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‘Guardians Of The Galaxy’ Shows ‘Deadpool’ Movie Will Work As PG-13

By Scott Grill
Published on: 07:40 PST, Aug 1, 2014

Guardians of the Galaxy opens this weekend while test footage for a Deadpool movie leaked earlier in the week giving a double dose of cool Marvel movie news. Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld has been debating with fans over whether a movie featuring the “Merc with a Mouth” should be R-rated or PG-13 rated on Twitter. After taking my family to see Guardians of the Galaxy last night, I can say that a Deadpool movie would do just fine with the teenage friendly rating.

Note: Some of this may be considered spoiler material for Guardians of the Galaxy, but I plan on talking about certain actions or language and not plot elements or events.

The two defining characteristics of Deadpool is violence and language. Guardians of the Galaxy did not skimp out on either. As an example of the violence, the camera cuts away just before one anonymous character has his head crushed. There are also multiple instances throughout Guardians where characters are stabbed or impaled. This includes several at once before being violently banged back and forth against walls. There are also times that random civilians are killed, characters are vaporized on screen, and one character is shown getting crushed in his ship. That’s not to the mention the pure poundings that are given. All of this violence is done in a bloodless, almost cartoon-ish or comical way, however. Sometimes the violence is punctuated by a comedic bit to lighten the mood.

Deadpool Test Footage

Compare that to the leaked Deadpool footage and the mercenary in red actually looks a little less violent. He gives a physical beating to some thugs and snaps another’s neck but the worse bit of violence is an off-screen decapitation and the showing of a motorcycle helmet that implies the freshly decapitated head is inside. Again, this is all very bloodless and performed in a comedic fashion.

As for the language, Guardians drops pretty much every bit of foul language that I’m not allowed to drop in Inquisitr articles with the exception of variations on the F-bomb. This includes the s-bomb, the a-bomb, the d-bomb, the bulls-bomb and other “colorful metaphors.”

By comparison, Deadpool dropped the s-bomb a couple of times singing along with a Gwen Stefani song, dropped a b-bomb while punching a thug, and ended the test footage with an f-bomb. However, f-bombs in PG-13 movies are not actually new. The Fox produced X-Men: First Class infamously featured a cameo appearance by Wolverine using the mother of all swear words as did its follow-up, X-Men: Days of Future Past. There are plenty of other examples where the word is partially bleeped out in PG-13 films, including Marvel’s own Iron Man 2.

Nope, not violent at all.

The Deadpool test footage created for 20th Century Fox went over well with the intended audience by hitting the right notes of action, absurdity, and comedy. While the Ryan Reynolds project is still in limbo, there’s no reason to think that it couldn’t be a PG-13 movie given the level of violence and language that the MPAA is allowing in movies today. An R-rating may allow for some of the more explicit gore that is in the comic, but it will also narrow the potential audience down and that is something movie studios actively try to avoid for big budget films.

Do you think a Deadpool movie could get away with a PG-13 rating or should a movie studio let Wade Wilson bathe in all of his violent glory with an R rating? Sound off in the comments below.

[Images via Deadpool game, leaked Deadpool test footage]

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