Max Payne - R Rated? Good or bad thing?

Looks as if the Max Payne movie is going to be R rated and not PG-13 as the film makers wanted (our previous posts on the Max Payne posters and trailer's are here). Now this is good for the older movie going audience and could mean that it will be close to the game with lots of brutal killings. However, it does of course mean it might not do as well at the box office as a PG-13 rating would. The Max Payne games are a few years old now so the main fans of the game will all be old enough to go and see an R rating.

However, Max Payne director John Moore is not happy with the MPAA’s decision to give the film an R and is supposedly trying to cut the film down to the original PG-13. He tells Das Gamer, of his frustration with the whole process:

We’re suffering from what I call Batman blowback. The Motion Picture Association of America gave The Dark Knight a PG-13 rating and basically sucked Warner Bros. cock…The MPAA changes their rules willy-nilly and it depends on who’s seeing your actual movie at the time. It’s very difficult to get a hold on what’s acceptable. The only thing you can use is current standards. So I go and see The Dark Knight and I say, “Gee, that’s pretty gnarly for PG-13,” but I felt good about Max Payne after coming out of the theater. I thought Max wasn’t going to have a problem. And that’s not the case. They’re coming down on us pretty hard.
[The MPAA] really hung themselves with The Dark Knight. Every other filmmaker in town is knocking on their door saying, “Please sir, may I have my PG-13 rating and be as fair to my movie as you were to The Dark Knight.”

What is your opinion of all this? Should it be an R or PG-13? Should the Dark Knight have been rated R and, if it had, would it have been the huge box office smash?

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