I am intrigued when a Disney film for example adds a gay reference that is not relevant to the movie, so it is easy to remove when heading to China or something.
What was the most interesting thing you have seen done to a movie or show to appease foreign governments?
In Skyfall, Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, scenes depicting James Bond defeating men of Chinese origin have been cut - any suggestion that the Chinese people are weak or easily defeated, even by a world class assassin, mean that the government won’t approve it.
Well, the Chinese characters was beaten by a … British (OPIUM WARRRRR) character.
Interesting, did the filmmakers know that ahead of time or was it edited later when they found out?
No idea. There’s less stories of these sort of shenanigans nowadays, simply because the studios found it increasingly harder to predict what the censors would allow at any given moment.
I know the US market version of Leon - The Professional - is very much a different film due to the way it’s cut. A lot of the interplay between Leon and Mathilda is cut (including her participating in hits with him and some of the more… direct developments in their relationship).
This wasn’t done due to government meddling, but due to furious test audiences and to get a lower age rating for the film. The international version is worth a watch, the US one is just OK.
Really? The U.S. version must be less than an hour long then, since that’s like, the entire second act of the movie.
I quite liked Sicario, and saw a trailer for a sequel in Vietnam. It looked great with plenty of action, and was advertised as such on the cinema’s (CGV) website too.
I bought my ticket, went to the cinema just after it came out, and sat down. The movie got to a scene where action was about to happen, then suddenly all of the guys were dead on the floor. Odd, I thought. Other similar things happened… I realised I hadn’t seen any bullets flying about, just aftermaths. Turns out all the action had been cut by the censors… out of an action movie. The cinema said it wasn’t their problem, which is weird, as their website said it was an action movie, yet they had removed all the action.
John Wick movies must have such a short runtime in Vietnam.
Interesting. Are gays or anti government censored as well or just violence?
Sex too. Netflix has plenty of queer stories though, it’s getting better.
I wouldn’t put it past Netflix if they secretly determine a viewer’s political views and hides content that may make someone cancel their subscription in rage 😆
Or like HBO renaming episode 4 episode 3 instead so certain people never see the Offerman episode. I hope this is just humor and not something companies actually thought of
That’s actually quite genius, as they wouldn’t notice it was missing! What an episode though.
Small thing, Kubrick’s The Shining has the “ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY” scene filmed in multiple languages so the text on the page is in the proper language. Rare to see a film maker take care of localization when filming, most of the time it get patched in afterwards or the images aren’t adapted at all.
Outside of movies: all the Rambo-like characters in Contra games have been replaced with robots in the European version Probotector. A rare example of where the censorship might actually improved the game. The Rambo-like characters always felt a bit like a lame.
I think the US version of the office while originally a copy of the British one went on to really surpass it.
You mention removing scenes for the Chinese market but I’ve read many movies have extended scenes added when shown in China featuring Chinese actors added to Hollywood movies. I believe one of the Transformers movies had this.
Neat, are the extra scenes still relevant to the plot?
Nope, I think there was a Iron Man movie where theres some Chinese doctors treating Tony Stark and discusses the moral implications of modified human (If I recall correctly).
Neat, are the extra scenes still relevant to the plot?
Neat, are the extra scenes still relevant to the plot?
Neat, are the extra scenes still relevant to the plot?
