PG-13 PG-13
Cartoon StudyFeature Film

From ‘Cool World’ To ‘Wildwood’: The Unusual History Of PG-13 Animation

Laika’s new stop-motion fantasy Wildwood is exciting for all sorts of reasons, but one particularly notable aspect is its PG-13 rating. Precious few American animated features have been rated PG-13 over the years; most fall in the G or PG range, while those that break out of the kid-friendly confines tend to speed straight past PG-13 and shoot for an R.

So today we’re taking a look at those misfit movies that fall into the rarefied circle of PG-13 animated films, along with a few that nearly earned the designation. We’ll begin with a clip from Wildwood.

A bit of backstory: The MPAA ratings system began in 1968 as a replacement for the outdated Hays Code, but PG-13 wasn’t added to the roster until 1984. Before that addition, several animated features squeaked by with a PG despite containing material that could easily secure a PG-13 today, including 1977’s Wizards (blood, profanity, barely-there outfits, and post-apocalyptic neo-Nazis), 1978’s Watership Down (rabbits meeting spectacularly gory ends), and 1983’s Rock & Rule (drugs, nudity, salty language, and a portal to hell).

You can credit the birth of our little pal PG-13 to two live-action movies released in 1984: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins. Both were rated PG, and both attracted large audiences of children, who were treated to scenes of human sacrifice, a heart being ripped out of a chest, and a murderous little freak getting blown up in a microwave.

In response to the controversy, Steven Spielberg, director of Temple of Doom and executive producer of Gremlins, proposed an intermediate rating between PG and R, and thus PG-13 was born. Even after its creation, some surprisingly adult material continued to turn up in PG movies. Spaceballs (1987), Beetlejuice (1988), and Big (1988) all drop the F-bomb, while the live-action/animated classic Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) is teeming with elements that would be a tough sell in a PG-rated movie today.

So what was the first PG-13 animated feature, you ask? Well, several online sources claim that honor belongs to Martin Rosen’s The Plague Dogs, about two canines who escape from a research lab. It premiered in the U.K. in 1982 and received a limited U.S. release in 1985. However, as far as I can tell, the film wasn’t submitted for an MPAA rating during its original theatrical run and only received a PG-13 when it was released on DVD in 2004.

Oddly, Janet Maslin’s New York Times review from 1985 identifies the film as being rated PG. I certainly hope that wasn’t the case, as I’m sure any kid who happened upon this unbelievably bleak movie was scarred for life.

So if we set aside ratings assigned to later releases, what was the first PG-13 animated film? The answer could be Ralph Bakshi’s animated/live-action combo Cool World (1992), about an underground cartoonist thrust into his own creation.

The original pitch was an R-rated spin on Roger Rabbit, but producer Frank Mancuso Jr. had the script rewritten as a PG-13 movie without telling Bakshi. Bakshi was so resentful of the new script that he didn’t even show it to the animators, instead telling them to draw whatever they wanted. As a result, the movie is loaded with zany cartoon nonsense on the fringes that has nothing to do with the story.

Storyboard artist Conrad Vernon remembered, “It was fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants filmmaking. It’s the only guerrilla animated film. We never knew what we were drawing, because no one ever read a script.”

As you might guess, the movie is a mess, but it’s such a bizarre, creative mess that I can’t help but love it. Highlights include Milton Knight’s delightfully retro animation and Barry E. Jackson’s nightmarish backgrounds.

Given that Cool World is partially live-action, the title of first fully animated feature released with a PG-13 belongs to Bebe’s Kids (1992). Based on a stand-up routine by Robin Harris, it also holds the distinction of being the first animated feature directed by an African American. Bruce W. Smith, best known as the creator of TV’s The Proud Family, directed the movie and served as principal character designer.

The film was largely ignored at the time, but I quite like it. It makes adult jokes without straining for shock value, and the animation is snappy and expressive.

Cool World and Bebe’s Kids were both box-office disappointments, but Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996) was a huge hit. The MTV series was such a phenomenon that a movie seemed inevitable, but the studio was initially skeptical that there was an audience for adult animation and pushed for a live-action adaptation starring Adam Sandler and David Spade. Creator Mike Judge vetoed the idea.

A scene in which the two teenage slackers drink whiskey had to be cut to maintain the PG-13 rating, but Judge got away with a head-trip sequence, directed by Chris Prynoski, in which Beavis eats a peyote cactus and hallucinates a music video. There’s a funny spoof of subliminal messaging when a demonic Beavis speaks in reversed audio; play it backward and he says, “I suggest that everyone go to college and study hard.”

For a brief moment in the early 2000s, it looked like we were inching toward an era of mainstream PG-13 cartoons. PG-rated animated adventures like Titan A.E. (2000), Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001), Treasure Planet (2002), and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003) were clearly gunning for the same teen and preteen audiences that lapped up PG-13 action flicks like Men in Black (1997) and The Mummy (1999). But none became the box-office hit its studio had hoped for, and animation studios largely retreated to more kid-oriented fare.

In the case of DreamWorks’ The Road to El Dorado (2000), producer Bonnie Radford said, “We originally thought it would be rated PG-13, so we skewed it to that group, but then we thought we could not exclude the younger kids, so we had to tone the romance down.”

The final film mostly stays within the bounds of its PG rating, but Chel’s sexy design and costume hint at that earlier, more mature target audience. You can spot a few moments and gestures that didn’t make it into the finished film in these pencil tests by Rodolphe Guenoden, supervising animator of Chel, and James Baxter, supervising animator of Tulio.

The live-action/animated hybrid Osmosis Jones (2001), about a white blood cell cop tracking down a virus inside a man’s body, was also designed with a teen audience in mind. It even got far enough along that the MPAA gave the initial cut a PG-13 for “crude language and bodily humor.”

Warner Bros. chickened out and recut the film, finally securing a PG for bodily humor alone. The original cut has yet to surface, although there was apparently a sperm sequence set in Frank’s testicles that got nixed. A few innuendos survived, however, including the one in the clip below. The lackluster live-action sequences bring the movie down, but the animation, directed by Tom Sito and Piet Kroon, is terrific.

Osmosis Jones might’ve gotten its blood drained, but another live-action/animated hybrid from 2001 actually made it to theaters with a PG-13: Henry Selick’s demented cult classic Monkeybone.

Like Cool World, it concerns a cartoonist who comes face-to-face with his own characters. Also like Cool World, it endured a lot of executive meddling. Twentieth Century Fox executive Bill Mechanic was fired during production, and the studio’s new leadership attempted to refashion this surreal fantasy into something resembling a mainstream comedy — a fool’s errand.

The result must be one of the strangest studio films ever made, but I thoroughly enjoy its craziness, and its ambitious blend of animation and live-action is impressively realized.

As much as I’d like to see more animation veering into PG-13 action-movie territory, I don’t think photorealistic films like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) are the best way to go about it. As Chuck Jones once said, “Animation is an extension of motion pictures, not an imitation.”

Films like this don’t really expand animation’s horizons so much as suggest that animated films need to replicate the look of live-action to be taken seriously.

The gross-out Adam Sandler comedy Eight Crazy Nights (2002) is not only one of the few PG-13 animated movies but also one of the few holiday movies centered on Hanukkah. Director Seth Kearsley and the animation crew give the film a polished look, so it’s a shame that the script, by Sandler and his frequent collaborators, could’ve just as easily been filmed in live-action.

And speaking of PG-13 films that could’ve just as easily been shot in live-action: The creepy wax-figure look of the cast in Beowulf (2007) is the main thing that distinguishes it from effects-heavy live-action films like 300 (2006). I’m sure the CG format allowed director Robert Zemeckis to pull off shots that would’ve been difficult to achieve with physical cameras, but otherwise, the film doesn’t take advantage of the medium’s possibilities.

One of the biggest box-office successes among American PG-13 animated features is the very funny The Simpsons Movie (2007), directed by David Silverman, whose history with the series stretches back to the earliest Simpsons segments on The Tracey Ullman Show. The MPAA typically lists specific objectionable elements to explain its ratings, but for this one, it simply went with “irreverent humor throughout.”

Shane Acker’s post-apocalyptic sci-fi film 9, released on 9/9/09, certainly stands out among the hordes of family-friendly CG cartoons. I remember seeing it in theaters as a teenager and thinking it signaled a new era of PG-13 animated movies. Like many people my age, I was a huge fan of macabre animation in the Tim Burton vein, and this movie, which Burton produced, seemed like the natural next step.

My hopes didn’t exactly come true, but hey, maybe someday.

Wes Anderson’s quirky stop-motion movie Isle of Dogs (2018) garnered a PG-13 for thematic elements and violent images. The film probably could’ve been adjusted to accommodate a PG, but I admire that Anderson didn’t feel the need to soften it. Instead, he made a movie geared toward the same audience that appreciates his similarly offbeat live-action work.

Over the past decade or so, the MPAA — renamed the MPA in 2019 — has handed out the PG-13 label to relatively few American animated features released theatrically.

The indie movies My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea (2016) and Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood (2022) received limited theatrical releases. The Bob’s Burgers Movie (2022) didn’t make much of a splash at the box office, and neither did The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (2024), an international production involving Japan and New Zealand.

Henry Selick’s darkly imaginative stop-motion feature Wendell & Wild (2022) played in select theaters ahead of its streaming debut on Netflix. One of the reasons the MPA gave for its rating was “substance use,” which I assume refers to this scene in which the two titular demons trip out after swallowing hair cream.

That covers many of the notable American theatrical releases. There haven’t been many direct-to-video PG-13 cartoons outside the superhero genre, either, although DC Comics adaptations have built up quite a catalog, beginning with Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker (2000).

The film was originally released unrated, with its most violent moments snipped out amid concerns about media violence following the Columbine High School massacre. In response to petitions from fans who wanted to see the original cut, Warner Home Video released the PG-13 version in 2002.

The notion that animation is strictly for kids remains sadly pervasive in the United States, but Japan has a much more established market for animation aimed at older audiences. Hayao Miyazaki’s intense fantasy epic Princess Mononoke (1997), rated PG-13 in the United States, became Japan’s highest-grossing film before Titanic overtook it.

Famously, Harvey Weinstein wanted to edit Mononoke for its U.S. release, but Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki drove home the studio’s opposition with a samurai sword and a simple message: “No cuts.”

In the years since Mononoke, many international animated features have received PG-13 ratings for their U.S. releases, and several have earned Oscar nominations, including The Triplets of Belleville, Persepolis, The Wind Rises, My Life as a Zucchini, Loving Vincent, The Breadwinner, Flee, and Robot Dreams.

Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron (2023) became the first PG-13 movie to win the Academy Award for best animated feature. An R-rated movie has yet to win.

At this point, you might be wondering, “Who cares?” I’m sure many people reading this pay no attention to a movie’s rating. Even so, I think the lack of American PG-13 animated movies leaves a gap that damages the industry as a whole. Plenty of young people aren’t old enough for Fritz the Cat-style raunchiness but are ready for a level of action, sensuality, and darkness they aren’t getting from kids’ movies. When there aren’t animated movies to scratch that itch, young audiences gravitate toward live-action and are conditioned to believe that cartoons are something you grow out of.

Obviously, a well-made G- or PG-rated movie can be enjoyed by viewers of any age. But I see no reason we can’t also have animated films with the tone and level of content you’d expect from a typical PG-13 action movie, delivered with the exaggeration and stylization the medium allows.

I think this is one reason anime is so popular with American teenagers: People of all ages love animation; they’re just looking for stories they can identify with, and Japan has consistently offered films and series that fill that gap for teens and young adults. If Western studios were putting out cartoons with colorfully kinetic action scenes like those in Hiroyuki Imaishi’s Promare (2019), rated PG-13 in the United States, I think they could open up a whole new audience.

Do you have a favorite PG-13 animated film? Let us know in the comments below.

Pictured at top: Cool World, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, Wildwood

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Vincent Alexander

Vincent Alexander is an animator and cartoonist who works in 2d and stop motion. He received an MFA in animation from the Columbus College of Art & Design in 2018, and has directed music videos for D.P. Dough and Pretend Collective. He created the Youtube series "Cartoon Remakes" and directed the animated short "Musical Man and the Magic Kazoo."

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