The Batman Is Rated PG-13, and Some Fans Are Surprised — Others, Not At All

Robert Pattinson’s The Batman film has just received an official PG-13 rating from the Motion Picture Association, shocking some fans who expected it to be rated R — and confirming others’ long-held suspicions that the odds of big-budget superhero movies excluding younger audiences are getting smaller and smaller.

The Matt Reeves-directed Warner Bros. film, which also stars Paul Dano as The Riddler and Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman, is set to hit theaters on March 4.

“The Batman was always going to be PG-13, anyone who thought otherwise was kidding themselves,” The Hollywood Reporter contributor Richard Newby wrote on Twitter Wednesday.

“Every few years we go through this same silly thing, and every time the obvious outcome is ‘Of course WB isn’t making their biggest IP an R-rated adults-only release,'” replied screenwriter Mark Hughes.

However, despite 13-year-olds being allowed into the theater — this reporter’s niece, who is a hair’s breadth away from 13, will be excited to hear this — the film seems to still have an edge to it.

According to the MPA bulletin, the film’s PG-13 rating is due to “strong violent and disturbing content, drug content, strong language, and some suggestive material.”

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“This the most R rated sounding PG13 movie rating I’ve heard,” one fan tweeted.

“So basically, ‘rated PG-13 for R-rated content,'” another fan tweeted.

Still, others are not shocked at all by the relatively tame rating compared to Rated-R films like The Joker, which was, arguably, a supervillain movie, not a superhero one.

“It’s somehow big industry news that THE BATMAN is rated PG-13,” wrote We Are Still Here director Ted Geoghegan.

“You know… the exact same rating that Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Batman and Robin, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, and Batman V Superman received. Big news.”

Though some hard-core fans had hoped a more mature rating might give the film more cinematic edge, others don’t believe the rating will hold the film back in any meaningful way.

“Buncha nerds complaining about this forget that The Dark Knight was PG-13,” wrote Kinda Funny Vids social coordinator Barrett Courtney. “They also probably haven’t seen Reeves’ Apes trilogy. Rating it ‘R’ isn’t gonna guarantee it a masterpiece, it’s such a weird sentiment people have when this kinda thing happens.”

See all these reactions and more below.

Main Image: Robert Pattinson in The Batman. Photo Credit: Warner Bros