Chinese censors have struck again, this time by changing the ending of the animated film ‘Minions: The Rise of Gru’ to make it more politically correct and showing that the good guys always win.
The ending of the fifth installment of the ‘Despicable Me’franchise ‘Minions: The Rise of Gru’ has been altered for its local release in China over the weekend, as pointed out by netizens across the globe.
Several weeks after the film opened in United States cinemas, the animated film set in 1970s San Francisco tells the story of how the agonist Gru cut his teeth as a tween criminal, Chinese moviegoers were shown differently in which the good guys win.
The original ending showed the two thieves, Gru and Wild Knuckles, speeding off together after Wild Knuckles faked his own death to evade capture by authorities.
Censorship then took over and according to screen grabs from the movie posted on the social media platform Weibo, the ending was edited to make it more politically correct.
The editing changed into Wild Knuckles caught by the police and served 20 years inside a prison, putting his con artist skills to positive use while serving time to show his redemption, while Gru, a co-conspirator of Wild Knuckles “returned to his family” and “his biggest accomplishment is being the father to his three girls”.
Online reviewers mocked the additional scenes in the movie, saying it looked more like a PowerPoint presentation than ending credit scenes.
DuSir, a film review publisher with 14.4 million followers on Weibo, was quoted as saying “It’s only us who need special guidance and care for fear that a cartoon will ‘corrupt’ us,” while questioning why the Chinese version ran one minute longer than the international one.
Distributors of the films internationally and locally, Universal Pictures and Huaxia Film Distribution Co. and China Film Co., respectively, both did not respond to requests for comments regarding the altered ending.
Tags: #film, #minions, #animation