By now you’ve probably heard that “Terminator Salvation” will be arriving in theaters as a PG-13 action film. That in itself isn’t such a problem as I see it. After all, “The Dark Knight” was dark and violent as hell, and it got in with a PG-13 rating, too. According to McG, the reason for the PG-13 is that they removed two scenes from the movie: a breast shot of actress Moon Bloodgood, and a scene where Marcus stabs some guy in the shoulder with a screwdriver. Removing those two scenes, says McG, was enough for a PG-13 rating.

More with McG via SciFiWire:

You’re going with a PG-13 rating on this one. Some people aren’t happy about that. What got cut?

McG: We shot an R movie, and at the end of the day we found that if we just cut back one shot of the Marcus character stabbing a screwdriver through the shoulder of one of these thugs it would warrant a PG-13. We thought, “Well, that would be ridiculous to make it tough for kids to go see this movie.” We were inspired by The Dark Knight getting a PG-13 and being a film without any compromises. So we took the rating we got and ran for it. We never had to shoot for a rating. We were liberated by [Warner Brothers president of production] Jeff Robinov from day one, and I give you my word that there’s no way that Christian or Sam or I, for that matter, would shoot a picture aiming for a rating. We never cared. We just shot what we thought was best, and, short of gratuitous gore, which I don’t think furthers the story or furthers the characters, we didn’t really have a problem with it.

Will that scene be an extra on the DVD, or will you cut it back in for an R-rated version for the DVD?

McG: I haven’t decided yet. We’re looking at the different ways to express the DVD. I think I’ll include all the extra scenes.

Such as?

McG: There’s a topless scene of Moon Bloodgood that I thought was a very beautiful scene, that Moon thought was a beautiful scene, that we ultimately cut because we didn’t want to fall into any of the cliches of the genre, like “Here’s the scene where the beautiful girl takes her top off.” I thought it was a soft moment between a man and a woman that was designed to echo the Kelly McGillis/Harrison Ford moment in Witness, for God’s sake. They never touch each other; they just notice each other. But, in the end, it felt more like a gratuitous moment of a girl taking her top off in an action picture, and I didn’t want that to convolute the story or the characters.

So there you have it. If McG is to be believed (and I’ll grant you, ol McG hasn’t always been entirely truthful, it would seem), the only difference between the R-Rated “Terminator Salvation” and the PG-13 version is Moon Bloodgood’s boobies and a screwdriver stabbing. If that’s the truth, I can live with it.