Disney Bans PG-13 Smoking, Including Any Marvel Films It Produces

In a day and age when smoking, not ISIS is the problem, it should come as no surprise that smoking bans are becoming more prevalent. The Inquisitr reported in January that a Colorado town was considering an all-out ban throughout the town. For those that complained about NBC’s Constantine not having smoking in it, you might not want to see any chain-smoking Marvel characters get brought to the screen through Disney studios.

According to the Wrap, Disney CEO Bob Iger states that Disney is “committed to being an upstanding corporate member of society and a positive influence on children”. Like it or not, that is Mr. Iger’s belief, and all films under the Disney banner will follow it. A shareholder’s meeting on Thursday was the location for this announcement. For those unaware, one of the sets of films that fall under that massive umbrella is Marvel films.

Wolverine, put down that stogey. Nick Fury and J. Jonah Jameson, stop. No More. Gambit, Kingpin, and the Punisher cut that out. Disney has declared a smoking ban on all of them. In fact, the new rule will affect all of them, and every future Disney flick.

“We are extending our policy to prohibit smoking in movies across the board: Marvel, Lucas, Pixar and Disney films.”

For Marvel, it should not surprise too many. That is because, for most of the time since Marvel comics was under Joe Quesada’s rule in 2001, cigarette and cigar smoking vanished from Marvel comics.

It would appear that a study is true reason behind this smoking ban. A San Francisco healthcare professional Gina Schuler cites a 2012 Surgeon General report that alleges there is a link between children seeing smoking on television or in a film. Monkey see, Monkey do. Therefore, they see it in the film, then they take up the habit themselves. At least, that is the report.

However, according to Comicbook, they will allow a historical exception. So, if Ben Franklin was a chain-smoker, it will probably be in the film. The Wrap reports that Mr. Iger sited Mr. Lincoln. That would be the one and only Abraham Lincoln.

“Except when we are depicting a historical figure who may have smoked at the time. For instance, we’ve been doing a movie on Abraham Lincoln, he was a smoker, and we would consider that acceptable, but in terms of any new characters that are created for any of those films, under any of those labels, we will absolutely prohibit smoking in any of those films.”

This comes much to chagrin of fans of proper comic book adaptations, smokers, and John Constantine.

What are your thoughts? Would you be okay if Logan was made to chew Nicorette? Should it go further than cigarettes, and include alcohol? Does the exception seem hypocritical?

Leave your thoughts.

[Image Via JournalDuGeek/Marvel/Creative Commons]