Usually, they only censor the explicit content. But this is the first time that AI tools were used to directly alter the content of the original film.
By the way, the film has been withdrawn from a wide release in China after receiving too many complaints.
This isn’t the first time. There’s been a long running myth in the videogame industry that you’re not allowed to have skeletons in videogames in China. This isn’t true of course, but it hasn’t stopped western companies changing their games for the Chinese region by removing the skeletons and replacing them with something else.
This is caused by some dumbass liberal media producers in australia believing the propaganda that China is anti-lgbt and disallows this and making this adjustment based on that belief. It’s caused by western ignorance and “better be safe than sorry” rather than anything the government actually wants.
This is false. The film in question is a buyout/acquisition film, meaning that the importing distributor pays a lump sum for the licensing rights and the original producer does not participate in the revenue earning from Chinese cinematic release, so the purchaser of film rights has more liberty to alter the content.
The other type of film is called revenue-sharing film - and because the producers retain the film rights, this would require the Chinese censorship to list out their demands for the producers to remove specific parts of the film.
Ok but that’s still a private company.
Depends on your perspective. All import films are exclusively distributed by China Film Group (中影) and Huaxia Film Distribution Co (华影). Both are SOEs (China Film is state-owned, Huaxia is state-owned joint-stock enterprise) but are fairly autonomous. This film, Together, was licensed by China Film Group.’
Again I encourage you to read the link above (with machine translation) to understand the topic in more detail because a lot of what you’re writing is misinformation.
I did. The link is just a bunch of quotes of random things Chinese people are saying on social media (with no actual links to where they said them so I can’t source anything or even trust that they’re real). What exactly are you suggesting I take from a bunch of random people online complaining that the change happened? Why does a bunch of random Chinese social media posts prove what I have said is misinformation?
What exactly have I even said that is misinformation anyway? You know SOEs act independently of the state, or at least you should.
Your info isn’t even correct anyway so why are you accusing me of misinformation? You’re claiming that this film was actually released in this state. It was not released. It was due to be released on the 19th of September and they cancelled it on the 18th of September before the national release.
This is version of the film has in actual fact not been released.
I don’t know where the original article you’re linking to is getting its information from. Either it’s some private screening, a leak, or it’s totally and completely bullshit. The quality of the evidence makes me suspicious, some weird low quality photograph of a screen, maybe a theatre, is being compared to the western version with a photograph of it on a literal CRT? Who the fuck is using a CRT to watch a 2025 movie? The more I look at it the more questions I have about it. The fact nobody is citing any real sources in absolutely anything is pissing me off.
I’m getting more and more suspicious about whether this is even real. China Digital Times is based in Berkeley, CA. Who owns this shit?
Edit: From the wiki for this site’s owner:
EDITEDIT: AND IT’S BEEN FUNDED BY NED LMAOOOOOOOOO
MULTIEDIT: I’m satisfied that the ai edit is real now.
Again, it’s all over the social media, especially on xiaohongshu (social media platform) and zhihu (Chinese quora) that are extremely lib coded. They are the ones who care most about the LGBT stuff.
The page I posted is exactly catered for crowds like this. However, if you don’t like the source, feel free to take it from Sohu which posts articles from users. This is as mainstream as you can get.
Also, the film has been released in selected cinemas in 20 cities. This is how people have already watched it and reported on social media. No offense but you seriously are misrepresenting a lot of stuff here. As I said in the original post, it is being withdrawn from a wide release due to complaints.
This is a much better article. It at least satisfies the questions I had about whether it was real or not.
I do still think you are misattributing the blame for this to the government as opposed to a poor decision by whoever was in charge of the localisation for this, which would be whoever the team leader is of the team handling this at the import company.
This is starting to feel like wrecker shit. Is it just me?
I don’t know about that. I like XHS in the news mega because they provide some useful negativity towards China on certain issues.
They clearly belong to one of the ideological groups that doesn’t consider China to be marxist anymore. Ultra left or Trot or something. Not british Trot though because the trots here I know behind the scenes have all started to see China positively and as basically the only hope marxism has in the world. That leaves like, Ultra or Leftcom I don’t know.
I’m not about to say they’re a wrecker wholly. Some of their contributions are good. They just don’t really have the same views that the MLs here have. What bothers me is that I’m trying to get to the bottom of something earnestly and I get called “spreading misinformation” instead of help to find the truth of the matter. I am totally willing to call China-actual out on things China-actual deserves to be called out on, but I need to get to the root source of this matter to do that. My blame goes with who did it. At this point I’m not even 100% certain that this is real though, I need to get past that uncertainty first. Where is the version of this movie that this comes from? Where was it screened? To who? The national release for this movie was supposed to be the 19th Sept and it was cancelled on the 18th. So I need to know exactly where this was screened and who put out this information on it being different to the western version to satisfy my threshold for “ok this ai edit did actually happen and isn’t just clever propaganda” before I move on to blame.
My suspicion at this point is that it is plausible for western propagandists to get wind of “this movie is being cancelled/delayed” and then to make up a bullshit scene with bullshit changes for propaganda, push it out into the internet, it gets republished by hundreds of media outlets that all take it as fact and then it’s hard to find the truth of the matter. So I think we should verify that it’s actually real and not just clever propaganda.
and 2. there should be an exact source for whoever told the internet that these changes were made and whoever made the photo.
Where did all this accusation come from? An ultra or a Trot would denounce Mao and Deng lol. I have been fully supportive of Mao and Deng’s reform. You have seen my comments over the years - how do I still get misunderstood by the people here?
Wait you’re pro-Deng? I am very confused by you lol
I thought your position was basically: China is being too capitalist and neoliberal and too socially conservative. Big simplification, but that’s how most everything you write comes off. The first always felt like a critique of Dengism, but maybe you support Deng, but just want to push the left shift in policy now despite appreciating his policies for their time? How do you reconcile these?
edited out a piece so I don’t misinform
I’m defending you. Mostly. I like your shit in the news mega and wouldn’t want you gone. I just also kinda view you through the lens of not being pro-china. I couldn’t point to a specific thing that caused that though, my memory is dogshit.
They’re not a wrecker, they’re just actually familiar with China and its flaws.
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Video game industry is not the same as distributing imported films.
As I wrote in another comment to you, there are only two film companies that have the exclusive rights to distribute imported films, 中影 and 华影, and these are the two companies that have dealt with the censorship bureau for years. You are making a lot of assumptions about a topic you barely understand.
In short, very few people thought the film would even have a cinema release in the first place due to the explicit content - especially gay marriage and some of the body horror contents. People were in fact surprised to see it getting a wide release.
Yeah which is ironic because the videogames industry is significantly bigger than the movie industry now.
there have been different rules at different times. Magic: The Gathering used to do some variant art for the chinese market but sometime in the mid 2000s Rosewater said they didn’t have to anymore.
I’ve heard other media people say the rule for videogames was you could show bones but not bones sticking out of flesh, so skeletons were ok and zombies were ok but not a zombie with a bunch of bones sticking out.
The best example of this I’m aware of is the Headhunter item in Path of Exile getting a slightly different skin that still has skulls in it in the Chinese version, but they’re less clearly skulls. But the game is still a dark fantasy game so there’s tons of skeletons; it’s always been a bit of a question mark why they even changed the HH skin when there’s skulls everywhere else.
WoW did it with skeletons in their chinese version, both on bones+skulls in the world and on the undead characters. Couple examples:
https://imgur.com/a/undead-1smvr https://imgur.com/a/female-undead-MPsE3
This is obviously super false and disproveable of course. I actually posted a thread about this when the recent Chinese Wukong game came out: https://hexbear.net/comment/5288533
The decision to self-censor is coming entirely from the western private companies who are acting either on their own bad beliefs about China or on very bad advice. It’s not coming from the Chinese government.
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Are you sure?
I’ve seen many counterstrike skins with variants of skulls replaced with gas masks and supposedly skins that slipped through and kept skulls on them bumped up in price because Chinese people wanted them.
I am completely sure that there are Chinese games with skulls and skeletons in them. Wukong came out to critical mass acclaim this year with skulls and skeletons and blood everywhere, it was pushed heavily by all media including state media as a darling example of China now producing AAA games titles.
Didn’t the devs for that game say something like they don’t expect or want women to play it, or something like that? Asking because I don’t know, I just heard some shit.
Yeah the dev is a shitter.