On last week’s show, we brought you news that Warner Brothers decided to go with a PG-13 cut of “Terminator: Salvation” instead of an R-rated cut. This marks the first time in the franchise’s big-screen history an entry hasn’t earned the R-rating.

Director McG said he was aware of the history when he filmed the movie and that he shot the movie with the R-rating in mind. So why the PG-13?

“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,” McG told SciFi Wire. “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.”

“We took the rating we got and ran for it. We never had to shoot for a rating,” the director continued. “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.”

As to whether or not the scene in question will be added back in for the DVD release to produce an “unrated” cut, the director said he’s not sure that will happen.

“We’re looking at the different ways to express the DVD. I think I’ll include all the extra scenes,” he said.

One of those scenes will be one previously reported here on Slice of SciFi, featuring actress Moon Bloodgood topless.

“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.”” said McG. “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.”

“Terminator: Salvation” opens in theaters later this month.