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Doctor Strange 2: Viewers are Debating Whether It Should Have Been R-Rated

Doctor Strange 2: Viewers are Debating Whether It Should Have Been R-Rated

Warning: Spoilers follow for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

Viewers of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness are debating whether the movie should have received an R rating, instead of its PG-13 designation.

Marvel unleashed Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness into theaters this weekend and the film managed to secure the 11th best US opening of all time. However, many of those ticketholders are now deliberating whether the movie’s PG-13 rating is appropriate, or whether the MPAA should have awarded it with a higher age restriction.

The Doctor Strange sequel received a PG-13 rating for “intense sequences of violence and action, frightening images, and some language.” Several people have since argued that the film should have been rated R because of its occasional graphic violence and horror elements, while others have commended Sam Raimi for pushing the movie to the edge of the rating threshold.

There’s no denying that the film’s two-hour-and-six-minute runtime features several big scares, especially as things ramp up in the third act. There’s smatterings of bloody violence and gore, thick kills, and some unsettling sequences throughout, however, some people have suggested it’s no darker than other boundary-pushing PG-13 rated titles.

The PG-13 rating was created in 1984 in response to parents’ concerns that movies like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom contained too much violence for the family-friendly PG rating but didn’t qualify for an R-rating. The MPAA’s new PG-13 rating would allow for “depictions of violence,” but “generally not both realistic and extreme or persistent violence.”

As The Hollywood Reporter pointed out, Doctor Strange 2 might be the scariest MCU entry so far but the film most likely received its PG-13 certificate because much of the violence and horror elements were carried out at the hands of superheroes and supervillains rather than ordinary people, which is how parents would likely interpret the more intense scenes.

MCU movies have never crossed the R-rated threshold, but we know that Deadpool 3 will be the first MCU movie to break that barrier.

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IGN’s review of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness called it “a Sam Raimi movie from top to bottom, for better and worse,” noting that “the script is downright hokey sometimes, and there are odd moments that are weird for the sake of it without adding anything to the overall lore or character development,” but “fans will never once be bored.”

Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

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