'Rated R for strong bloody ninja violence'

'NC-17' means only adults and bunnies
in Ray-Bans will be admitted.Forty years ago today, the American movie industry adopted its first film ratings system.

Since the early '90s, the MPAA has supplemented its ratings with descriptive reasons why a film got rated the way it did.

This has spawned a new literary form of sorts, as the MPAA strives to differentiate between different shades and styles of violence. You see, there's "strong bloody ninja violence," as featured in "The Hunted," which is worlds apart from the "creature violence" found in "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban."

Other amusingly categorized forms of violence include:
• Strong horror violence/gore, as found in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning." This sounds a little more palatable than the demented mayhem and torture you'll find in "Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation."
• "Tombstone's" strong western violence, which presumably is way different than "Geronimo's" frontier violence.
• Zombie violence/gore in "Shaun of the Dead." I'm not sure why this descriptor doesn't apply to "Land of the Dead," which is all about zombies, but contains only pervasive strong violence and gore.
• Medieval adventure violence, as depicted in "Dragonheart: A New Beginning." Martin Lawrence's awful "Black Knight," however contains mere battle violence, although it takes place in the 14th Century (and is, hence, technically also medieval).

My favorite rating reasons are the ones that sound like sales pitches for the movies they describe. It's pretty self-serving to pretend that you're helping parents decide whether they should let their kids see a movie — while using terms that seem to talk said movie up.

Who wouldn't want to see "Mortal Kombat Annihilation" when the MPAA promises non-stop martial arts violence! Sounds like a winner to me!

(Jorge Sosa is a staff writer for the Hutchinson Leader. He can be reached at sosa@hutchinsonleader.com)