Venom will be the PG-13-rated sexy face-devouring slime monster—for kids!

That’s not to knock PG-13 superhero flicks—the vast majority of Marvel’s celebrated output, plus stuff like The Dark Knight, have all proudly carried that in-betweener label—but it does seem like a guy who runs around threatening to eat people, and who sports roughly a million teeth with which to carry out those threats, might be able to get a little nastier for once. (Especially without any long-term crossovers on the horizon that might force him to later tone it down.)

Even more, this speaks to the strangeness of a Venom movie in the first place, which has always seemed like a compromise that Sony settled on after making the deal to hand Spider-Man (but not his associated characters) off to the MCU. As a character, Eddie Brock and his parasite pal have always skewed far more violent than acceptable hero behavior, falling into a vigilante role more like The Punisher (albeit with way more tentacles). The just-released rating presumably confirms, though, that, for all his bluster and Eminem rapping—itself perfectly suited to a PG-13 audience, now that we think about it—this is a lighter, softer take on the giant sexy space monster.

[via Collider]