Movies That Would Have Been Better With An R Rating

There's nothing inherently better about R-rated movies—in fact, many films work perfectly well without sex, swearing, or violence. Toy Story's Buzz and Woody can bicker just fine without using profanity. In Casablanca, a graphic love scene isn't necessary to sell Bogart and Bergman's romance. The little girl from the The Ring is terrifying all on her own—no extra blood needed.

However, when a studio compromises a film's story in order to earn a more marketable rating, problems occur. In those cases, the R rating isn't about gore or nudity—it's about freedom. In order to tell the best stories possible, filmmakers should be able to use all the tools available, and removing access to powerful imagery and language for financial reasons can hobble a film creatively. But don't just take our word for it—read on to see just how different these movies would be if studios had allowed them to pursue a more mature rating.

The Evil Dead movies aren't scary because they're gory. They're scary because pretty much anything can—and does—happen. Under Sam Raimi's direction, Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 are gleefully chaotic. Is there blood? Sure, lots of it, but the movies' real horror comes from the fact that, thanks to the Necronomicon's dark powers, the audience has absolutely no idea what terrors are coming next.

That's why the PG-13 rating for Drag Me to Hell, Raimi's return to the genre that made him famous, was so disappointing. Admittedly, it was Raimi's choice, not the studio's. As Raimi, who was coming off of three back-to-back Spider-Man films, explained, "I didn't want to do exactly the same thing I had done before. This time, I didn't want to have a lot of blood." That's fine. After all, there are plenty of horror movies that don't rely on gore to get the job done.

However, compared to The Evil Dead (and its delightfully unhinged small-screen sequel, Ash vs. The Evil Dead), Drag Me to Hell feels constrained—thanks to the teen-friendly rating, you know exactly how far the film is willing to go. An R rating wouldn't just give Raimi more room to play, it would also give the audience's imagination room to run wild—and that's really the scariest thing of all.

In the age of Twitch, YouTube, and social media, The Truman Show, Peter Weir's reality-TV satire, feels quaint—especially its feel-good ending. Maybe it might've had more staying power if it had stuck closer to the original script—which, unlike the final film, is incredibly disturbing.

Unlike the final film, which traps Jim Carrey's Truman in Seahaven, a suburban neighborhood straight out of a '50s sitcom, Andrew Niccol's original version of The Truman Show takes place in a dark, gritty version of New York City. On the page, Truman doesn't have any of Carrey's natural charisma—he's out of shape and insecure, and when his world starts to break down, Truman absolutely loses it. He watches two men rape a woman and does nothing. He tortures his wife, who he's (correctly) deduced is lying to him. He grabs a baby out of a stroller and threatens to smash its head on the pavement if passersby don't admit Truman is at the center of a conspiracy.

It's edgy stuff—and a guaranteed hard R—but the studio wanted something more comedic, and director Peter Weir agreed. Weir thought that the in-world version of Truman Show, as it was depicted in Niccol's screenplay, was too grim to plausibly attract an audience, and Weir decided instead to create a lighter show that appealed to the fictional viewers' nostalgia—or, as Weir puts it, "this kind of dream of a small-town America that may never have existed but was certainly mythologized in movies and other media."

The Motion Picture Association of America, the organization that assigns movie ratings, is an interesting beast. For the most part, according to the MPAA, violence is okay—and gets even more okay as time passes. Foul language is a little trickier, with films like The King's Speech—a light, inspirational story—getting controversial ratings simply because of a few dozen curse words. And sex? That's still a big no-no, even if all you're doing is a little bit of dirty talk.

That's where films like Mean Girls get into trouble. Originally, the MPAA wanted to give Tina Fey and Mark Waters' high-school send-up an R rating simply because its teenage characters talked about sex like, well, teenagers.

Waters had to record new dialogue to replace Mean Girls' dirtier lines after filming was finished, and it's incredibly obvious in the final movie. "There was [a] line," Waters says, "which eventually became 'Amber D'Alessio made out with a hot dog.'" A line about a "popped cherry" was similarly changed.

However, Waters stood his ground when the MPAA's influence started bordering on sexism. As Waters explains, "The line in the sand that I drew was the joke about the wide-set vagina. The ratings board said, 'We can't give you a PG-13 unless you cut that line.'" But Waters compared Mean Girls to Anchorman, which was PG-13 despite a scene in which Will Farrell's character is visibly... excited, and told the ratings board, "'You're only saying this because it's a girl, and she's talking about a part of her anatomy. There's no sexual context whatsoever.'"

With that, the MPAA backed down, although it's hard not to wonder if the movie would've been better served with fewer changes and a more lenient R rating.

These days, many moviegoers consider Jurassic Park a modern classic, and it's certainly become a big, profitable franchise for Universal. Still, it's hard not to wonder what hardcore fans of Michael Crichton's original novel, which moved over nine million copies, thought when they first saw Steven Spielberg's adaptation. While the film is largely a family-friendly affair, the book includes weaselly hacker Dennis Nedry holding chunks of his own intestines, park founder John Hammond succumbing to poison as dinosaurs eat him alive, and Jurassic Park's game warden Robert Muldoon blowing a velociraptor to bits with a bazooka.

There was even a world-class director waiting to make a darker, more mature version of Jurassic Park. James Cameron, the man behind Titanic and Avatar (the two highest-grossing films of all time), tried to buy the film rights, but says that Spielberg beat him by "a couple of hours." According to Cameron, his Jurassic Park "would have been Aliens with dinosaurs," resulting in a product more in line with Cameron's other R-rated sci-fi flicks, like the first two Terminator films.

Even Cameron can't deny the power of Spielberg's final product. "Dinosaurs are for 8-year-olds," Cameron says. "We can all enjoy it, too, but kids get dinosaurs and they should not have been excluded for that." That being said, it's still too bad Cameron never got his shot at bringing dark and violent dinosaur action to the big screen—if not for the first Jurassic Park film, then at least instead of the two bland and forgettable sequels.

Unlike some of the other films on this list, we can definitively prove Batman v Superman would be a better film with an R rating. While Batman v Superman's theatrical cut is rated PG-13, a special R-rated extended edition arrived alongside the film's official Blu-ray, and while it doesn't address many of Batman v Superman's bigger flaws (like, say, its Lex Luthor problem), at least it makes a little bit more sense.

In Batman v Superman: Ultimate Edition, Superman's attack on African mercenaries is a lot longer and a lot bloodier, and the scene benefits from its extended runtime by making it much, much clearer exactly how Superman is being framed for a grisly murder. In addition, Ultimate Edition explains exactly why Superman has a problem with Batman, which isn't really addressed in the theatrical cut. As it turns out, Superman decides that Batman's actions are too extreme following his investigation into a prison murder, in which one of the criminals captured by Ben Affleck's Dark Knight is stabbed thanks to his Batman-shaped brand.

Fans who didn't like Batman v Superman's dour tone or poked at the film's many plot holes won't exactly change their minds after watching Batman v Superman: Ultimate Edition—ultimately, it's 30 minutes of the same—but at least the movie makes more sense with the extra footage. Remember, better just means improved: it doesn't necessarily mean good.