Users of social media platforms across China observed over the weekend that the conclusion of the recently released animated film “Minions: The Rise of Gru” has been changed by censors in preparation for the film’s distribution in China.
Some spectators have expressed regret about the alterations brought about by the editing, which is yet another instance of Chinese officials altering a popular Hollywood picture in order to make it more politically correct.
According to messages and screenshots from the movie that were uploaded on Weibo, a medium that is comparable to Twitter, censors slapped on an epilogue in which Wild Knuckles, a prominent character in the heist film, was apprehended by police and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Screenshots from the movie showed that one of the people involved in the Wild Knuckles plot, Gru, “returned to his family,” and that “his finest success is being the father to his three kids.”
After Wild Knuckles feigns his own death in order to avoid being apprehended by the authorities, the story’s two thief anti-heroes, Gru and Wild Knuckles, ride out together at the end of the movie in the international version of the film.
The addition has been ridiculed by a number of online commentators who have stated that it is too similar to a powerpoint presentation.
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The online movie review publication DuSir, which has 14.4 million followers on Weibo, observed that the Chinese version of the film is one minute longer than the international version, and it questioned the necessity of the additional minute. DuSir’s findings were published on Weibo.
In an article that was published on Saturday, DuSir wrote the following: “It’s only us who require particular guidance and care, for fear that a cartoon may ‘corrupt’ us.”
Outside of regular business hours, Universal Pictures, which is the distributor of the film in the United States, did not reply to a request for a comment.
A request for comment was sent to the film’s distributors in China, Huaxia Film Distribution Co. and China Film Co. Neither of these companies provided a response.
There is a limit set by the Chinese government on the number of foreign films that can be screened in Chinese movie theaters. The versions of Hollywood movies that are shown in this nation frequently cut or alter certain portions from the originals.
Some viewers have observed that potential endings to films significantly depart from the films’ original conclusions.
Viewers in China who watched the iconic film Fight Club in 2018 noticed that the original ending, in which the protagonist and his alter ego blow up a group of skyscrapers, was missing from the version that was offered on the Chinese streaming website Tencent Video.
Instead, the script that was shown on-screen stated that the police “rapidly worked out the whole scheme and arrested all of the culprits, successfully stopping the bomb from exploding.”
The alterations prompted replies not just from the director of the original film but also from the author of the novel that the film was adapted from, which led to widespread ridicule among Chinese fans of the original film. Later on, Tencent reverted back to the original conclusion.
