As a film that centres on a battle to the death between 24 teenagers until only one is left standing, you might think box-office smash The Hunger Games spells out its own warning to parents of young teenagers. But Gary Ross's dystopian science-fiction thriller has been criticised by the Daily Mail over its 12A rating, which means children above the age of 12 can see it in British cinemas without an adult.
At the prompting of UK censors, studio Lionsgate excised a number of gory shots from the final cut of the film, the weekend debut of which achieved the year's highest global gross. The British Board of Film Classification had intended to give the movie a 15 rating, but agreed to a 12A following the removal of seven seconds of brutality and bloodshed.
Nevertheless, parents have complained on online forums that the film's focus on extreme, government-sponsored violence makes it unsuitable for preteens. One blogger argued the removal of gory moments contributes to a "Bambi effect" that only adds to the movie's ability to shock.
"It is really good, but I thought it was really stretching the 12 rating. [My 12-year-old] was so distressed at one particular part, not long before the end, that we had to leave the cinema," wrote a contributor to a thread about the film on the Mumsnet website.
Another said: "You don't see much gore but it's implied and some death scenes are quite shocking. You see a lot of dead faces and it's very realistic. There's one bit where the whole cinema rocked back in its seats and went "aaargh" together." However, the same poster added: "My 12-year-old daughter and her 11-year-old mate loved it."
Critics have pointed out that Lionsgate chose to ignore the fight scenes in trailers for the film, focusing instead on heroine Katniss Everdeen's pre-Hunger Games preparation in the Capitol, the sprawling, ornate capital of Panem, (post-apocalyptic north America). That, coupled with the film's rating, gave filmgoers little warning of the intense nature of the movie, it has been claimed.
The film features scenes in which contestants as young as 12 are stung to death, impaled by spears, ripped apart by mutant dogs and battered to death with bricks.
"I can't help but think that there's a little dose of Bambi medicine here," wrote Simon Brew of the Den of Geek blog. "The shooting of Bambi's mother, infamously, was in the original plan for the Bambi film, but was removed because it was considered too much. As a result, the sequences in and around it became all the more shocking.
"[In The Hunger Games] pretty much any vestige of blood is absent from the movie. Knives going into bodies? You don't see those. Basically, instead of focusing on the kills themselves, the film ends up being more focused on what happens before, and what happens afterwards. I'd argue it makes it all the more shocking."
Star Jennifer Lawrence, who plays Everdeen, has defended the film as a fair adaptation of Suzanne Collins' gory young adult novel. "We weren't going to make a watered-down version of what we love," she said. "If you take the violence and brutality out of the movie, you take the entire heart out of it."
