For China to edit film is nothing new. However this one i found interesting and sad at the same time. Here’s the news from Yahoo:
Censors have cut scenes of Chow Yun-Fat as a bald, scarred pirate in the new “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie, saying they insult China’s people, the main state news agency said Friday. Xinhua said Chow’s time on the screen in “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” had “been slashed in half by censors in China for vilifying and defacing the Chinese.”
Now this is the part that I found both interesting and sad at the same time. Taking Chow Yun-Fat out of Pirates of the Caribbean 3, either half of him are all of him… would make ZERO effect on the movie. Think about it for a moment. If you suddenly removed all of Chow Yun-Fat’s screen time from the film… would the move have been ANY different wahtsoever (aside from length)? No, it would have been the exact same movie.
That was one of my complaints about the awful ass sucking film. Chow Yun-Fat’s character was 100% inconsequential to the movie as a whole. he didn’t matter at all and had no effect on the over all arc of things. That’s sad.
So China has taken half of Chow Yun-Fat’s stuff out. If I were him I’d be sending the Chinese censors a thank you gift basket.
Let’s be honest here John. The WHOLE film was inconsequential. Long, boring, shit. i mean come on, that bit at the end with the huge ship with billions of guns on both sides, he’s about to rip shit into the black pearl, and then another ship comes along. Might take a little more time, but its certainly not terribly difficult to take out both, especially since it had big fuck off guns to sort things out. And the dude just stands there like, oh dear. FUCK THAT SHIT.
Narrative cinema is dead. And Gore Verbinski should be shot. Bruckheimer can live…he does stuff with Michael Bay.
Btw. Saw the Transformers trailer today. GOOD GOD! It’s going to be special.
John…How can you say Pirates three was a horrible film? You might need someone to tell yo uwhat a good film is.
@Twitch
The thing is, everything that involved Feng were nothing more than side note plot devices that could have been ascribed to anything character at all.
Nothing in the film hinged on his character whatsoever.
You might think I will say something profound and meaningful.
You would be right.
I agree with Twitch.
But how do they suddenly explain Elisabeth becoming a Pirate Lord?
pendragon00:
Well, I think it’s more like monitoring how Chinese people are represented in “foreign” films, more so than how Chinese people are represented in general. Chow Yun Fat has played morally questionable roles in Chinese movies. Heck, he made his mark playing a gangster in a TV series.
The point is, that they’re looking out for potentially bad stereotypes that tend to exist in American movies (good lord… I wonder in any of the Rush Hour movies were ever shown there). Sometimes that stuff can get pretty bad, often boarderline, if not totally racist (I’m recalling the movie “Dodgeball”, where they show the “origins” of the sport). I’m not really defending the act of censorship. I’m just stating that it’s not about how their own people are represented in their own films and why it’s not really THAT silly. That and how Chow Yun Fat shouldn’t be affected because he’s played so many different roles, including noble heroes.
This movie sucked, and if China was really smart, they’d edit it to be a two hour movie where people can actually understand what the fuck is going on.
TO: pendragon00
I live in an ultra-conservative part of the US midwest. Is that why Borat was just talking to himself for 40 minutes? I couldn’t tell what all the hubbub was about! :-)
Kidding aside, that’s pretty sad. I haven’t seen the movie based on the reviews (and comments here), but if he assists them in their quest in the story I don’t see how it’s showing disrespect (again, I haven’t seen the movie). They had a similar beef with M:I3 because US agents escaping from Chinese officers was “disrespectful.”
imagine if us English people took out evil english people from movies, we would only ever get half of half the films ever made….
How’s Chow Yun Fat looking freak’n awesome as a pirate, insulting to the Chinese? I have no idea. I think he’s done enough diverse roles that the government would not worry about him not “representing the Chinese in a positive image”. I mean, he’s so well known!
The Chinese censors have made it a better film if they have in fact cut it by half.
It would still be poo though.
Just a lot less poo.
thats really really sad…don’t they feel any shame in the fact that they spent sooooooooooo much money on such a shitty ass movie.
shit like this should be punished by castration
You’re right. he ended up being totally uneeded. You’re also right about the movie being ass awful, so I really don’t care aout this story either way.
I’m going to disagree with you here. Without the scenes with Chow Yun-Fat the Pirates don’t get the map, the EI Trading Company doesn’t get the Black Pearl, and Elizabeth does not become the Pirate Queen.
Without his character delivering background and dialogue in those scenes (for better or worse) the movie could not flow the way it does (for better or worse).
blaablaaablaa…. was great movie, not as fantastic as second one but infinately better than the first…