of the things that drove us in there was at the time, WW2 veterans were praising Steven Spielberg for his bloody, visceral interpretation of the war.

PREVIOUSLY: ‘What are we supposed to use, harsh language’?

No!  Actually don’t use that either, you’ll upset the censors.  In Dunkirk, anyway, now that the movie is rated PG-13. Of course, this movie isn’t quite set on the Eastern Front but it’s WW2 all the same, hardly a picnic.  This should not be.

Anyway, Nolan recently said that the movie will have a triptych structure, telling the story from three points of view—air, land, and sea:

“The film is told from three points of view. The air (planes), the land (on the beach) and the sea (the evacuation by the navy). For the soldiers embarked in the conflict, the events took place on different temporalities,” Nolan said (via Google translation). “On land, some stayed one week stuck on the beach. On the water, the events lasted a maximum day; And if you were flying to Dunkirk, the British spitfires would carry an hour of fuel. To mingle these different versions of history, one had to mix the temporal strata. Hence the complicated structure; Even if the story, once again, is very simple.”

So I don’t know, should our enthusiasm alter now?