Last February, director Shane Black tweeted exactly what fans wanted to hear about his new Predator movie: “Just to be clear … PG-13 is for pussies. Spines bleed … a lot.” Black knew that, as well as Schwarzenegger in his prime and some macho sci-fi action, part of what made the original 1987 Predator movie a cult classic was its abundance of “strong bloody violence, language throughout, and crude sexual references”, as the ratings board would put it. It wasn’t exactly PC, but Predator represents a bygone era of ripe, risky, reckless action movies, often dripping with blood, testosterone and cheese but also wildly entertaining.

So many enduring classics and guilty pleasures from the 80s were rated R (roughly equivalent to a UK 15): the Predators, Aliens, Terminators, Die Hards, Mad Maxes, First Blood and Rambo, Lethal Weapon (which Black wrote), RoboCop, Total Recall. Their levels of violence and profanity were not exactly laudable, but they were part of what made these movies popular. They reflected a movie scene where Hollywood didn’t have to play it safe and pitch every movie at the broadest possible demographic in order to recoup costs.

That’s what many of the latter-day sequels to these movies did: Alien vs Predator, Live Free Or Die Hard, Terminator: Salvation, the 2014 RoboCop reboot – all disappointing, all rated PG-13 (12A in the UK). Today’s summer blockbusters mostly follow suit. The box-office share of R-rated movies in the US has plummeted from 41% in 1999 to below 25% in the 2010s.

However, things started to change in 2016 with Deadpool, which became the second highest grossing R-rated movie in US history. (The Passion of the Christ is top, American Sniper is third). Deadpool reminded the studios that there were still moviegoers out there who weren’t put off their popcorn by bad language and gore. In fact, they grew up on them. And they’ve been lapping up recent R-rated offerings such as Logan, Kingsman, Mad Max: Fury Road and, of course, Deadpool 2.

So could we be entering a new golden-and-claret age of gory, grown-up blockbusters? Let’s hope so, although the stakes are still prohibitively high. Look at X-Men spin-off New Mutants, which was anticipated as a horror-tinged, R-rated movie. After a year’s delays and reshoots, it looks to have been toned down to a safer PG-13. Or recent shark movie The Meg, which original director Eli Roth walked from when they wouldn’t give him an R-rating, and which ultimately cut most of its gory deaths to get a PG-13. The new Predator pledges not to do the same. If it succeeds, the floodgates will be well and truly open. If it fails, we’re probably looking at Predator Cubs vs Deadpool Junior, the delightful new family comedy.

The Predator is in cinemas from 13 Sep