Monster Hunter movie pulled from Chinese cinemas after backlash over ‘insulting’ joke
- A pun on the words ‘Chinese’ and ‘knees’ angered many on social media and prompted calls for a boycott
- Screen grabs circulating online suggest cinemas have been ordered to pull the release and wait for an edited version
The fantasy action movie Monster Hunter has been pulled from cinemas in China a day after its release after a backlash over a pun on the word “Chinese” that viewers said was derogatory.
The film, produced by the German company Constantin Films, Tencent Pictures and others, was released on Friday and video clips of the offending joke quickly spread on Chinese social media platform Weibo.
In one scene, an Asian soldier, played by Asian-American rapper and actor MC Jin, jokes to a white soldier “what knees are these?” before responding with “Chi-knees”.
The Chinese subtitles however changed the hard-to-translate pun to “there is gold underneath my knees” – a reference to a proverb that means men do not kneel or submit easily.
Some internet users saw the vastly different translation as an acknowledgement that the original dialogue was problematic. Others also recalled the racist playground slur “Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, look at these”.
