‘Monster Hunter’ Starring Milla Jovovich Pulled From Chinese Theaters Over ‘Racially Offensive’ Accusations

Monster Hunter, which stars Milla Jovovich, has officially been pulled from theaters in China after racist accusations. According to Variety, Chinese regulators are in the midst of censoring Monster Hunter after social media users in China accused the film of including an exchange that they say “insults China.” The film originally premiered in China on Friday.

Monster Hunter is written, produced, and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. The film stars Anderson’s wife, Jovovich, as well as Tona Jaa, T.I., and Jin Au-Yeung, who is better known as MC Jin. Variety reported that Au-Yeung is the first Asian-American solo rapper to sign to a major record label. He is also well-known in China for appearing on the show The Rap of China.

The controversial scene in question involves Au-Yeung. In the scene, a white male character and an Asian character, played by Au-Yeung, are driving together at a high speed. The white male character then asks Au-Yeung’s character, “What?” He then replies, “Look at my knees!” His companion then asks him, “What kind of knees are these?” Au-Yeung then jokes, “Chi-nese,” a pun on the word’s last syllable.

While some viewed the scene as one featuring a bit of banter over a bad pun, others were particularly angered by the scene as they thought that it played into an old, racist schoolyard rhyme insulting Asians. The racist rhyme they referenced is, “Chi-nese, Jap-a-nese, dir-ty knees, look at these.” The inappropriate phrase reportedly involves knee slaps and slant-eye gestures.

In order to localize the joke for Chinese audiences, translators decided to make the dialogue a reference to a Chinese colloquialism about how men must have dignity and that they must not kneel down easily. The saying is roughly translated as, “Men have gold under their knees, and only kneel to the heavens and their mother.” Even though the translators tried to assuage the issue by including this reference, some individuals felt that this new translation signaled a deliberate cover-up of film’s original offensive language.

On Friday evening, Capcom Asia issued a statement in Chinese on Weibo (a social media platform in the country) in order to distance themselves from the controversy (Capcom Asia reportedly helped develop the video game on which Monster Hunter is based on). They reminded those reading that they had no role in the actual production of the film. Their statement read, “After learning your opinions about the movie ‘Monster Hunter,’ we’ve collected everyone’s ideas and reported the situation to the relevant companies.” They added that they hope “to continue to live up to your expectations in the future” when it comes to creating video games.