Sony Rejected China's Demand To Scrub Statue of Liberty From 'Spiderman' (nypost.com) 147
An anonymous reader writes: Sony struck a major blow against censorship after defying a Chinese government demand to delete the Statue Of Liberty from "Spiderman: No Way Home" ahead of its release. The bombshell rejection was revealed by "multiple sources," per a recent article by Puck. According to the piece, Chinese regulators had asked if the Japanese entertainment giant could "delete the Statue of Liberty from the ending of the film." Sony unsurprisingly declined the demand given the prominence of Lady Liberty in the climax in which the three spidermen swing around the iconic symbol of freedom while battling supervillains, Puck reported. Undaunted, China then inquired if the monument could be "minimized," according to the report. Specifically, they'd wondered "if Sony could cut a few of the more patriotic shots of [Tom] Holland standing atop the crown, or dull the lighting so that Lady Liberty's visage wasn't so front-and-center," per Puck.
FUCK CHINA (Score:2, Informative)
Re: FUCK CHINA (Score:4, Insightful)
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I suggest you look downwards and notice who exactly has whom by the balls.
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Huh? Did China invade Taiwan while I was sleeping? Or why?
Boy, the world changes fast these days.
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Time for the west to start confiscating CCP and their oligarchs assets.
Yeah nah. That would be monumentally stupid. It's easy enough to strongarm Russia who owe the USA a fortune, and have nothing other than oil and gas which is replaceable with other third world countries, but it's quite another to fight with China who are so intertwined with the west's economy that they can happily go tit-for-tat with trade embargos to the point where the west backs down. Now do a google search on where the majority of US treasury securities are held and you'd realise that China has far more
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We?
Not me.
If a bunch of rich guys lose their investments, I suppose there will be some harm down at my level, unemployment going up or whatever. But the effect will be sharpest at the highest reaches of the income distribution. Most of us would certainly weather it far better than the 2008 financial crisis, and if it impoverishes some of the swine that caused that crisis, it would be worth it.
Most of the oligarchs I'd like to see impoverished and disempowered are not in China. It's more of a world-wide
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Have any retirement money in the stock market?
Re: FUCK CHINA (Score:2)
Or many parts in his PC that didn't come from China?
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or many parts of (almost everything)!! ... so yes, in your home, full of "national products" are really full of chinese products and chinese parts... Blame the mantra of making money at lowest cost ... and believe, china loves to lower cost... lower quality supplies, lower environment and safety controls, slave or near slave labor, dumping prices, lower final product quality... but the output is so big th
Most local brands are really just rebrand of chinese products or assemble of a bunch of chinese products
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I forgot who it was, but a Comedian once came onto the stage, flying a huge Chinese flag. After the predictably confused reaction from the audience, he explained "Sorry if the color ain't your style, but it was the only flag I could find in the store that was made in the USA".
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Not China, Fuck Xi (Score:2)
China is a wonderful place with millions of great people.
However they need to lose Emperor Xi.
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I've said it before, and I'll say it again. FUCK CHINA
Wow. I knew Chinese people were easily offended at any challenge to their nationalist sentiments. But I did not know Americans were so thin-skinned.
Chinese people are quite used to gung-ho flag-waving jingoism in their own media, so would not be terribly surprised to find it in US movies. And I'd like to think they find the efforts of their censors as amusing as I did. Can't you just have a laugh at the absurdity, instead of taking it as a personal insult?
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If you pay attention to the news at all, indeed even slashdot in particular, China got similar flak for deleting the ending of fight club, replacing it with text saying that everybody was arrested before the buildings started going down. Deleting that ending has the same intent as deleting the statue of liberty. It's not about America or even nationalism, rather they don't like the symbolism of the statue of liberty itself.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/0... [nytimes.com]
I think if China simply didn't like anything America
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Re:FUCK CHINA (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody needs to "establish" an anti China or anti Russian narrative, those dumb fucks are doing that all by themselves. The idea that there was a coup in Ukraine in 2014 is ludicrous Russian propaganda, and you are an asshole for spreading it. Ukraine had plenty of reasons to hate Russia, the Euromaidan protests needed no prodding from the US. Fuck you for insulting Ukraine like that. And fuck you for spreading propaganda for totalitarians like Xi and Putin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:FUCK CHINA (Score:5, Insightful)
It should also be mentioned that the Ukrainians have since voted in a pro Europe government since they overthrew their pro Russian one and as far as I've heard it was an honest election. Clearly the Ukrainians were done with Russia.
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Ukraine has voted against Russia since 2004 when Russia poisoned one of the pro independence from Russia candidates (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yushchenko#TCDD_poisoning), it was only because Russia still had enough sway amongst Ukrainian institutions from soviet era control of the country that they were able to force Yanukovych in in 2008 by weaponizing gas and forcing political instability.
Ukraine has long wanted to move away from Russia to Europe, the only reason it took until the 2014 revoluti
Re: FUCK CHINA (Score:2)
I can't blame the Ukraine.
Russia is firmly mired in the bad old days of the early and mid 20th century. Who wants to be monstered like that?
Russia is finished and that country did it to itself. Putin's batshit crazy and bloodbath attempt to stay relevant confirms that they are more irrelevant to the world as ever. Time for Russia to take a dirt nap on the world stage.
Oh well, we have room on our flag for a 51st star, and now we will have a really big place to send the dregs of US society. :>
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If the voters kick out a tyrant, is that a coup by the people? But I do think Putin does not see Ukrainians as real people able to form their own minds, and so they must have been influenced by someone else. He cannot even see the irony when he complains that Ukraine fought back and blew up something small in Russia; he cannot see the irony when he demands that the US has no right to interere in Ukraine. There's no way Putin can believe his own lies unless he's senile, all this crap is propaganda for his
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One of the problems with Putin is that he believes that if you speak Russian you identify or at least should identify as ethnically Russian. By that count everyone who speaks English would be English and everyone who speaks Spanish would be Spanish etc. It is of course complete and total fantasy.
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Putin possibly would also want all ethnic Russians to pay tax to him also. There are many ethnic Russians in Ukraine, and very few of them have any desire to be Russian citizens; in the same way that Canadians don't want to be American, or Australians don't want to be ruled from London. I think this baffles Putin.
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One of the problems with Putin is that he believes that if you speak Russian you identify or at least should identify as ethnically Russian
Wait, that sounds familiar. What's "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer" in Russian?
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For that extremely concise, and incorrect description of the events from 2008 to 2014 in Ukraine, Premier Putin thanks you, comrade. He will certainly reward you, once he has access to cash again.
Re: FUCK CHINA (Score:2)
He'll just rob the orthodox churches of their valuable icons (the ones that aren't the fakes created when these churches were rebuilt after 1991) and other sellable material and have straw sellers pawn it off for cash on the international black market.
His people will starve and maybe Russia will become the next Yugoslavia, but he doesn't care.
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President runs on a campaign to go for integration and eventual membership of the E.U. Then for what ever reason the president decides to not sign the agreement with the E.U. and signs an integration agreement with Russia instead. It is hardly surprising that there is a popular uprising at this point to over throw the president who is not following through on the promises he made to the electorate to get elected. If we add in the president was a corrupt bastard that had embezzled tens if not hundreds of mil
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Yeah, I'd say so. Oliver Stone's "documentaries" are notoriously bad. One of his WWII documentaries is still on netflix, and in it he basically paints Stalin as a saint, and he basically ignores the context behind every one of Stalin's decisions that he paints as pure benevolence when it's anything but that.
You probably never noticed this: https://www.hollywoodreporter.... [hollywoodreporter.com]
What makes you think he would actually be honest about Russia today? In fact, we already know he isn't:
https://deadline.com/2022/03/o... [deadline.com]
L
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lol, someone that still believes Russia's propaganda over Ukraine despite the fact they've spilled into Ukraine as a blatant unprovoked aggressor with countless warnings to that effect before our eyes.
How quaint.
Do you also shit in an outhouse?
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Simpsons did it [youtube.com].
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Oh please, troll somewhere else. Is Twitter already saturated and you can't get anyone into your "truth" bubble anymore?
LOL WTF (Score:3, Funny)
Did China just ask Sony to delete the entire 3rd act from Spiderman No Way Home?
What next, do they want 20th Century Fox to remove the phonebooth from the movie Phonebooth? Or demand that there be no water shown in Deep Blue Sea?
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Companies which have capitulated in the past have caught a lot of backlash over it;
Examples please. I know plenty of films which have scenes cut, edited, or minor details changed. I know plenty of examples of up front pandering (see Transformers). But I know of precisely zero cases where an entire 3rd act was reshot post release for China.
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a public corporations fiduciary duty to it's shareholders, which is actually what Sony has a responsibility to do?
Publicly traded ompanies actually have a lot of leeway when it comes to running afoul of their fiduciary duties to shareholders.
The obligation to maximize shareholder value is overstated in the public imagination because the only time the American public hears about it is after some CEO burned down an orphanage for BTUs.
The same CEOs will downplay their duties when it comes time to enrich themselves at the expense of shareholders anyhow.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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I don't think they really care, It was a test of power. Instead they learned the power of fuck you. (Works for many other kinds of censorship.)
Re:LOL WTF (Score:5, Interesting)
Have no doubt, China absolutely has the power to ban anything it wants, but it *doesn't* have the power to prevent Chinese people from seeing that banned stuff.
There's quite an interesting situation going on with Korean dramas, which are as wildly popular in China as they are everywhere else. China has tacitly banned them for years, ostensibly because of South Korea deploying THAAD, but everyone still watches bootlegs. The producers even make money from the bootleg Chinese market with product placement. The ban has been so ineffective that China has been backing away from it over the past year.
The ability to ban something does give the Chinese government *some* leverage; enough that it routinely can coerce foreigners to changing their movies. But that leverage has limits, and those limits don't encompass a global hit superhero movie.
I don't think this attempt at arm-twisting was purely performative. THAAD notwithstanding, I think the party sincerely dislikes seeing hostile foreign societies and their symbols portrayed in a favorable light.
Re:LOL WTF (Score:5, Interesting)
What next, do they want 20th Century Fox to remove the phonebooth from the movie Phonebooth? Or demand that there be no water shown in Deep Blue Sea?
They already got Paramount the Woke to bend over, grab their ankles, get sodomized with cash, and remove the Taiwan flag from Maverick's G3 flight jacket.
And people out there still think China's not trying to reshape the world?
Fuck Winnie the Pooh's government. and all their apologists, both there and worldwide. As if Mao wasn't bad enough for them. Xi is worse.
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Ehehe -- and since there's no edit in /., here I am replying to my self: That flag removal, Paramount's acquiescence to China, is why I refuse to watch Top Gun II. No matter that it's likely shit cinema like the first one was, but my point is -- I refuse to support Hollyweirdos who bend over to accommodate China's censorious views. Fuck them. Long and hard. With a splintered phone pole.
China's government needs to be the next pariah state.
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and remove the Taiwan flag from Maverick's G3 flight jacket.
Yep, completely the same thing as asking for a complete reshoot of the 3rd act in a completely different location. /sarcasm.
If I came up and asked you to give me $1,000,000 would you say "that was just like that time you asked me for $1 for coffee"!
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The Chinese edit of Fight Club had a very different ending.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
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Different scale mate. Cutting 10min of content to change the appearance of the ending is not the same as asking for the entire 3rd act of a movie to reshot at a different location.
It's like asking if we can pick a different restaurant for dinner vs asking if you could sell your house so we can have dinner in a different kitchen.
Not a problem (Score:2)
For only a couple thousand more dollars, they can make special "China friendly" versons of the scenes that were removed. Switched to jarringly and featuring the best acting and effects that the 1960s Batman TV series if it's budget was only a tenth of what it was could offer.
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Planet of the Apes (Score:2)
I wonder what China wants done with the end of the 1968 classic.
Re:Planet of the Apes (Score:5, Funny)
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Uh, probably nothing, since that scene depicts Lady Liberty and America, winning like Charlie Sheen on a tiger-blood bender.
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Top Gun: Maverick better not bow down to china in (Score:4, Funny)
Top Gun: Maverick better not bow down to china in any way. Or it's slap in the face to all of our service members
Re:Top Gun: Maverick better not bow down to china (Score:5, Informative)
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Imagine how difficult it really is for a director to make a movie about naval aviators, while having to contend with [classified] this and [obfuscated] that, peppered all throughout.
Ironically the United States Navy already executed a "censorship" fly-by on this one.
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That’s why I really didn’t like The Martian. Nothing but US propaganda and Chinese ass kissing.
Re:Top Gun: Maverick better not bow down to china (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that's the wrong read on Andy Weir's intent in spotlighting China in The Martian. It seems improbable that when he self-published the book on Amazon (I think for free, maybe for like $0.99?) and announced it on Reddit, he was thinking forward to some future where it became an international hit that would be turned into a movie, and that there'd be some huge benefit to pandering to the Chinese audience. It seems more like a way to convey an optimistic, hopeful future where the nations of the world are able to pull out the stops and work together to save the life of an astronaut.
I'd say it's more akin to Gene Roddenberry including Chekov in ToS: that wasn't Russian ass kissing.
Re: Top Gun: Maverick better not bow down to china (Score:2)
Try 'Paths of Glory.' They didn't get much wrong in that one.
Silly (Score:4, Interesting)
Does the native Chinese audience actually have that mental connection to what the Statue of Liberty represents, even with the name, or would they just see it as that "big green statue" in New York? The historical context is totally missing I have to imagine.
It's like that giant Guan Yu statue in Jingzhou [wikipedia.org]. To me it's really cool and I understand it has some cultural and historical significance to people in China but I simply cannot relate to that all.
I feel like in a situation like this the attempt to remove it or if it was actually scrubbed causes more attention than just leaving it. It's just an interesting set-piece.
Re:Silly (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Silly (Score:4, Funny)
Very interesting, thank you.
I know the answer is they have to be extremely overly paranoid because they are an authoritarian state but I am just impressed at how they seemingly both over-estimate and under-estimate their citizenry's sensitivity to such things.
Like if "Spiderman: No Way Home" is the trigger for a new round of protests then you were screwed the entire time.
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Back in 2010, high-level officials in the CCP agreed with you, and said that the censorship was getting ridiculous and should be rolled back.
Now no one dares to say that because Xi is the man.
Re:Silly (Score:4, Informative)
During the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989, Chinese students built a replica of the Statue of Liberty they called the "Goddess of Democracy". It was built right before the tanks rolled in. Due to heavy censorship from the CCP, I have no idea how many ordinary Chinese citizens remember or have even heard of the Goddess of Democracy, but the CCP leadership certainly does. This is most certainly the reason why they want the SoL removed.
Had not heard of it so looked it up, apparently the Goddess of Democracy [wikipedia.org] was intentionally not based off of the Statue of Liberty (although they do look similar).
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They had statues of both.
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They had statues of both.
Source? I'm Googling and seeing only references to SoL at Tiananmen Square as a potential reference point for the Goddess of Democracy/Liberty/Democracy and Freedom or Spirit of Democracy.
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Goddess of Democracy was different, IIRC, but they had statues of both.
Bingo. (Score:2)
Came here to say exactly that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The protesters in Tienanmen Square erected a replica of the Statue of Liberty. It was a centerpiece of the protest. The Chinese government has not forgotten this and tries extra-hard to censor any reference to the statue.
Ironic it's a Japanese Company (Score:4, Insightful)
Defending an American symbol of liberty, while American companies are trying as hard as they can to lick China's A$$.
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Defending an American symbol of liberty
Don't flatter yourself. In reality Sony doesn't want to reshoot the most expensive 1/3rd of an entire film. This isn't like editing a flag out of a picture or similar bullshit.
Sony has a long history of pandering to China, including aliens not blasting a hole into the great wall in the Pixels movie, censoring Hong Kong criticisms of China in the entire Playstation ecosystem, the insane over representation of WeChat in Sony movies in countries where WeChat is not actually a thing.
Sony just like every other m
Re:Ironic it's a Japanese Company (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think wokism has anything to do with same-sex-love. For LGBT-in-creative-work issue, the cult part of wokism is mostly about forcing the racial and gender elements into every stories with an almost fixed ratio. This is what hurts art and creativity. The real world does contain those elements in a certain ratio on average. But it is unnatural and also a false assumption that those elements spread evenly across the society. The fixation as if we have to collect all the stamps every time disengage readers.
The 2nd cult part of wokism in creative works is their rejection of the classical view of what is pretty and what is ugly. The classical view or the "mainstream" view is there because they reflect who's healthy (for off-spring bearing purpose) and who's aren't. Sometimes the images deviate from that a little bit but a total discard of such trashes the shows. Both cult parts haven't existed (yet) in Japanese entertainment industry so far.
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To the contrary, same sex couples offer writers lots of new ideas to explore.
This happens every time something becomes acceptable for the majority, or the rules change.
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Tell me when the they come up with new ideas explore, I would love to watch. Over we are the some sex and love each other, or look how hard it is for us, we are so oppressed, most people simply don't care, I certainly don't, just like I don't care if you are straight or not.
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Try Star Trek Discovery. The dynamic of two guys in a relationship, and semi-adopting a family within the Star Trek future is entirely new for the franchise and very well done.
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Modern Japan is fairly progressive, as far as Asian countries go.
Not as progressive as you might think. Still have draconian laws against weed. Can't marry if you are gay. Weird porn laws still in effect from the '50s (Where the tentacles come in)
And if what I read is anything to go by, they have some really old fashioned family values.
As for Yaoi, that isn't made for gay men. That is made by women for women depicting what women think gay men are like. Yuri is the same way, just with the genders flipped.
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Modern Japan is fairly progressive, as far as Asian countries go.
The tricky thing about calling Japan progressive is that Japanese society is itself fairly conservative. Japan appears progressive because it's not a confrontational society, unlike the West where Christian dogma (including communism) predominate. Progressive ideas are tolerated so long as they don't disturb the public order too much. Such attitude toward social stability is basically a less paranoid version of what prevails in the PRC, where Bitcoin, for example, was tolerated for years until it turned int
Re: Ironic it's a Japanese Company (Score:2)
Fuck them both to be sure, but it's not every day you hear Communism referred to as having a Christian connection or influence. Personality cults only have room for one God, the guy at the top.
Propaganda film (Score:2)
Let the Americans enjoy their patriotic propaganda films. China is free to make their own entertainment. Once we try to appease everyone by removing the offensive bits, any meaning or art is removed. And there isn't a lot of that to spare in a super hero film.
Re: Propaganda film (Score:2)
Chinese art... Do you mean Buddhist art?
Re: Propaganda film (Score:2)
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They've been bringing back their ancient history (which is a good thing imo). Interestingly, they've even started doing sacrifices again at the temple of heaven.
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Yes. to both.
From NPS website (emphasis mine):
The Statue of Liberty has a long history as a symbol of the United States and she graces the design of government issued postage stamps medals, awards and coins, such as the commemorative silver dollar silver designed and engraved by Don Nelson Everhart II and issued by the United States Mint in 2008.
For nations at odds with the United States, it is impossible for them to separate a symbol of the United States from it also representing jingoism.
Kowtowing To China (Score:3)
All this kowtowing to China is bullshit. These studios should tell China to either show the movie as is or pound sand. Unfortunately the $$$ talks so it will never happen.
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These studios should tell China to either show the movie as is or pound sand.
China is a bigger movie market than the USA. What you call kowtowing company executives call "giving the customers what they want".
Slashdot, a site where we say movie companies should ignore their customers while complaining that Linux distributions ignore their customers.
What I would give... (Score:5, Funny)
For Sony to edit out the Statue of Liberty and replace it with a giant statue of Winnie the Pooh.
Foolish (Score:2)
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(And btw, it's not exactly a blow against censorship when the fact that censoring has taken place will just be censored...)
Practically speaking, they won't be able to hide that the movie exists and can be seen everywhere other than China. Not for something this well-known and anticipated at any rate. That might work for something most Chinese citizens were previously unaware of, and which wasn't widely covered in global media.
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Ghostbusters (Score:2)
Egon has entered the chat.
I bet Disney would have done it (Score:4, Insightful)
I bet Disney would have edited it, or possibly never filmed the scene to begin with.
Disney is far to eager to make the Chinese government happy.
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Re:I bet Disney would have done it (Score:4, Informative)
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Sony Pictures owns the rights to Spider-man films. Have since at least the first Toby McGuire movie and, as far as I know, there is no expiration so long as they continue making them.
More specifically, per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org], No Way Home was:
Marvel Studios (nee Disney) is very salty about this arrangement (which was pre-Marvel acquisition) and has been trying to strong-arm Sony Pictures to get the rights
It is a stunt (Score:2)
I think if you have to compromise (Score:2)
Do it as shittley as possible. Big black bars that say CENSORED and sometimes overlap the actors, etc.
The movie itself was changing the statue (Score:2)
Not that I understand Marvel-world politics much, but I got the impression that in that world they were busy remodeling the statue to be Captain America and change the entire meaning of it, and it was implied that not everybody in the USA/Marvel-world was in favor of this.
So basically China wants to censor something that is being censored in the movie?
Pot kettle black (Score:2)
Right after 9/11 the twin towers were being edited or airbrushed out of productions filmed shortly before the attacks, and this was being done to some older productions too.
Yeah, China's motives are more sinister but the US is fully capable of pulling shit like this.
Well (Score:2)
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Also known as "Sony did not want to spend the money to CGI the statue out of those scenes"
If the statue was less prominent and more easily removed they absolutely would have done it.
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Also known as "Sony did not want to spend the money to CGI the statue out of those scenes"
If the statue was less prominent and more easily removed they absolutely would have done it.
It's all CGI to start with. No actual Statues of Liberty were harmed in the making of this film. They would just need to swap in a model of a different statue and do another rendering run,
But that fact that it would have easy just reinforces the point that Sony made a stand on principles. So we've got that going for us, which is nice.
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s/against censorship/for free enterprise
FTFY