Right now, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s Air is out for people to watch before it heads to Amazon Prime Video in the future. The movie about how Michael Jordan’s famous shoe brand came to be represents the dream project for a moviemaking company today in that it has a built-in merchandising opportunity, and some are puzzled by the fact the non-fiction footwear story has an R-rating.
To casual audiences today, such a content guideline is normally reserved for things dripping with guts and gore or nudity of even the tamest variety, but film fans know how movies get a rating in the United States today is a little bit more complicated than that. One of the best explainers of the situation comes in the form of the 2006 documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated, which is about the Motion Picture Association of America’s rating system, and, ultimately, it’s just a very secretive system with a lot of odd parts.
To begin with, even if a film does not have violence or nudity, the amount of foul language in it can lead to it receiving a more restrictive rating before it debuts at the box office. This is the primary reason for Air’s rating, and the United States ratings board only allows one use of the F-word in the PG-13 tier just below the R category. Here, you can use it only in a non-sexual context, and, regardless of anything else, if you dial it up to intimacy, you will be slapped with the suggestion the film is only for adults.
Over the years, prominent directors like Darren Aronofsky have criticized this and, while many public bodies have some level of transparency, the ratings board from the Motion Picture Association of America is famously secretive. In This Film Is Not Yet Rated, the production team had to hire private investigators to track down those who were serving at the time and found some involved were members of the clergy (how is that fair to the general public?), and in contrast to the claim members must have children ages 5-15 when they join and need to leave when their kids turn 21, several had adult kids or no children whatsoever.
The ratings appeals board is also as secretive, and in 2018, the board said less than one percent of the total amount of films they have rated to that point ever received a changed rating. Filmmakers have often been frustrated by this, and little of the methodology has ever been explained, so, given this, it is likely Affleck just chose not to bother once he got the category.
It is possible this could change in the future as foul language becomes more acceptable (indeed, it has been on the rise since 2008), but for now, the weird rules stand. So, if you feel you need to watch your mouth, great. If not, be prepared to see the film!