Super-Franchise MeLists that rank the best and worst film series, sequels, prequels, threequels, and other ways movie studios chew up and regurgitate good ideas to squeeze out every last dignity-free penny.
Vote up the films that made the most of the R rating.
In the day and age of four-quadrant entertainment, it’s relatively common for studios to stick their major releases with ratings that appeal to the broadest audience imaginable. Sometimes, that can look like the kind of oh-so-2000s wave of bloodless PG-13 horror movie franchises. Other times, it means neutered sequels to R-rated genre classics.
But every once in a while, audiences are treated to the opposite- a movie sequel unafraid to go harder than its predecessor. In the spirit of those fearless follow-ups that deigned to dabble in gore, explicit language, or the dreaded “mature theme,” no matter who the stars might be. Here are a few movie franchises that went from PG-13 to R ratings!
The Vacation franchise is an example of what happens when a series goes the opposite direction, reducing the R-rated comedy that made the first Chevy Chase picture a classic to a more family-friendly affair over time. Vegas Vacation is rated PG for crying out loud.
2015’s Ed Helms starring reboot (also titled Vacation) flipped the script back to R-rated jokes. The results are decidedly more mixed than the generally beloved 1983 original, but following up a legendarily influential collection of comedies can’t be an easy gig.
James Mangold’s 2017 sequel Logan served as a critically adored denouement for the fan-favorite mutant superhero. The movie picks up with the adamantium-laced drifter years in the future, one in which mutants are almost extinct. Wolverine spends his days driving a limo and caring for an especially grumpy Professor X. Things aren’t exactly cheerful, but Logan is resigned to riding out the remainder of his days in relative isolation. That plan goes awry, though, when he crosses paths with a young mutant girl named Laura, whose powers bear a striking similarity to his own.
Laura is desperately trying to escape from a cadre of evil scientists, and Logan must strike out toward the Canadian border as her only protection. The character of Wolverine is beloved for his bad*ssery and bad attitude in equal measure, and Logan finally gives fans the full experience after an entire franchise’s worth of PG-13 restriction. Logan lets Wolverine go full berserker, and he curses, slashes, and pummels his way to a fitting farewell.
Released 25 years after The Hustler’s 1961 debut, The Color of Money brings back Paul Newman as “Fast Eddie” Felson. This time, though, “Fast Eddie” adopts the role of mentor to Tom Cruise’s Vincent Lauria and coaches him on the ways of hustling. A sports movie with all the inspirational tropes reversed, The Color of Money turns barstool scumbags into heroes in only the way Martin Scorsese can.
Coming off of the original’s unrated (but tame by comparison) level of adult content, Scorsese puts his F-word-loving stamp on the material. These pool house junkies talk like wise guys and act like them too. It makes for one heck of a high-stakes game.
Patriot Games, the 1992 political thriller sequel to Hunt for the Red October, not only swaps out its predecessor’s PG rating for an R… it also swaps out Jack Ryan himself. Alec Baldwin gets replaced in favor of Harrison Ford, who brings a decidedly grumpier charisma to the famous Tom Clancy character. Patriot Games is less contained than Hunt for the Red October in a literal sense (it’s not primarily set on a submarine) but more obliquely too.
Four-letter words and bullets fly across the same at similar rates when Jack Ryan intervenes in an attempted slaying. The retired C.I.A. operative finds himself the target of a revenge plot and must come out of retirement to protect his family from an Irish revolutionary paramilitary group. Tom Clancy's novels were always intended to be for adults, so it makes total sense that the movie adaptations followed suit with an R-rated second outing.
In a move that almost no audience member could have expected, Hollywood rebel Robert Rodriguez made a taffy-colored kids' movie with all his best pals that turned into a smash at the box office. In another move that no audience member could have expected, Robert Rodriguez took a supporting character from said children’s picture and placed him in the titular role of a '70s-style, hyper-aggressive grindhouse flick. That character, and movie, is Machete.
Originally the estranged uncle in Rodriguez’s Spy Kids, then the star of a fake movie preview in the Rodriguez/Tarantino split-venture Grindhouse, Danny Trejo’s intimidatingly monikered bad*ss finally got his own movie in 2010. Machete is a far cry from the family-friendly fare in Spy Kids and earns its hard-R rating, leaning heavily into the grindhouse tropes that Rodriguez is so gleefully aping in the movie’s aesthetic.
Aliens vs. Predator didn’t need to be a masterpiece… it just had to deliver the extraterrestrial goods. Unfortunately, it was hamstrung by a PG-13 rating that reduced the Predator and Xenomorphs into run-of-the-mill baddies on par with any YA franchise. The keepers of the series’ keys heard the fan complaints and turned the proverbial ship around with the sequel.
Sure, Aliens vs. Predator 2: Requiem isn’t exactly Citizen Kane either, but it does give the audience precisely what it needs: unbridled monster mayhem and a rabble of human-shaped collateral damage. AVP: Requiem does have some fun twists up its sleeve, fashioning one of the towering Predators as something of an antihero and bringing the ultimate monster mash-up to the big screen in the form of the Predalien.
