Sunday, December 6, 2020

Monster Hunter Pulled from Chinese Theaters Over Offensive Slur - IGN Southeast Asia

Paul W.S. Anderson's Monster Hunter, which is set to hit theaters in the U.S. on December 25, is already causing a fair amount of controversy in China, where it's already been released.

Per Variety, the film has been pulled from theaters after its opening day, and is currently being censored by Chinese regulators, due to "a ten second-long exchange in the film that patriotic local viewers say 'insults China.'"

Monster Hunter, which stars Milla Jovovich and is based on the hit game from Capcom, "enjoyed midnight screenings in the small hours of Friday local time, and officially debuted in Chinese cinemas on Friday, Dec. 4." The film is now being pulled from local theaters all around China because of an exchange that was, reportedly, intended to be a light-hearted scene.

Variety states that Monster Hunter made up approximately 25% of all film screenings in China on Friday. That number has now fallen to around .07%.

One notice that was sent to cinemas read: "A new version is being produced overnight, and should be the one screened...Theaters should please strictly observe that the old version should not be further screened a single time." Right now though, despite that notice, Variety is stating that "the release of even a censored version is effectively halted."

In the wake of this, "Chinese users have quickly flooded the video game’s Steam page with hundreds of angry, negative reviews."

Apparently, the scene in question is a dumb, pun-y exchange between two characters that unwittingly made Chinese moviegoers think was "a reference to an old, racist schoolyard rhyme insulting Asians." The situation was seemingly made worse by the translation, which was localized in a way that was a "reference to a Chinese colloquialism," causing some viewers to deem the moment an insult.

In the film, Jovovich plays Natalie Artemis, the leader of a group of soldiers who gets transported from their world into that of the Monster Hunter video games. Jovovich's Artemis teams up with The Hunter (Tony Jaa) and his boss, The Admiral (Ron Perlman).

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