The Phantom Menace may have been out for over 26 years, taken a box office haul of $1,046,515,409 and only last year returned to cinemas for a glorious 25th aniversary re-release, but some bright spark at the BBFC has decided that ‘spaceships shooting at each other‘ and the climactic three-way lightsaber battle between Qui-Gon, Darth Maul and Obi-Wan Kenobi (with memorable cleaving in two of Maul, which as we now know was merely a flesh wound) warrants changing the films classification from a universal ‘U’ to a parental guidance ‘PG’.
Future screenings of the Phantom Menace will now come with parental guidance after the BBFC upgraded their original classification from when the film was released in 1999.
The British Board of Film Classification has not made the change for the offensiveness of the much-maligned Jar Jar Binks character, and nor does George Lucas’s prequel origin story now carry a nap warning for the slow paced middle act.
Episode I, was instead found to contain “moderate violence” because of spaceships shooting at each other and the climactic lightsabre battle between Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson), Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and the villainous Darth Maul (voiced by Peter Serafinowicz).
Please, continue to enjoy Episode I, but for your own safety, watch it from behind the sofa.
