While the DCEU and X-Men franchises have dared to release R-rated comic book films, Marvel Studios has always stuck to the box-office-friendly PG-13 rating. Nobody could accuse the bulletproof superhero studio of taking the wrong strategy with its movies, but sticking to PG-13 ratings does limit the stories that MCU filmmakers are able to tell (and the stakes of their action sequences). Deadpool 3 is confirmed to aim for an R rating, but Marvel’s head honcho Kevin Feige has confirmed that Ryan Reynolds’ upcoming Merc with a Mouth threequel is the only R-rated MCU movie currently in development.
James Mangold’s uncompromising approach to Logan and the stunning blood-soaked visuals of Zack Snyder’s Watchmen have proven that an R rating can work spectacularly in the superhero movie genre, but not every story warrants an R rating. The Guardians of the Galaxy’s banter is just as biting without the NSFW vocabulary available to James Gunn in the DCEU. Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man quips wouldn’t necessarily be funnier with Apatowian profanity (although it would’ve been great to hear Robert Downey, Jr. drop at least one F-bomb in the role of Tony Stark). But a movie about a grizzled, ageless, near-invincible, PTSD-ridden war veteran with blood-stained retractable metal claws in his knuckles and a ton of skeletons in his closet needs to be rated R. Switching from PG-13 to R isn’t the same as establishing the rules of a multiverse and bringing in characters from other movie-verses. Having a hard-R tone in one MCU project won’t necessarily have any ramifications on the rest of the franchise.
But that could be the case with an R-rated movie starring one of Marvel’s flagship heroes, like Iron Man or Captain America. If Marvel suddenly took a gamble with an R-rated Spider-Man movie or an R-rated Thor movie, it might be a refreshing change of pace, but those characters ultimately don’t suit a dark, gritty, violent tone. Their stories are designed to be lighthearted, family-friendly superhero adventures, and the R-rated attitude of these films would end up spilling into big Avengers team-ups and creating a tonal mess across the board. Netflix shows like Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and The Punisher have proven that there’s room in the MCU for grisly, ultraviolent, socially conscious stories with plenty of sex, violence, and hard-hitting themes – but only if they exist on the fringes of the larger universe.
R-Rated Comic Book Movies Are Still Risky
After the unexpected success of Deadpool, Logan, and Joker, R-rated superhero films don’t seem like such a risk anymore. But, as DC Films learned at the beginning of the pandemic (and then learned again toward the end of the pandemic), R-rated comic book movies are still a huge risk at the worldwide box office. Both Birds of Prey and The Suicide Squad disappointed at the box office despite generally positive reviews and the appearance of fan-favorite Harley Quinn, proving that gore and profanity aren’t an automatic draw in the comic book genre.
Birds of Prey made over $200 million at the global box office, which would be a very respectable figure – especially at the beginning of the pandemic – if the movie’s $100 million budget didn’t give it an unreachable break-even point of $250-300 million. The same goes for The Suicide Squad. James Gunn’s requel made $167 million at the box office, which is the perfect amount for an R-rated action-comedy to make, but since it cost $185 million to produce, it was labeled as a bomb.
Some studio executives might think that the lesson from Birds of Prey and The Suicide Squad’s box office failure is that they shouldn’t make any more R-rated comic book movies. But the lesson should be to spend less money on risky projects. As franchises have taken over Hollywood, all the major studios have gone from making around 25 mid-to-high-budget movies a year to only making four or five big-budget tentpole blockbusters a year. But not every movie needs to cost $200 million to bring crowds to theaters.
A Lower Budget Doesn’t Mean A Less Exciting Movie
Not every comic book movie needs to be as expensive as Birds of Prey or The Suicide Squad, costing upwards of $100 million with a break-even point that requires them to be one of the biggest movies of the year to turn a profit. Deadpool’s movies are inherently expensive to produce because he’s a mutant with healing powers and X-connections that require a lot of CGI and movie-star salaries to visualize. But Fox gave the producers of the first Deadpool movie an extremely conservative budget of $58 million. The movie’s blockbuster success earned the sequel a budget of $110 million, but it was important to treat the original gamble as a gamble. If the first Deadpool film bombed (as it was expected to), Fox wouldn’t have lost as much money as Warner Bros. did with The Suicide Squad.
Marvel’s grounded heroes from the Netflix shows, like Daredevil and the Punisher, thrive with a hard-R tone. A feature adaptation of their street-level adventures would cost a fraction of the average Avengers movie. These little mid-budget R-rated Marvel movies could be standalone stories that aren’t required viewing to understand the larger universe, much like the Netflix shows themselves. There are plenty of standalone comic book storylines to adapt into a standalone R-rated movie, like the Punisher’s iconic “The Slavers” arc, to provide the edge that’s missing from Marvel’s big-screen output. Between the Netflix fans who are invested in Jon Bernthal’s Punisher and Charlie Cox’s Daredevil and Krysten Ritter’s Jessica Jones, and casual moviegoers who miss the blood-soaked vigilante thrillers of Charles Bronson and Pam Grier, there are more than enough ticket-buyers out there to justify an R-rated $40 million Daredevil movie or an R-rated $40 million Punisher movie.
As a flagship hero who suits an R rating but whose solo movies would have to be big events (and expensive to produce), Wolverine would be the exception to the rule that would allow Daredevil, the Punisher, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage to get solo R-rated movies. But Logan proved that an R rating doesn’t hurt Wolverine’s chances at the box office when it outgrossed his past two PG-13 solo movies. An R-rated Deadpool 3 is a great start for the MCU’s journey into more grown-up material on the big screen, but with characters like Wolverine, Daredevil, and the Punisher in this universe, the R-rated movie train can’t stop there.