The superhero genre has traditionally been family-oriented. Often light-hearted and ending with a moral message, PG-13 is what most of these films aim for. However, every now and then there comes an R-rated superhero flick that completely blows off adult minds, forcing them to be hyped like kids again. And the Deadpool series did just that.
However, Deadpool wasn’t the first R-rated superhero movie, and it certainly won’t be the last. Most of the time, R-rated movies earn much less than their PG counterparts, and just like Deadpool, that rule is occasionally broken. As in the case of Logan, which successfully clawed through its family-friendly genre to present a bloody masterpiece.
Logan‘s R-rating played a significant part in its success, and its Oscar nomination speaks volumes about it. But did you know, that gore-filled rating wasn’t easy to get?
Logan producer struggled to get an R-rating
Logan was lightly inspired by Marvel’s Old Man Logan comic book series, which was highly popular among the readers. The series ran from 2016 to 2018 and showed a dystopian world, where an old and gritty Logan desires some peace, but is inadvertently set on a path of revenge.
Just like its comic book counterpart, Logan producer Hutch Parker wanted the film to deal with adult themes of blood and violence. He recalled in an interview with Slashfilm,
“You know, it would probably be a better story if I said yes. But the truth is, no. The studio, they certainly had questions, but from the early days — particularly Emma Watts, who was a big champion of the project, as was Steve Asbell, actually, the two of them — it was always about how do we tell the story correctly?”
Old Man Logan soared in popularity mostly because of its graphic and adult theme. Leaving it out would’ve been a soulless adaptation, and hence the R-rating was necessary for Logan.
James Mangold pitched Logan as “Little Miss Sunshine” with mutants
When filmmakers present a storyline to a studio, they try to make it as easy to grasp as they can. In the case of Logan, James Mangold pitched it to Fox as “Little Miss Sunshine” with Charles, Logan, and Laura. He told DirectConversations.com,
“My initial proposal to Fox was that I wanted to make [a] very bloody, existential version of ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ with Logan and Charles Xavier.”
The pitch, as hilarious as it sounds, eventually worked out in his favor. And the comparison isn’t way too off either, as just like Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris in Little Miss Sunshine, Charles, Logan, and Laura are on the road quite a lot, and get close to each other over time.
Logan is streaming on Disney+.
