How Gremlins and Temple of Doom accidentally invented PG-13
In 1984, two Spielberg-connected movies scared enough parents that the ratings board had to create a whole new category.
If you were a kid in the early '80s, you probably saw something rated PG that had no business being rated PG. A heart getting ripped out of a man's chest. A gremlin exploding in a microwave. Your parents trusted that letter, and that letter lied.
That gap is exactly how PG-13 was born.
The ratings had a hole in the middle
Before 1984, the Motion Picture Association of America's rating system jumped from PG straight to R. PG meant parental guidance suggested. R meant nobody under 17 without a parent. There was nothing in between, so a lot of movies with real violence got squeezed into PG because R would have killed their box office with families and teenagers.
For a while, nobody made much noise about it. Then came the summer of 1984.
The one-two punch
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom opened in May with a PG rating. This is the one with the Thuggee ritual where Mola Ram reaches into a man's chest, pulls out his still-beating heart, and lowers him into a lava pit. Kids who loved Raiders showed up expecting an adventure and got nightmares.
Weeks later, Gremlins arrived, also rated PG. Spielberg produced it, and it was sold with cute Gizmo on the posters. Then the cute creature spawned a pack of monsters who got blended, stabbed and microwaved in grisly fashion.
Parents complained loudly. The kids, for the record, mostly thought it was awesome.
Spielberg's suggestion
Spielberg had a stake in both films, and he's widely credited with pitching the fix: a rating between PG and R. He took the idea to MPAA president Jack Valenti, and the organization moved fast. PG-13 took effect on July 1, 1984, meaning parents were strongly cautioned that some material might be inappropriate for kids under 13.
The first movie released with the new rating was Red Dawn, the Patrick Swayze movie about high schoolers fighting off a Soviet invasion, which hit theaters in August 1984. (The first film actually assigned the rating was The Flamingo Kid, but it came out later that year.)
What happened next
PG-13 was meant to protect kids. In practice, it became the most valuable rating in Hollywood. It let studios push violence and language while still selling tickets to teenagers, who are the most reliable moviegoers there are.
Over the following decades, PG-13 became the default for blockbusters. Most of the superhero movies your kids watch today wear that rating. Meanwhile, PG slowly turned into the rating for animated family films and not much else.
There's a fun irony in all of this. The two movies that forced PG-13 into existence never got re-rated. Temple of Doom and Gremlins are still officially PG. So if you put either one on for your own kids based on the rating, just know you're repeating your parents' mistake.
Honestly, that's half the fun.
