How 'Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom' Created The PG-13 Rating 30 Years Ago
However, a more important anniversary is what "Temple of Doom" helped to usher in: the creation of the PG-13 rating.
For the next 30 years, PG-13 would become a coveted rating that would help mold films, the box office, and movie studios.
Here's how the rating came to be.
A Darker Doctor Jones
Of all the films in the Indiana Jones series there's no doubt that 1984's "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" is the darkest, even to its creators.
As producer George Lucas explained to Empire, "Part of it was I was going through a divorce, Steven had just broken up, and we were not in a good mood. It ended up darker than we thought it would be. Once we got out of our bad moods ... we kind of looked at it and went, 'Mmmmm, we certainly took it to the extreme.'"
Those extremes - which included an incredibly violent human sacrifice scene - were too much for parents who brought their children to the PG-rated film. Still, the darker installment was massively popular and brought in $179 million in the U.S. alone.
"Everybody was screaming, screaming, screaming that it should have had an R-rating, and I didn't agree," director Steven Spielberg told The Associated Press in 2004.
But with no rating in between PG and R, Spielberg would come up with a compromise that would change movies and their rating system forever.
A New Rating
Up until 1984, there had only been four ratings a film could receive: G, PG, R, and X (which would later become NC-17).
Films like "Temple of Doom" that were too mature for PG audiences but not mature enough for the R rating would find themselves in limbo.
Spielberg found this "netherworld" rating unfair to both filmmakers and audiences. So, according to a 2008 interview with Vanity Fair, Spielberg says he came up with a new rating that would bridge the gap:
On Aug. 10, 1984 - only three months after the release of "Temple of Doom" - "Red Dawn," a drama starring Patrick Swayze, became the first film to be released with the PG-13 rating.
The Popularity and Profitability of PG-13
Six of the top 10 highest-grossing domestic films of all time are rated PG-13.
The highest-grossing film ever, 2009's PG-13 rated "Avatar," raked in $760 million at the domestic box office, while the highest-grossing R-rated film - 2004's "The Passion of the Christ" - took in a comparatively low $370 million.
With its ability to be both safe and threatening while reaching a mass audience, the rating has become a great marketing tool for most major studios.
"In a way it's better to get a PG-13 than a PG for certain movies," Spielberg told the AP. "It turns a lot of young people off. They think it's going to be too below their radar and they tend to want to say, 'Well, PG-13 might have a little bit of hot sauce on it.'"