Monster Hunter Film Banned In China

The Monster Hunter film has been removed from all theaters in the People’s Republic of China over some of the opening lines. In the first few minutes of the film, Jin Au-Yeung’s character makes a joke about his knees being “Chi-knees” in English. Despite the film being subtitled in Mandarin with alternate lines about gold being under his knees (a Chinese idiom about never standing down), audience members proficient in English have denounced the line as being veiled racism. They cite the old schoolyard slur about Asian students living in other countries being dirty from kneeling and kowtowing. Au-Yeung has responded by saying that this is a misunderstanding, and the line was meant to be a simple joke.

 

The banning is somewhat ironic as the Monster Hunter film was coproduced by Tencent and other PRC based companies. Capcom’s previous film franchise, Resident Evil, had a huge success in part due to the Chinese ticket sales. Even if Monster Hunter failed in the rest of the world, especially with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it is likely Capcom would have at least broken even with just the Chinese market. The film is being re-edited with the line removed in hopes of it returning to theaters.   

Kurtis Seid, NoobFeed
Twitter