Disney+ edited violent scenes in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier in its latest attempt to toe the line of family-friendliness. Users noticed this week that images of blood have been removed from the Marvel Cinematic Universe series, with one very clear example going viral on social media. Many are uneasy about this slippery slope towards censorship.
Disney has been re-working its approach to Disney+ on the fly in the last few months, especially as it becomes the go-to destination for most Marvel Studios content. It added new parental control features just in time to start streaming the Defenders shows which were originally on Netflix, and those worked well for the new series Moon Knight as well. That made it all the more perplexing to fans when the streamer edited scenes from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Reddit user u/MooninMoulin seems to have been the first to catch this one.
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The shot shows Dr. Wilfred Nagel (Olli Haaskivi) lying dead with his eyes open and with blood splatter on his face, his shirt and the ground around him. The newly edited version shows Nagel with his eyes closed but no blood to be seen. Other altered shots like this soon came to light as well, with viewers re-watching the series to find all the alterations.
As these clips went viral online, sources at Disney+ reached out to The Hollywood Reporter to confirm that they were real. They reportedly said that this was “a software control issue and the wrong file was recently published accidentally. It’s being corrected immediately.” Still, some fans wondered why this censored version exists at all and what Disney intends to do with it.
Disney’s parental control settings allow for the Netflix-era shows to stream on the service without fear of kids stumbling across them by accident. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is a different story, since it premiered on Disney+ in the first place. Some fans are wondering if an edited version of the show will be presented to users with parental controls turned on. If that’s the case, it’s puzzling that Disney allowed the show to be made this way in the first place.
This has sparked a widespread discussion about censorship, depictions of violence and parental responsibility on social media. It’s a complex issue that has some fans wondering whether Disney+ is the best home for the MCU at all. At the time of this writing, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier still seems to be intact in Disney+’s streaming catalog.
