Swearing in Movies

Swearing in movies has all but dried up. I watched RoboCop the other day, and one thing that I noticed is that it had a ton of swearing in it. Makes sense, right? If you are selling cocaine in 1988, and a RoboCop busts in your door and shoots all of your henchman, some profanity will probably leave your mouth.

"Whoa! A cocksucking RoboCop is shooting everyone I know! What fucking year is this? I'm blown away!"

The other night I saw The Expendables 2, and although I thought it was really fun (other than the Maggie character who was completely useless), I was upset that there was no swearing. A man gets a knife spun-kicked into his heart. Does he swear? Nope. Doesn't even form the words with his mouth.

"Ah, boy. A knife spin-kick. Wow. That was a doozy. Well, I'm sure I only have ten minutes of life left. Cripes, that hurt! No, there are no words I'm holding back. I know that if I stubbed my toe at home I might swear, but a knife jump kicked into my heart by Jean-Claude Van Damme? I think I can leave the language out of this."

I know that everyone is trying to make their movies reach a wider audience so they can make more money, but in some cases it doesn't make sense. Certain movies need swearing.

Why does it need to get taken away completely? Why can't there still be grown ups out there who are allowed to watch grown up things? Why are action movies and horror movies becoming children’s movies, and yet porn, which is almost the easiest accessible thing by anyone in the world, is getting more and more violent as the years go on?

"You HAVE to take all of the 'fucks' out of this movie. I know it's about a wizard who throws grenades at babies, but seriously, ALL of these parents are going to swear when it happens?"

"Man, you guys are tough. Next you'll be telling me that I can't hit a woman with a dick-shaped car in 'Whore Gets Hit By Dick-Shaped Car 2: Test Drive'."

"No, no. Quite the opposite. We, at the studio, were wondering if you could make it a dick-shaped semi-truck? Test audiences agree that the bigger the vehicle that hits the woman, the bigger the erection."

Movies used to just be rated R. Straight R. R meant restricted. I remember being turned away from countless movies for that reason.

"Sorry, kid. You're not old enough to see this movie."

"Man, that sucks. Um, do you have a cigarette?"

"...Fifty cents and it's yours."

A friend and I wanted to see Payback when we were fourteen. You know the movie. Mel Gibson is screwed over by a friend for seventy thousand dollars? That movie is great. They wouldn't let us in, so what did we do? We bought tickets to see Waking Ned Divine and then walked into Payback. We also sat on top of the unfolded chairs when the ushers walked by so that we looked taller. Honestly, I don't know why there wasn't any issue when two fourteen-year-old boys asked to see Waking Ned Divine.

"Two for Waking Ned Divine, please."

"You look a little young to be wanting to see that movie. Are you sure you're not going to buy a ticket for it, then sneak into an R rated movie?"

"What?! Why can't I be interested in a movie about an old man who wins the lottery, dies of shock, and then the people in his town try to collect the money? Because I'm fourteen!? Are you serious? I'm very mature for my ag... ah! A boob!"

We wanted to see Payback more because we couldn't – because it was for adults. Now, all of these movies are for kids that age. Doesn't really matter what it is, there will be kids in your theatre.

"Are these kids in the right theatre? I mean, the 'Swear Truck' series usually has swearing in it. Especially 'Swear Truck 3: Tires, Trunks and Tits."

"Nope. Not this one. 'Swear Truck 4' doesn't have any swearing. They took it out to get that sweet kid money. Look! They even put a slide in the theatre. Remember how fun those were?"

"I'm reminded of a line from 'Swear Truck 2: It Ain't Over 'Til The Fat Lady Trucks' –

"Get these goddamn kids, off of my goddamn swear truck."

Most horror movies and action movies need swearing. NEED them. Doesn't make any sense for an axe-wielding maniac to be chasing a guy through the woods and have him not swear about it. Doesn't seem right that a young man who just joined the army, finds out his entire family was blown away by a notorious crime boss, doesn't throw in a couple of 'f's' when he's on a rampage.

"I use to swear at kids on Xbox LIVE, and then my parents were murdered. Well, it's time to clean up the language and clean up these streets."

I'm not saying every movie needs swearing. Toy Story doesn't gain anything by having swearing in it.

"Hey, Woody – Andy is going to college and is going to leave us forever!"

"Yeah, Buzz? Where the fuck were you an hour ago when the dog grabbed me and dragged me outside to bury me in the yard? Was Andy leaving a big deal when I was up to my goddamn eyes in mud! Shove it, Lightyear! SHOVE IT!"

But there are certain movies where it seems dumb to me not to have swearing. Ever watch a movie like Casino or Goodfellas on TV? How awful is it when they change the swearing?

"I just told Andy Stone that maybe you should disappear for awhile until the heat blows over. That's all."

"Listen here, you dumb mochafudger, you! You only exist out here because of me! Not your frog splash country clubs or your funnel cake TV shows! And what the film sundae are you doing on TV anyhow! You know I get calls from back home, they think you went bat style?!"

Just don't play the movie if you can't give it the justice it deserves! You can't play Titanic and Photoshop out the boat.

"Man, this movie Titanic about an invisible ship that hits an iceberg is a real tearjerker. I would also love to make love in a car that appears to be floating in the middle of the Atlantic. This movie rocks."

Who are they playing these cut-up movies for? Children? Were people upset that their kid couldn't watch Terminator 2?

"Come on! I wanted to take my three-year-old to this and you fill it with swearing? Isn't there a way we can have our cake and eat it too? Just make the movie without swearing so that children can see it, and adults can be made to feel stupid while watching it. Everyone wins!"

If you have kids, I get it. You want them to see things or take them to things that don't make you look like a horrible monster. But why should people who don't have kids be punished because there are kids in the world? Why! That doesn't seem right.

"Excuse me, everyone. I am a parent, albeit not a very good one, so instead of trying to watch what my child views, I would like to ask that all swearing be removed from movies that you enjoy. It takes a village, guys."

"Well, move to a damn village then! This is a city with adults! Sit down and shut up!"

Movies in the 70s, 80s, and even 90s had swearing in them. In a lot of cases it made the movies seem more real. It showed how many people would react in these situations. How did we go backwards? How was it that in the 70s people swore when getting stabbed in the chest, but forty years later we deemed that inappropriate?

"Ah, fuck! I was shot! Help!"

"Help you find some more words for your vocabulary? No problem. What about 'geez', 'gosh', even a 'gosh darn'. That should help you out."

"What? No. I'm bleeding!"

"My ears were bleeding listening to that vile speak of yours. We are both in pain. I won't die of course, and for you, that's yet to be determined."

Why does everything have to be PG? Can't some things still be adult? Maybe once a year there are movies that are made for actual adults. No more than that. Movies about possession, for God's sake, don't have swearing. Does that make any sense to anyone? A movie where a demon takes over somebody's child and that movie no longer has swearing in it?

"Honey! Our daughter is possessed by a demon! What should we fucking do?!"

"Watch our language for one. What is wrong with you? Just because she's possessed doesn't give you license to break the promise we made at the marriage retreat. No swearing in the house. Remember that? We made a pact!"

"...What?! Out daughter, dammit! Out daughter is..."

"Again with the swearing! Mercy sakes alive! I just don't believe it. I can deal with our daughter's head spinning, and her walking on the ceiling creepily in the middle of the night, but the language coming out of your mouth is driving me to drink."

"I'm the demon in your daughter. You'll never see this slu..."

"Don't you even finish that word, demon! Or I'll be washing your mouth out with soap."

"...Demon sorry."

If you don't like it, don't watch the movie! That's how things work. I can't watch gay BDSM porn and complain that it's too crass.

"Does that guy HAVE to put a lamp in that guy's ass? It's just ridiculous. Why can't they tone it down just a little so that a casual fan, such as myself, can watch in peace without worrying that a child may walk in and be exposed to something harsh? I mean, do they even CARE about children?"

Certain words are gone forever. No one will call a guy a faggot in a movie again. Never. Never again. No matter how many predators Jesse Ventura fights, will he be able to use it.

"You bunch of slack-jawed faggots!"

That is a fantastic line from the first Predator. It's coming from a roided-up Vietnam vet who, not knowing it yet, is about to fight a beast from space that rips your spine completely out of your body. No one will call someone a fairy again. Nobody gets called a cocksucker, motherfucker, none of it. When bullets are flying past your head, what would you say?

"Fudge! These woodland creatures with magic dust are shooting at me! Momma-intercourser!"

Nope. You'd say some of the words that are becoming extinct in such films.

I read an article that was referring to comedians cleaning up their sets.

"Nobody ever leaves a show and complains that there wasn't swearing in it."

Well, actually, I do. If something feels fake, ingenuine or faulty, I complain about it. When Stallone rips a guy's throat out and doesn't utter a curse, I find that to be all of the above.

Twitter @Nathanmacintosh

Movies today look worse than they did in '88.

We are told that we are advancing every day. New phones, new graphics, new computers. One way we are not advancing, though? Effects in movies. With these, we seem to be getting worse than we already were. We're actually going back in time. Special effects in the eighties in the nineties were great. Now? Some movies that come out now use good special effects, but most? Not good at all. Watch the trailer for Expendables 2, where the plane crashes into a cave, and tell me that doesn't look like some graphics that were used in the first PlayStation.

"Hey, should this movie look better than the original Tomb Raider?"

"...No. I think that's fine."

"Yeah? Sweet! Movie's done then. Man, it's so easy to finish a movie when you don't care how it looks. Time to celebrate!"

How is it that in 2012 special effects can look so bad?

This all came about for me one night while watching Predators. Made in 2010. The original Predator was made in 1987. You would assume that with all of the advancement that took place within those twenty-five years that Predators would look better than the original. Does it? Does it look better than the original that looked totally fine? Does it even look AS good? It does not. First Predator? Looks great. New Predators? My God. It looked like the special effects were taken from a Laser Quest.

"We need space guns, right? My son said that these laser tag guns he used last week looked pretty cool."

"Laser tag? You want to use laser tag guns?"

"Yeah, it'll be fun! Not only will we be shooting a movie, we'll give the actors a game to play! Whoever has the most points at the end of the shoot gets a million dollar bonus!"

For a scene in the first Predator, a jungle needed to be mowed down with guns. What happens? A JUNGLE IS MOWED DOWN! That's how it used to be. When something was called for to be blown up or destroyed, something was blown up or destroyed! An entire rainforest and ecosystem were probably taken out making that movie.

"I called this meeting today about the environment to let everyone know that we lost three types of birds today and a rare tree."

"What? How come? Is it pollution? Is it gas emissions?"

"No... it was due to one scene in the movie Predator. An entire forest was destroyed during a scene in which Arnold and his team shoot aimlessly at a Predator that they cannot see."

"...Oh man...does the scene look cool?"

"Well, yeah, it looks great, but that's not the point. The point is, we lost birds that we will never see again, and when one ecosystem is destroyed, it hur..."

"It looks great! Let's go see it!"

Also, just quickly, Topher Grace was in Predators, and who in the world wants to see Topher Grace with a gun in an action movie? Are seventeen-year-old girls casting movies? Even more quickly, how the hell did that man become the one chosen to play Venom?! How! Why not Fez? What about Red? Go all the way down the 'That 70'S Show' cast and get Kitty.

"Spidermaaannn. I've been looking for you, eehehehahah."

We're told all the time that movies that come out today are great looking, unbelievable, and visually stunning.

"You have to see this movie! It looks better than real life! Like, right now, you look like trash compared to this movie. You look like an 8-bit loser compared to it! I know! Wow, even your tears look worse than that movie's tears! Doesn't compare at all." 

Really? Most movies now are comparable to cartoons. Nothing in them is real at all. There are times in the movie when the actor is digitally imposed. The actor! They'll digitally impose in the actual actor that is supposed to be actually acting in the actual movie. 

"Hey, guys? I really don't feel like going in there and saying my line, 'Do we have any leads on this case?' I just want to sit here and finish my soup."

"Oh, that's no problem. We have already created you on a computer. You can just go home if you want."

"Really? Wow. A yacht for this, huh? The only line I said so far was, 'Can I get a footlong? Yeah, lettuce is cool.'"

"And you delivered it perfectly! We still may computer-generate it, though. Either way, thanks for coming in."

Nothing in movies is real anymore. Everything is computer-generated. When something was needed in an older movie, they actually had it. Even things that didn’t exist – they would be made.

"Hey, we need a spaceship."

"Just go down to Costco and grab one. Haha, just kidding. I'll start building it."

CGI is so ridiculous now that they will digitally create things that we have. Example? Old people in movies. Old people! We have old people! For example, in Prometheus, Guy Pearce is CGI-ed into an old person. Why are we doing this?

"Hey, we need an old guy for this movie."

"All right, I'll just create one here on my iPhone."

"Create one? We'll just cast one."

"And have that terrible old person smell on the set? Like a Werther's died inside a rat? No way, man. iOldPerson."

"Good call. Remember shooting that movie with Christopher Plummer?"

"God. I was washing the smell out of my hair for weeks!"

Movies today don't look as good as they once did. Terminator 2. All that needs to be said. Anyone have any complaints with the special effects in Terminator 2? A movie made in 1991? Maybe the actual metal, working Terminator that the crew painstakingly made? Or the actual explosions that happened in it? Maybe the insane CGI with a liquid metal man who changes shape? Any of these a problem for anyone? Absolutely not! Terminator 2 could be put out today, exactly the way that it is, and people would love it. No one would complain that it didn't look like movies now.

"Whoa, whoa. Is that a REAL robot that people built for the set? Jesus Christ. What the hell did I spend money on?! I wanted fake! If I wanted real, I wouldn't have come into the theatre! I want something that looks like it was put together on an old Atari! Someone built that robot? Man, don't waste your time. Just put an R&B star in this and I'd be happy!"

Jurassic Park as well. It's hard to make Jurassic Park a better movie. And when it was called on for there to be dinosaurs in the movie, what did they do? They made dinosaurs! Made them!! They made that T-Rex! In 1993! Actual dinosaurs made out of actual things that you could see and touch. We are twenty years past that and we have dinosaurs in movies that look like they were made on 'Draw Something'.

"Whoa! That's a sweet Velociraptor! You ever think about making a movie with it?"

"Umm... no. I scratched that together on my phone for a game I was playing with you."

"But, man! I was really scared! I dropped my phone and everything. I thought a real Raptor was coming at me!"

With everything being computer-generated, special effects people must be out of business. The people who used to build sets, monsters, gore, and anything that was used in a movie? There's no reason for them to be around. Unless they are now the highest paid coffee-getters in the world.

"Hey, grab me a cappuccino."

"Ugh... you know I built the alien used in Alien?"

"Oh, man! Love that movie. The work you did on that creature was just magic. Now use some of that magic in the foam for my cappuccino. Also, you want to grab that seventeen-year-old a glazed donut? Try not to disturb him, though. He's hard at work on his computer making the special effects for this movie. He's a real genius."

The craziest part is that everything is computer-generated and the movies don't cost any less to make. Doesn't seem to be any cheaper at all. Everything is made on a computer and the movie still cost sixty-eight trillion dollars. How?! Where the hell is this money going?

"You know, I can make Transformers 4 on my iPad 2."

"Wow. How much will you charge?"

"Well, it'll take me a full week. Umm, ten million?"

"Done. I'll go ask the studio for three hundred and fifty million."

"Wow, that's a lot. Where's the rest going to go?"

"Are you serious? Abs! Every actor in the movie has to have an insane amount of abs. You think that comes cheap? The God of abs won't dish any out for less than two hundred million."

"...There's a God of abs?"

"Ah, scene-generating-computer guy. You have so much to learn. You probably think that actors get white teeth the old-fashioned way, and there's not a tooth gnome who will whiten your teeth for a truck of Little Debbie cookies. What a noob."

Why would they now make special effects worse? What is the point of this? Why! To not be so elitist and have movies only be made by moviemakers. Did we start to do things this way so that people wouldn't feel bad? So that now everyone can make a movie with only their phone and an afternoon?

"God, I'd love to make movies, but how the hell am I going to be able to blow up a helicopter? I don't have that kind of money and my movie is called "When A Helicopter Blows Up". I'm doomed!"

"No worries! Now you can blow up a helicopter on your phone!"

"...Really? You... you really mean it? And people will... respect me for it?"

"Respect you? People will blow you! You won't be able to walk down the street!"

"Oh, wow. Okay, well I'll get working on the script. I really only have the name right now, but I know I need a helicopter to blow up."

"Script? What the hell are you talking about? I just told you that you can make things blow up on your phone. Scripts be damned! When the writing gets bad, bring in another helicopter crash!"

"Man, you're right! Nothing but explosions! Words are overrated, anyway. BOOM!"

CGI is also really over used. There are tons of scenes in movies now where there are absolutely no humans around. None! Just computer generated humans. We see the star for a minute and then he is replaced by the scenes someone has created on a Steve Jobs machine. Not a real person for huge segments. We are just watching computers do what they do. Movies should start being marketed that way.

"This summer, an action movie with epic proportions. When a ninja is mistaken for a grocery store clerk and has to fight his way out of a chip aisle – things go to hell. This summer, "Ninja Chip Hell!" 'You Say Dorito, I say Akido'. Starring the newest Mac Air and a brief, brief, brief cameo by Bruce Willis."

With new special effects, for some reason, people have decided that the entire movie should be CGI. There are so many movies where actors are talking in front of a green screen. Actors aren't even talking to anyone! 

"I know. I can't believe that the king took all of our rubies either. What's he gonna do with i..."

"CUT! CUT! CUT! Where are you looking? The half-man-half-goat you are talking to is right here! You're looking towards the donut table, which is a drawbridge in the movie. Would your character be talking to a drawbridge? Huh? Would he?!"

"Look, I'm sorry, but can we get something better for me to act with other than a coffee cup? Like a box of Cheerios? Just something bigger. I'm supposed to be talking to a satyr. What about an actual goat? Can we get that? Or just draw a face on the cup. That would straighten this out. Just give me a face to look at!"

"Oh, you need a face to look at? What – you want to be an actual actor? Bad news for you, kid, you're twenty years too late. Talk to nothing!"

In the eighties and nineties, when something blew up, something was blown up! 

"We need to blow up a car!"

"Well, digitally compose it on a computer, render it in HD, and we'll put in the audio of the actors after!"

"It's 1989 and I have no damn idea what you're talking about."

"Oh, yeah, right... well, blow up a car!"

Twitter- @Nathanmacintosh