'Monster Hunter' pulled from Chinese cinemas over scene said to be racial slur

Chinese regulators are in the midst of censoring the Hollywood title “Monster Hunter” after controversy broke out online on opening day over a ten second-long exchange in the film that patriotic local viewers say “insults China.”

The fantasy action film is produced, written and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, and stars his wife Milla Jovovich, Tony Jaa, T.I., and others. It also features Jin Au-Yeung, better known as MC Jin.

The movie is loosely based on the immensely popular role-playing video game series of the same name, developed by Japan’s Capcom, but sold and distributed in China by Chinese tech giant Tencent, whose film arm also co-produced the film.

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According to Variety, ‘Monster Hunter’ enjoyed midnight screenings in the small hours of Friday local time, and officially debuted in Chinese cinemas three weeks ahead of its planned Dec. 25 U.S. release. Despite hitting China fresh and first, it grossed just $5.19 million on day one, good enough only for third place, after trouble quickly emerged.

Cinemas around the country began to pull the movie from their line-ups when what was intended as a lighthearted moment in the film was taken by local viewers as a gloating insult.

While some hardcore fans of the video game said that they still hoped the film adaptation will be allowed to re-screen after cuts, most others cheered on the idea that it would be taken down for good.

“If there is no severe punishment, in the future others who want to humiliate China will just humiliate China, thinking it’s fine to just give those Chinese a version to screen with the insults cut out,” wrote one Weibo user. Weibo is a wildly popular social media platform operated by Sina Corp. and not affiliated to Tencent, owner of WeChat, though many online comments appeared to blame Tencent for content changes on the site, where trends and visibility are notoriously susceptible to paid manipulation.

Tencent declined to comment for this story, while Capcom and production companies Constantin Film, Impact Pictures, contacted by Variety, had not yet replied at the time of publication. Sony, which distributes “Monster Hunter” in other territories but is not involved in its China release, said it was not “fully informed” of the situation and declined to comment.

Meanwhile, Chinese users have quickly flooded the video game’s Steam page with hundreds of angry, negative reviews, most mentioning “dirty knees” — even as a few gamers are leaving positive reviews specifically to troll China, such as one that’s merely a long, bilingual list of the country’s most censored issues and events.

“Capcom is dead to me!” wrote one negative reviewer in Chinese, while another wrote in English, “I don’t recommend this game just because of its movie racism [sic].”

Early in the day on Friday, a short clip of the offending passage seemingly shot in a cinema by cellphone circulated on Chinese social media. It appears to have sparked outrage due to the subtitles and an unspoken, inferred subtext that would likely have been lost to those who know only Chinese or English, but not both.

In the scene, a white male character and an Asian character played by Jin are driving together at high speed. “What?” says the former. “Look at my knees!” shouts Jin. “What kind of knees are these?” asks his companion. “Chi-nese!” jokes Jin, punning on the word’s last syllable.

This interpretation was subtly propelled forward by the Chinese subtitles. To localize the joke, translators made the dialogue a reference to a Chinese colloquialism about how men must have dignity and not kneel down easily. “Men have gold under their knees, and only kneel to the heavens and their mother,” the saying goes in rough translation, implying that any time a man kneels, it should be an occasion precious as gold.

The inference of a connection to the racist rhyme from the words “knees” and “Chinese” combined with the subtitles’ phrasing about kneeling down appears to have made many patriotic young viewers believe that the moment in English must be an obvious insult. Worse, many feel that the translation — which swaps in references to “gold” and makes no mention of “Chinese” — was a deliberate cover up of the offense.

By afternoon, the hashtag “Monster Hunter Insults China” had taken off on Weibo. Viewer rating apps quickly filled up with angry rhetoric.

Even the ruling party’s Communist Youth League took the unusual step of slamming the film on its official Weibo account Friday evening, pouring gas on the already burning flames of patriotic outrage with a post calling out American racism and hypocrisy.

“What kind of knees are these?” it wrote above a hashtag of the movie’s title, accompanied by a photo of a giant policeman’s knees crashing down on the tiny heads of upward-looking passerby, overlaid with the words “Floyds, can you breathe?”

The missive was soon reposted by “Ziguang Ge,” an important, high-level Communist Party magazine focused on Party-building that targets government officials, alongside the English caption “I can’t breathe” and a smiley face.

Both posts were later deleted, but the fact remains that two high-level government entities speaking to an internal Communist Party audience with highly controlled messaging chose to use a passing moment in a video game adaptation to prod the U.S.

By Friday evening, Capcom Asia had issued a Weibo statement in Chinese to distance itself from the growing controversy, reminding readers that it had no role in the production of the film.

“After learning your opinions about the movie ‘Monster Hunter,’ we’ve collected everyone’s ideas and reported the situation to the relevant companies,” it said, saying it “hopes to continue to live up to your expectations in the future” and keep on creating appealing video games.