A racist line in the upcoming Monster Hunter movie has Chinese audiences rightfully upset.
Monster Hunter World is facing the ire of upset audiences due to a controversial comment in the new film.
The Monster Hunter film already has fans of the franchise cautious. The modern military elements mixed with the iconography of the game is a stark choice and not one die-hards seem overly thrilled about.
However, it appears the film is now even beginning to hurt the franchise’s flagship title, Monster Hunter World. The game has come under fire from Chinese audiences, where the film is available. Negative reviews hit Steam as a reaction to a controversial line in the film which seemingly refers to a discriminatory chant.
Senior Analyst at Niko Partners Daniel Ahmad (via Eurogamer) posted a clip on his Twitter. He went on to explain:
Anyway, this is going down about as well as you’d expect in China where it’s being linked to the rhyme / phrase “Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees – look at these?” which is considered offensive. pic.twitter.com/pQCFNQ86Je
— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) December 4, 2020
It’s also been reported that the film’s showings in China have been cancelled and that plans to reprint the film without the line have been suspended, potentially banning the film in the country.
Update: Theaters exhibitors just got new notification that the plan of releasing new copies(removing the scene) of Monster Hunter have been suspended.
It almost means it’s banned here. https://t.co/ckqflJcu2w
— Gavin (@gavinfeng97) December 5, 2020
Capcom has taken to Chinese social media site Weibo to put distance between itself and the film. The company said that it was aware of the situation but that it was not the maker of the film. They’ve said they’ve reported the situation to the ‘relevant film companies’.
However, that may not fly, especially as the company has recently promoted a Milla Jovovich skin in Monster Hunter World.
It’s not clear how the line slipped through China’s strict classification process, although it is noted that the subtitle does not match up with what is said on screen. All of this has seen the game receive over 1700 negative Steam reviews since yesterday.
What happens next isn’t exactly clear, but this looks to be a fairly disastrous mess that is now spilling over onto the actual game franchise.
