PG-13

How do you keep a movie that revolves around a war against foul, man-like beasts below an R rating?

Well, you hope nobody knows enough elvish to catch all the swear words… and you go easy on the bloodshed.

There might be a whole ton of fighting, and the ground might be strewn with corpses of the fallen, but all we see is a few splashes of black orcish blood. There might be a few graphic moments, like Aragorn's tussle with the Uruk-hai captain, Lurtz, but for the most part all the slicing and dicing done by the fellowship results in a lot of dead orcs, and without a whole lot of mess.