‘Watership Down’ upgraded to a PG classification 45 years after its release
The notorious British animation Watership Down from 1978, has been reclassified as a PG, after 45 years of traumatising children with its violent imagery.
Telling the story of a colony of rabbits seeking a new home after human developers destroy their habitat, the animation, based on the novel of the same name by Richard Adams, has long been known for its terrifying scenes of gore and eerie violence.
Insisting on warning viewers on the promotional poster for the movie with a statement that said that this wasn’t the all-innocent film it appeared to be, director Martin Rosen thought he did his part to deter the wrong audience. “I reckoned a mother with a sensitive child would see a rabbit in a snare with blood coming out its mouth and reckon, ‘Well, maybe this isn’t for Charlie – it’s a little too tough,’” director Martin Rosen stated during the 40th anniversary of the movie, as per The Guardian.
Although the film featured some pretty graphic violence, British censors awarded the film a U rating, recommending that it could be viewed by children of all ages.
Now, the film has been reclassified as a PG, awarding it this as a result of its “mild violence, threat, brief bloody images and bad language”.
Speaking in an annual report, the British Board of Classification stated: “Whenever a distributor resubmits a film with an existing BBFC rating to us, we review it under our current guidelines…This sometimes means we may reclassify the film at either a higher rating or a lower rating than it was under previous guidelines.”
Being a little more specific about the movie itself, they added: “In their exile, the rabbits meet various challenges, some of which result in bloody bite and claw injuries caused by animals fighting … In one scene, a bird tells one of the rabbits to ‘piss off’…When we viewed the film under the current guidelines we reclassified it PG in line with our current policies for violence, threat, injury detail and language”.
Take a look at the trailer for the classic movie below.
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