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.
