The Monster Hunter movie has been pulled from theatres in China just 1 day after it released

This happened after strong backlash on social media over a scene that is considered offensive (below). It is unclear if the movie will return

Here is a thread to explain the situation: https://twitter.com/ZhugeEX/status/1334794969727569924

Firstly I want to preface this by saying: if your immediate response is "That's not offensive" or "stop being sensitive" then I'm just going to block you.

If you're not Chinese then it's not really your place to decide what is / isn't offensive to people in China.

There are 4 key points to discuss in order to understand this situation.

1. The 10 second scene in the first tweet
2. The link to an old racist rhyme / phrase
3. The way the movie was subtitled during this part
4. Social media backlash and review bombing

我们开始吧

1. I think we can all agree the joke in the OP is poorly executed overall. It's an attempt at a pun but ends up making "Chinese" the punchline

It's not particularly clever or funny, just bad writing

Surprised it wasn't removed at some point, especially for the Chinese release

2. Differences in lived experiences and cultural awareness means that a Chinese and English speaker will interpret this in a different way than someone who only speaks English.

It's why the scene was very quickly linked to a racist rhyme / phrase that was used against Asians.

Multiple Chinese people, including people i've spoken to, said that the scene reminded them of this racist rhyme which goes:

"Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, look at these"

The rhyme is accompanied with gestures such as slanted eyes, slapping knees and pointing at breasts.

The rhyme has been used against people of Chinese and Japanese descent that immigrated to the West

It also has a number of sexist connotations in the second part about "dirty knees" & "look at these"

Here is the rhyme referenced in a family guy episode

Here is Chinese-American singer Wang Leehom talking about how he was subject to this racist rhyme when he was growing up.

This link to the rhyme quickly started to spread on Chinese social media and it led to people becoming upset at the reference.

3. This was further exacerbated by the way the film was subtitled in China.

The translation was completely changed to reference a Chinese idiom - 男儿膝下有黄金.

It essentially became about "Kneeling down", which further played into the "Dirty Knees" part of the rhyme.

The disconnect between the English voices and the Chinese subtitles led people to believe that the whole thing was intentional and the backlash on social media intensified as people became more convinced it was a slight against Chinese people.

As the backlash intensified there were multiple parties that chimed in.

1. Capcom said it would follow up with the production company and investigate

2. Key figures in China called out American hypocrisy - How racist jokes against Asians aren't seen as a big deal to Hollywood

A lot of the criticism, usually linked to the video itself, was taken down due to copyright claims

Many Chinese people questioned how this could pass the censors and criticised the director + production companies as well as the China film regulator

This led to negative reviews

One of the unfortunate review bombing events, outside of Chinese platforms, took place on Steam under the Monster Hunter World page.

Nearly 2,000 negative reviews were left for the game, calling out hypocritical attitudes towards racism and criticising the movie for the scene.

Movie theaters in China have been instructed to pull the movie today and major ticket booking sites have delisted it already.

Currently it is unknown if the film will make a return with the offending scene cut out. https://twitter.com/gavinfeng97/status/1335050779372232705?s=20

If the movie is to be banned from future showing then this would result in upwards of $30m lost from potential showings in China, not to mention the negative impact on bookings in the ROTW.

I'm sure this will end up a case study for companies to learn from in the future.