Black Adam was nearly rated R due to violence
Black Adam hits this week, a comic book movie that introduces new heroes and villains to film fans.
Dwayne Johnson takes center stage as the title character, who receives mighty powers from the gods in ancient times, then unleashes his unique form of justice in the modern world.
Black Adam is an anti-hero, meaning that he doesn’t play by the usual superhero rules, so things get pretty violent. Which led to problems with the MPAA.
Why did Black Adam nearly get an R?
Producer Hiram Garcia told Collider that the filmmakers had to collaborate with the MPAA go get the film down to a PG-13 rating.
Garcia explains: “We really wanted to make sure that we honored the character of Black Adam. One of the things he’s known for is his aggression and violence, and to do a Black Adam movie that didn’t have that just wouldn’t have been authentic. So we always went into this knowing that we were going to push it as far as we did.
“We knew it was going to be a collaborative process with the MPAA to finally get it to where we were able – to get that rating – but we were able to pull it off. But it was really important for us to do that. And that’s something Dwayne was very committed to as well.”
What got cut from the Dwayne Johnson movie?
It took four rounds of trims for Black Adam to land the PG-13, with several memorable moments cut, as producer Beau Flynn explains…
“We did have to make a lot of edits, actually,” Flynn tells Collider. “There are some personal moments that we really love, but we had to let them go. But we never compromised, we never had to cut a scene.
“We had some really cool moments, and if you notice, there are some great moments when Black Adam is in the fly bike chase sequence and drops one of the intergang soldiers.”
“Then there’s this great moment where the truck bounces over the body. But those are moments that you need and remember in these movies, you know what I mean? You can’t play it safe, and you have to go for it.”
“And I think we have four or five of those. At one point we had about 10, and we were able to find some compromise with the MPAA on that.”
