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Watch, Watching, Watch -- Why do movies have to end so soon?


TheLastWolf

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3 hours ago, RumHam said:

I feel like this could become a pretty entertaining game.

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A key tenant of China’s film censorship system is that criminals must always be punished for their crimes on screen and societal harmony restored. So, before the 20th Century Fox film began airing on Chinese streamer Tencent Video, Fight Club‘s ending was altered. The climactic scene was excised and replaced with a blank screen showing the message:

At the finale of Rogue One, "Princess Leia's corvette was boarded and Darth Vader legally confiscated the stolen material of the Empire. The Scarif thieves died for their crimes and their lives were meaningless failures. Long live the Empire."

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38 minutes ago, RumHam said:

Like do the Fast & Furious guys just get thrown in jail at the end of every installement? 

Maybe after the first movie. But in the latter movies they always fight against global terrorists who are a much bigger threat to governments and society, so they are all awarded with [insert Chinese equivalent of the Order of Lenin] and cautioned to not stray from obedience to the law. 

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24 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

So how do mafia movies like The Godfather work in China? I'm not seeing many on the list of banned movies I found. They have however banned Back to the Future.

Banned or censored? I assume the only gangster movie not censored in China is The Untouchables.

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6 hours ago, RumHam said:

A key tenant of China’s film censorship system is that criminals must always be punished for their crimes on screen and societal harmony restored. So, before the 20th Century Fox film began airing on Chinese streamer Tencent Video, Fight Club‘s ending was altered. The climactic scene was excised and replaced with a blank screen showing the message: “The police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding. After the trial, Tyler was sent to a lunatic asylum receiving psychological treatment. He was discharged from the hospital in 2012.”

They should totally film this ending. Chinese state police. Chinese courts. Chinese mental health facility. And Edward Norton. 

"But that makes no sense!", you say. What are they doing in an American film? Authoritarians have no sense of irony, that's what. 

Thelma and Louise drive off the cliff... into a giant net quickly assembled by the Army Corps of Engineers. Chinese state police. Chinese courts. Chinese mental health facility...

Back to the Future*: during the iconic scene where Doc Brown first demonstrates the time machine, He hits Marty at 88 mph, smashing him to hamburger, instantly killing him. Chinese state police. Chinese courts. Chinese mental health facility... you get the idea.

*According to wikipedia, the film was banned for its depiction of time travel.

 

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Hey, if China still aired the rest of Fight Club, then they definitely still got nothing on the Hays Code.  Although even they could go soft sometimes.  I recall an alternate ending of Double Indemnity was MacMurray being executed in a gas chamber for his heinous crimes while Edward G. Robinson looked on.  One of Breen's associates deemed this ending "unduly gruesome."  Bunch of bleeding hearts.

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5 minutes ago, DMC said:

Hey, if China still aired the rest of Fight Club, then they definitely still got nothing on the Hays Code.  Although even they could go soft sometimes.  I recall an alternate ending of Double Indemnity was MacMurray being executed in a gas chamber for his heinous crimes while Edward G. Robinson looked on.  One of Breen's associates deemed this ending "unduly gruesome."  Bunch of bleeding hearts.

Pre-Code (or really, pre-enforcement of the code) movies are awesome. That stretch from 1929-1934 from the studios that just ignored it led to a bunch of movies that feel more modern than almost anything from the next 30 years. Seeing old movies that are actually sexy, or violent, or scary, or socialist, and so on, but otherwise have the same aesthetics as the puritanical stuff that came afterwords is quite a jolt.

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Watched The Last Duel, which was wonderfully done and beautifully acted (except for accents which were hilariously awful), but it was a movie that I just did not like and was not prepared for.  The one thing I did love is that everyone is a hero in their own story, but other than that I felt just gross throughout most of it.

Finished up S2 of Snowpiercer with my wife yesterday and really liked it, but not as much as S1.  I think having a Big Bad that had little to no redeeming qualities hurt what was going on overall, and the last two episodes started exploring some shark jumping threads that could lead it off the rails.  Hoping it tightens things up in S3.

Gonna find a movie for tonight, and then hopefully start Ozarks S4 this weekend.

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3 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

Banned or censored? I assume the only gangster movie not censored in China is The Untouchables.

As mentioned, BttF is banned because of time travel, which is just weird (The Time Machine isn't banned), but yeah, I don't really see any gangster films on the list I found (also wiki).

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54 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

As mentioned, BttF is banned because of time travel, which is just weird (The Time Machine isn't banned), but yeah, I don't really see any gangster films on the list I found (also wiki).

IIRC, the China doesn't like time travel movies because they imply that someone could go back in time and prevent the CCP from existing. At least, that's what I heard once; might be apocryphal though.

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35 minutes ago, Fez said:

IIRC, the China doesn't like time travel movies because they imply that someone could go back in time and prevent the CCP from existing. At least, that's what I heard once; might be apocryphal though.

Those levels of insecure are truly bizarre. 

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2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

As mentioned, BttF is banned because of time travel, which is just weird (The Time Machine isn't banned), but yeah, I don't really see any gangster films on the list I found (also wiki).

 I assume you're talking about the Guy Pearce Time Machine movie. Time travel in this film is different in that there is a sort of metaphysical determinism that governs events. He can't change the past in ways that matter. Back to the Future is changing and repairing the past all over the place. It's also possible The Time Machine was never released there.

I wonder if there was any objection to the climax of Doctor Strange. 

Edit: Clear as mud

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/china-bans-time-travel-films-177801/

Suddenly, the way they treated time travel in Avengers: Endgame makes perfect sense. 

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Finally got around to watching S3 of Lost in Space. Good final season. Still lots of great visuals in the show and decent enough plot. Easy watching sci fi for the family.

Will be starting the last season of Ozarks soon.

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