{"id":299749,"date":"2025-07-28T23:50:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T23:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/299749\/"},"modified":"2025-07-28T23:50:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T23:50:09","slug":"the-phantom-menaces-rating-reclassified-in-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/299749\/","title":{"rendered":"The Phantom Menace’s rating reclassified in UK"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anakin Skywalker\u2019s \u201cAre you an angel?\u201d speech is no longer suitable for universal audiences. Nor is Jar Jar Binks sticking his tongue in an electrical current. According to The Independent<\/a>, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) now recommends parental guidance for Star Wars: Episode I \u2014 The Phantom Menace<\/a>, slapping a \u201cPG\u201d rating on the film and upgrading its previous rating of \u201cU\u201d for universal. Although George Lucas\u2019 first Star Wars prequel is filled with traumatic story decisions, such as Qui-Gon cheating at chance cube, the new rating is for space dogfights, which depict a nine-year-old killing hundreds aboard the Vuutrun Palaa droid control ship, and the \u201cnon-graphic\u201d violence of Darth Maul getting bisected and dropped down a shaft.<\/p>\n

This classification was revealed last year in the BBFC\u2019s 2024 annual report and applied to last year\u2019s re-release. It\u2019s also not the only reclassified property. The BBFC finally got around to updating 1937\u2019s A Star Is Born to \u201cPG\u201d for implied suicide, as well as television\u2019s Frasier, which jumped from \u201cPG\u201d to \u201c12,\u201d for language (namely \u201cson of a bitch\u201d), drug references, and, presumably, Niles being a creep. Is there an episode in the new Frasier where Dr. Crane becomes addicted to Whippets and starts cursing like Martin Crane on his first tour of Korea? The world may never know.<\/p>\n

Last year saw the largest reclassifying of films in the BBFC\u2019s 112-year history. But it wasn\u2019t all upgrades. The Crow and Fight Club were reclassified to lower ratings, decreasing from \u201c18\u201d to \u201c15.\u201d However, if you\u2019re scratching your head about why Frasier went up and Fight Club went down, a statement from BBFC president Natasha Kalinsky will probably clear it up. TL;DR: They\u2019re apparently offloading their judgements to AI.<\/p>\n

In 2024, Kaplinsky said, the BBFC \u201cclassified more cinema features than ever before\u201d and made \u201csignificant progress\u201d toward adding BBFC age rating to stream services \u201cthrough new deals with Prime Video and Netflix.\u201d She saved the best for last. \u201cPerhaps most exciting of all, we have continued our pioneering work with AI, ensuring that the BBFC remains at the forefront of film and digital content regulation. It has been a genuine privilege to lead the organisation at such an exciting and transformative time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t want film ratings to be made by a frequently incorrect<\/a> algorithm that makes people dumber<\/a> when it isn\u2019t making them go insane<\/a>? Sadly, you can\u2019t stop the change any more than you can stop the suns from setting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anakin Skywalker\u2019s \u201cAre you an angel?\u201d speech is no longer suitable for universal audiences. Nor is Jar Jar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299750,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,3943,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-299749","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114933545375274863","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}