Still, the "Restricted: Children Under 17 Require Accompanying Parent or Adult Guardian" would smack of potential box office blues for a franchise riding on a gangbuster turn-out and a final cash infusion for Summit, the franchise's distributor. Initially, Breaking Dawn Part 2 received the R because of some extreme violence by way of beheadings, according to the Los Angeles Times.
"Certainly, with any other movie, there are a thousand ways to kill people," director Bill Condon told the Times. "With this one, it’s a variation on the same theme. If they were going to be offended by the idea of beheadings, we would have had no movie."
But the MPAA holds the ratings whip and the filmmaker said that some parts of the film were modified in order to give the multi-billion dollar franchise's finale a more access-friendly PG-13 (The offending 'R' scenes should make for great marketing come DVD time at the end of the day).
Sill, this isn't the first time the world's favorite vampires have sashayed with the only over 17 threat. Breaking Dawn Part 1 nearly received the R due to a sex scene (sex is often more titillating to the MPAA than violence which it more frequently tolerates, so those beheadings must've been doozies!)
Kristen Stewart told Glamour that the original sex scenes in the first Breaking Dawn had even surprised her.
"It was so weird, it didn't even feel like we were doing a Twilight film. I was like, 'Bella! What are you doing? Wow! What is happening here?!' It was very surreal. We [originally] got rated R. They re-cut it."
[Sources: The Huffington Post, Glamour, Los Angeles Times]