Monster Hunter Movie Director And Star Apologise To Chinese Viewers For "Racist" Joke

....We could've had an awesome Monster Hunter movie...but then this director happened. Really wished we could just let true Monster Hunter fans make the movie instead instead of these guys ruining everything.

This is somewhat understandable, i don't agree with kowtowing to China but the size of the market makes it really quite a hard choice to make. Especially if you've made such a big project like this.

We live in the sensitive age. What a downer

Sad to think China will own us all pretty soon. Speak your minds while you still can people.

Also this movie looks like a giant CGI monster took a dump all over the screen.

So it should do well in China.

Well if they want those Chinese sales they need to apologise, as the move stands no chance no matter how good or bad it is.

Very sad world.

"We apologise because we want your Money, so please, we are sorry, now gove us you Money."

@liljmoore,

Agree, but it is what it is when sales are involved, the film makers would have counted on the Chinese market for a valuable source of income for the movie.

"The line references the playground taunt "Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees - look at these", which has traditionally been used to mock Asian people"

Have you any PROOF it references that taunt and wasn't just a cheesy pun? The actor who actually said the line says it doesn't but okay, you know better.

I think commenters should be more sympathetic here, at the end of the day racism is racism and in current times no one should be belittling it.

@dew12333

No one is belittling it honestly. It's more that commenters are tired of people being oversensitive, being the victim, about everything.

@Vsaxo27 I don't disagree at all, but like you say people can be easily offended.

As I can’t find the clip anywhere online now, can someone who has seen it please confirm a little context for me:
1) are the character’s knees dirty?
2) does he say the line in a song-song nursery-rhyme-esque manner?

Not trying to offend anyone, or defend any kind of racism (intentional or otherwise), just wanting to fully understand the context of the line itself, and how evocative it is of the offending nursery rhyme.

In order to avoid offending future audiences, film directors should research the historical significance of each and every line in their movies.

Hey chinese people, before complaining about racism, I think you should first close the concentration camps where the Uyghurs are going through ethnic cleansing.

Just change the stupid line. For crying out loud it's not like his knees are a main character (although they've received just as much publicity lately 😒).

I never saw that phrase as racist, I saw it as stupid and annoying, lol. Though I guess the variation where you stretch your eyes to appear Asian is a bit wrong.

@gaga64

Check NL a few days ago. They had the clip.

No nursery rhyme or sing song. More like a dad joke pun.

When people become too dumb to even watch a movie, sure the director needs to apologize.

So they are claiming racisim yet in the star wars movie posters in china they are slighty different and John Boyega is missing. Im sorry if your racisist dont start on about a silly joke when you go as far as remove a staring actor from the posters due to his colour.

@gaga64 as far as i can tell he didn't reference the rhyme at all. He says it just like it's quoted in the article. It has a pretty tenuous connection to the original, like saying a character named Miss Mary who happens to be on a steamboat is referencing that rhyme.

@gaga64 not particularly dirty and not said sing song either. I cam’t really speak to the offensiveness but I think it was a stupid line to include regardless.

Serious question - why did the Chinese subtitles change the phrase to something completely different and (evidently) worse?

@Razer

Dont talk nonsense. It's a play on words about knees. If they are offended about that then they need to lighten up a bit

It's a play on words. With what they did to the rest of the world and to their own people in death camps and forced labour I'm surprised this offends them. Free hong kong.
It's getting a bit heavy for a video game website. Anyone got any knob jokes.

@GTHOLLAND i was so angry when the door knob broke off my front door. I couldnt handle it.

Well, there's a reason the entire world hates China.

I can see how this is such an important line for narrative and story. It just had to be in there. Whether it's offensive, racist, or not, it's a bit of a misstep for adding it in given the climate.
I've never played a MH game properly - is it set in a workl where humans from Earth exist therefore contains Chinese people? Or is it as out of place as if Star Wars referenced China for example?

How is that even a racist joke? It's more like wordplay. Race doesn't come into it.

@dew12333 @dew12333 "I think commenters should be more sympathetic here, at the end of the day racism is racism and in current times no one should be belittling it"

Throwing the word racism around like confetti (without proof that was the intention) is a great way to belittle and make a mockery of genuine racism.

I'm pretty sure only a few hipster metropolis dwelling Chinese even react to this, and then only after reading that they are supposed to react to it on Twitter.
The only actually racist thing here is thinking all Chinese people are the same and just as snowflakey as people from California.

@Mortenb

You make an interesting comment. I do feel people react to things without thinking critically, but rather in such a way they believe they should (such as reacting as Twitter says to react).

@Losermagnet

😂😂😂love it

@GTHOLLAND lol you tell me not to talk nonsense when you obviously didn't understand what i wrote.

It's okay though, i can explain it for you.

I didn't mention the joke, or taking offence to the joke. It's not relevant to what i said, I'm not sure how you thought it was.

I mentioned that this is understandable because of the market size.

What has that got to do with the joke?

"much hype"? For months that I just see memes on this movie on how bad it looks lol

@GTHOLLAND also you clearly read the first line of what i wrote and assumed you knew what i said.

You didn't.

No worries though, I'll let you off 😉.

@gaga64 and others. I have seen the line delivered in a video clip from the film. I’ll try and describe it as best I can: while characters, I believe 2 actors, are riding in a a vehicle MC Jin is holding a gun on a turret and ask another actor “what kind of knees are these?” The other actor says “I don’t know?” Jin reply’s “Chinese.”

The line seems horrible out of place and I would find it hard to believe as a person with Chinese heritage Jin has never heard the joke. As a black man I have heard about every racist reference about my people dating back to slavery.

For people saying others are being “too sensitive” it seems like you don’t understand how deeply pervasive racism and discrimination is in the West especially the U.S. Or you’re just excusing it because you support this type of childish and demeaning behavior. It is almost exclusively us as humor at the expense of others. I have seen the clip and it doesn’t even qualify as “bad comedy.”

With that being said, I am a proud America, who has served in the US Army as a Staff Sergeant so I get the kind of military vibe of the scene in the movie, but I’m seriously tired of people excusing and/or tolerating this type behavior. It isn’t about cancel culture, being PC, or just let things go. It’s about a serious issue, racism and discrimination. How about not doing things that are overtly insensitive and inappropriate. Having power and money allows most of this to continue. Jin should have known better. The director and other actors and people who edited and screen the film should have said WTH! It’s like adding a watermelon joke or a joke about Jews. It’s not time for the ones being discriminated against to let it go and just get over it. It is time for the one who continue to pretend and behave like it is is nothing to get over it and stop their behavior. I truly don’t understand how many of the commentators here see no issue with this behavior. I get some elements, you love video games, you love monster hunter. Hell I do too I have been playing this game since the PSP and own almost ever western copy of the game. But a spade is a spade. You may not like politics or how it is everywhere. Well as an adult if you look around politics controls everything and is everywhere and capitalism and racism is part of it dating back to the creating of America and every other system. No one needs to get over it. Racism and discrimination isn’t funny and needs to stop. 1/2

As a child I heard the playground joke and saw people pull their eyes back to make fun of people of Asian descent. Mila must be so privileged or sheltered for a person her age to have never heard it. However she is 44 and has been in the West since 5. So I don’t believe she hasn’t run across it especially as an immigrant in LA. She also claims to have become fluent in English in 3 months and says she was a victim of being tease because of her Ukrainian heritage. So she seems to have totally forgot about how demeaning and hurtful “she claimed” her experience was or has let success just cleanse it all away. She basically said in her response to Jin, that he has nothing to apologize for. So she must have felt the people of LA were entitled to call her a “commie and a Russian spy.” So the joke must be an earned jab at people? Or people on the low end of the scale should just have tougher skin and get over it. I think not.

So If you don’t know the joke just Google it. Racism and discrimination isn’t about having tougher skin or getting over it, it’s about power and oppression.

We are gamers and that unites us we shouldn’t tolerate these acts because they only continue to divide our great community. Let’s enjoy the hunt and put this, more than likely, terrible cash grab of a movie behind us.

Sorry for writing so much but I comment so infrequently. This issue happen to touch me because of my love for MH and my dislike of racism and discrimination.

@Clyde_Radcliffe I have no opinion about this situation but felt people should be careful not to offend someone else. I think @kof4life makes my point very well.

Kinda sad that they apologized to Chinese, but nothing about Japanese.

@kof4life @Kid_Sickarus @Losermagnet thank you for clarifying for me. It sounds like the link to the nursery rhyme is pretty tenuous to me, just a really naff and out-of-place pun, but then I hadn’t heard the rhyme in decades and had completely forgotten about it.

Again, to be clear, I’m not excusing anything, the nursery rhyme is clearly deeply offensive and inexcusable. I just think the link between that rhyme and the film is a little tenuous.

Also, anyone read Mila’s apology as deeply sarcastic? “I’m sorry we didn’t spend hours researching 80-year old nursery rhymes because of a 2-second throwaway improvised gag... My new BFF is Chinese, I can’t possibly be racist”.

@Vsaxo27 the link to the clip doesn’t work any more.

@Razer
My bad

China (the CCP) owns the media. Not to mention run work camps with tens of thousands of people in slavery. Meanwhile they are destroying Hong Kong’s liberties just as they’ve destroyed all their neighbors, and the West is next. The CCP is the greatest enemy to the Chinese people, not some dumb joke.

@Pickettfury i supose the concentration camps for the poor muslims that have the cheek to be muslims are disneys fault as well.

I claim you do not need to know the old racist rhyme to be able to draw a connection between “knees” and the second syllable of Chinese. A five year old child could make up the same joke in the movie.

Anyone remember this children’s rhyme?
“Chinese men are very funny, this is how they count their money” then some nonsense sing-song phrase I forget. Would the Chinese find that offensive?

@MichaelHarvey the line was: what kind of knees are these?.... “Chi-nese.” So yes it’s a racist joke. About the race of Chinese people. You don’t have to agree that it’s racist though. It’s up to you.

Turns out the actor Jin Au-Yeung is a rapper. Had he used the same rhyme in one of his tracks would it still be racist?

@GTHOLLAND no worries 👍.

Woah I had no idea MC Jin was in this! That's awesome and makes me want to see it way more. I like watching and listening to him, he's a cool dude. Done lots of different things here in north America and across the pacific, he has some really good free styles and raps and things if you wanna check it out. He raps in English and Mandarin

"The line references the playground taunt "Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees - look at these", which has traditionally been used to mock Asian people."

Wow NL, did you actually read the quotes you added to the article? He said it was an improvised line that WAS NOT referencing it. It was far fetched to link the 2 anyway as it was pretty obvious it was a dad joke linking the rhyming part of Chinese to (his own Chinese) knees.

"It's a pun and the way I portrayed the character and the emotion of it is, this is a moment for him to proudly proclaim that he is a Chinese soldier, not just his knees, but his arms, his head, his heart. And this has nothing to do with that stupid 'Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees,'"

Again people, there’s a difference between the Chinese state and the over a billion Chinese citizens. An attitude of ‘it’s ok if it’s racist because China bad’ just doesn’t help.

All l can say this movie will be bad anyways. Real MH fans should have take control to do this movie. And what l mean by real is, the fans who have played past MH games besides world.

Isn’t it key to see that Milla blamed Jin himself in saying that he “improvised” the line, taking the blame off her husband and the writers?? Hahahahha. Nice.

@ilh They don't seem to care what the actual person who SAID the line says. He was found guilty in the Court of Twitter. 🙄 Intent doesn't seem to matter anymore.

Asian guy here, don’t see the line as racist at all. Stupid maybe but not racist. Anyways, this movie looks terrible and that’s a shame as I love MH.

@Clyde_Radcliffe I don’t share any racist are sexist sentiments that are often portrayed in films involving the military. Just like in the outside world there are people who do and people who don’t. Most of the people I served with were like brothers and sisters. We harbor no ill will towards each other. I’m sure there are still racists, bigots, and sexist people in the military. Ultimately the line was unnecessary and not all people even Asians will find it offensive but Hollywood knows better a classic example would be: that even if a black person doesn’t feel like the N word is offensive to their people, it still is. It isn’t on the same level but the term and phrase was and probably is used to put down, belittle and offend people. It should have been scrapped at editing or screening. This film is not Borat. It’s science fiction/fantasy but not satire.

Maybe it's a good thing that Mega Man movie was cancelled after all. Remember that?

@kof4life
You're right, I don't agree that it is racist. It isn't even offensive or demeaning. The word Chinese sounds like it has the word "knees" in it. It's a Christmas cracker joke at worst. Grow up.

China is by far the worst offender in the world when it comes to human rights (and animal rights and ecological protection, if you care about those things). I couldn’t care less about their faux-outrage over something as innocuous as this. They fly off the handle over literally everything, and it’s generally about their outsized ego and the perpetual demand for unearned absolute respect.

But no, let’s totally continue prostrating ourselves before the nation that refuses to even acknowledge, let alone apologize for, creating coronavirus and covering it up for months while spreading it all over the world.

The irony is the Chinese are incredibly racist towards poc in movies lol

Funny how the ACTOR HIMSELF said he didn't mean anything racist with that statement and had nothing to do with that particular line, yet people still scream that it's racist.
Finding racism where there isn't any, creating problems where there isn't any.
Such is the way of the world.
My word of advice? Do not associate yourself with the cesspool that is twitter.

@Razer
Weird, I thought I was on Nintendolife but after seeing two people apologize to each other and civilly come to an understanding, I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere.

Great that he apologized. However, this shouldn’t have even been a joke in the first place. It was written so terribly. 🤣

@Arkay
I don’t necessarily agree with all of your post, but avoiding twitter will definitely increase your IQ by about 25 points. 🤣

-'calls someone a slur'
-'i cant believe this somehow could of been interpreted as offencive i am so sorry '

One of the countries with the most awful things done to people, and they get offended by a simple pun. Sigh

@riggah there was no line in that scene that I know of that mentions the Japanese.

@dew12333 Honestly at how oblivious (generous interpretation) / racist (honest interpeetation) many of the comments are here. Sad that gaming has attracted so many racist / misogynist people to the hobby.

"We should have researched the historical origin of it and that’s 100 per cent on us"

I feel like this is an unrealistic sense of responsibility. Every possibly joke, pun, or sentence could potentially have some sort of relevance contrived or drawn to SOMETHING, from SOMEWHERE at SOMETIME that was once offensive. How far do the rules go?

@Sam_Loser2
Of course all jokes will be offensive. There’ll always be snowflakes. However, there are jokes that were created for the sole purpose of bringing down other groups of people, and I’m assuming that was the case for this terrible joke.

Of course, these are just my thoughts.

@RandomAfricanGamer You assume the pun made by a Chinese actor was created for the “sole purpose of bringing down other groups of people?”

@RandomAfricanGamer
That is kind of a silly assumption. What is the more likely scienero?
1) That the actor who improvised it purposely improvised a joke to bring down his own ethnicity, and then the movie studio purposely included it to bring down the group that makes up a huge portion of their market?
2) Or that a shallow action movie added in a stupid pun, just like all the other stupid puns in all the other shallow action movies?

Maybe you can't bring yourself to think the odds of #1 is 0%, but surely it is far lower than #2?

When are they going to apologize to Uyghurs though?

@idrawrobots
My bad. I thought the film uses the "playground" version that states "Japanese". That's what happens when you don't read the whole thing.

I wonder where the movie will be shown given most cinemas in Canada (Ontario specifically) are still closed? Is it going to streaming?

@kof4life I have to say, you haven't convinced me that the lame joke we're discussing here is particularly problematical.

Racism against East Asians such as this - http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/08/14/olympics.photo.spain.basketball/ - is a problem and needs to be crushed ASAP.

Sexual harassment, like the clip of Terry Bogard slapping womens' backsides as he rides by on his motorcycle - https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2020/10/snk_apologises_for_offensive_ad_featuring_fatal_furys_terry_bogard - is a problem and needs to be crushed ASAP.

This? This is a failed, awkward, lame joke.

@kof4life And... I feel like... you wrote many paragraphs to tell us that racism is an evil.

The thing is, I don't feel that racists are reachable; nothing we say is going to convince them to change. I was interested, though, to read what you said about your life experience, which I resonated with, so I do thank you for that.

@DarthFoxMcCloud They can project them on Doug Ford's broad backside.

@SpaceboyScreams Luckily more and more large corporations start shifting production away from China.

Hopefully this will slow down China a bit in the future and brings some balance back to the equation. Though, I fear it might already be too late. They have stolen/get hold of so much intellectual property over the years, that they can keep flooding and dominating the world market for years to come.

@Sam_Loser2 @idrawrobots
Oh, this one is on me. I didn’t word it correctly at all, and I disavow that statement. Sorry for any confusion. 👍🏿

Groveling and apologizing to China over nothing again.

Money talks.

Even if this line was intented to be offensive - which it isn't - the Chinese are the last people who should be complaining about racism and discrimination considering all if the stuff that goes on in their nation. Amazingly, I'm not even talking about the concentration camps either, it goes way beyond those, which are already awful by themselves.

That goes for both the CCP and many of its citizens, who are encouraged to toe the line to keep a good social credit score. I feel a little sad for them that they have to go along with the terrible policies and defend their government, to avoid becoming social pariahs in the country, but it also means it makes them hard to trust. Hopefully this can change, but I'm getting into some deep cultural stuff, even in the context of this article, so I'd be best to leave it here.

@RandomAfricanGamer anything helps 👌🏽

@weisske haha yeah it has happened before. Not often lol.

"Paul WS Anderson's much-hyped Monster Hunter movie"

KEKW

@Razer Yeah, it's funny, I remember a time when people figured cultural imperialism would work on China and help sway the country around. It's krass to see that the opposite holds true, more so every day, with Chinese sensibilities more and more impacting western cultural output, particulary Hollywood (not so gaming yet for obvious reason).

Then again, the west also believed that, as Clinton famously stated, that China would fail to curtail the democratic power of the internet, which turned out to be a catastrophic misconception as well. And even before that we figured, that their semi-capitalistic approach would fail (wrong again), before we stuck modernization theory, accepting that their approach worked, but that it would give rise to a middleclass that would push for democratic participation (again, just wrong for the most part).

I think we've grown rather resentful on issues like these, seeing how we've spend half a century being dreadfully wrong. And now, we have modell our movies after the Chinese market, be it racially insenstive jokes (with up to a point is a valid concern, but still), or the display of a friggin map in a kids movie.

@Orpheus79V I think it also points to severe problems in the US and its people, though, that the Chinese government is able to manipulate the US with such ease through Wall Street and other economic forces.

@roboshort there hasn’t been or will be a civilization that doesn’t or won’t have many things that are broken about it, because humans are by default motivated by their own selfish desires and tribal mentality. We in the US have a willful ignorance of anything that doesn’t directly impact us individually (for the most part), and seem to form our opinions based on what opinion commentators pretending to be new anchors or just straight up by entertainers that say what they get paid to say (or know will get them continued paying jobs in their chosen profession or depend on our being divided to stay in power) tell us to think. We believe a short tweet from both celebrities and politicians blindly even when Twitter notes the originator didn’t even bother to open/read the article they retweet/comment on. And as a country we blindly believe we are the best (and everyone should be like us) while ignoring the injustices happening right outside our on front door as we slowly become little more than indentured servants of the ultra rich.

In short, perhaps we collectively need to work on getting our own crap together before we start demonizing everything and everyone else. Most countries have enough internally broken crap to keep them busy, but it is easier to drag others down and point out their flaws than to honestly take a hard look in the mirror and realize you are just as screwed up in your own way.

@Ralek85 oh man i can talk for hours about this but i doubt this is the right place for it.

Feel free to add me on Discord if you want to talk politics. My ID is Rezar#6777.

More than welcome to chat 😁.

Ok, an actor was unaware about a controversial topic and a Chinese translation team made the line even more suggestive.
Silly line is taken out. Move on. However, I still don't think China or any reallife country belongs in Monster Hunter's fantasy setting. I don't know about a single Monster Hunter game taking place in the real world. Are there any references?

@Darknyht I am from the US but I live in Japan and it saddens me a bit to see how low the level of discourse is in the US and the past few years it’s become much worse, especially the past year.

People can’t have serious conversations about what to about serious issues let alone the coronavirus cause everything has become so politicized over there with both political parties make poorly constructed arguments. And the airwaves are overrun with talking heads.

It’s far from perfect here but it’s still unfortunate that the US doesn’t get its act together. Especially when there are real threats to the world looming. And I do see China as a threat as well cause its values are so antithetical to the values that have made social and scientific progress possible the past 400 years.