Live Free or Die Swearing

"Yippee kayeh ki-yay*, motherfu-" said John McClane in Live Free or Die Hard, which I gleefully took in with Husband last night. (I don't fully understand it, but I adore Bruce Willis.) My mind, apparently, filled in the rest of the word because I was sure he said "motherfucker," just as he has in the previous three moves, always to my delight.

"Nope, he never said it," Husband explained. "They wanted a PG-13 rating, so he could not say 'motherfucker.'"

"Let me get this straight - McClane called people 'dickhead,' 'whore,' prostitute,' and other colorful phrases that I can't recall right now, but that is fine for a PG-13?"

"They say those things regularly on TV now," Husband replied.

"OK, but there are exploding helicopters, cars, and airplanes. People are run over by cars. Hundreds of people are shot. A guy gets mulched by gears. This is OK for a PG-13, but not the word 'motherfucker?'"

It seems so. Since I have long understood the ratings system to be utterly corrupt, I can't say that I am surprised by this. However, it does disappoint me that the producers of Live Free or Die Hard would cut McClane's trademark line in an effort to get an PG-13, not R rating. One of the reasons that I've always loved the Die Hard series is that there are no women characters who are in them just to look sex or have sex with McClane. Sure, there are generally no women in these movies at all, but that's also OK with me. Sometimes I just want to watch a ridiculous movie with shit being blown up and jokes being made and "yippee kayeh ki-yay motherfucker" being uttered. And the other movies did just fine with this formula. Why start pandering to the oddly prurient now? Bah.

* This is how Urban Dictionary spells it, so I'll go with them as an official version.