“We will be doing one thing and one thing only, killin’ Nazis,” said Lieutenant Aldo Rain from the hit summer blockbuster Inglourious Basterds, and nothing is more satisfying than hearing these words uttered. Even though “the bastards” were killing what most people would consider the worst group of people in history, some people left the cinema less than satisfied.
After two-and-a-half hours spent watching the bloody deaths of Nazis and Hitler, some people complained “Oh, it’s too gruesome,” “It’s taken too far,” or the worst: “They didn’t deserve that.” What this all comes down to is that TV and movie violence should not be frowned upon, it should be embraced with the open arms that Tiger Woods gives to cocktail waitresses.
A huge problem with the movie violence dissenters is that they ignore the warnings about what the movie will entail.  Specifically, one of the individuals questioning the brilliant director Quentin Tarantino’s depiction of gruesome slaughter was a man exiting the theatre hand-in-hand with his ten-year-old son. He berated the film’s violence and the impact it might have on his son, but he neglected to take note of the ‘R’ rating on the poster outside of the theatre.
Did the father expect to have a blood-bath of a good time with his 10-year-old son watching Inglourious Basterds, or did he expect the bastards to exercise the no violence morals taught in elementary school? However, from the look in the child’s eyes, his youthful innocence appeared to be gone forever and was replaced with the creepy glare of the Joker from The Dark Knight due to his father’s indiscretion.
Besides parents, there are also many people complaining about the violence seen in movies. Movie violence often correlates to the movie’s theme, and depriving directors of this freedom would limit their artistic expression. Speaking on behalf of everyone who aims to move audiences, rapper Wale put it best, “I’ll never compromise my artistic integrity.”
Again the purpose of the film Inglourious Basterds was to tell a fictional story loosely based on historical events. This imaginary exploit means that it was straight out of one man’s head, because it could have never happened in real life, and it never did. Anything is possible when it comes to making a movie and there are no boundaries, except for the one parent who thinks watching a movie where an American beats a Nazi officer with a baseball bat is good bonding time.
The tremendous opposition towards violence in movies is coming from these parents who are taking their innocent children to see them. It is not much different than the fact that the majority of anti-abortion activists are men. It’s an absolute oxymoron.
This changing of the guard from more family-friendly movies to more adult ones also correlates with the fact that in the last decade, every Academy Award Best Picture winner was rated R, with the exclusion of The Lord of the Rings: the Return of the King, which was PG-13 and had its own share of brutal scenes. In order for directors to be granted greater freedom to show what they need to, their movies end up having higher age requirements.
In this day and age, explosions are bigger, everything is more realistic and violence is usually the norm. Parents complain about the violence in the movies that they’re taking their children to watch, but the children shouldn’t be watching the movies in the first place. Violence is an artistic expression; directors should always retain that freedom in their films and people should not complain about it.