The “joke” is weird and I have no idea in what context it would ever be considered funny, but the connection to the old schoolyard boobs rhyme (which I remember except for the “dirty knees” bit) seems like a pretty big stretch.
I meant the context. That’s a pretty odd thing for someone to say. I would’ve assumed that was their way of showing the character is chinese.
Lots of people are racist AF where I live towards asians, but that’s one I never would’ve caught.
There’s not really any nuance to the context. Like, the characters are just driving in a Humvee when one randomly turns to the others and asks that question because it’s supposed to be a joke.
Really seems a hell of a lot more like an unfunny and hamfisted attempt to appeal to the Chinese market than any kind of reference to the rhyme. I mean who honestly believes a multinational film production (produced in part by Tencent!) would intentionally put in a racist allusion these days?
I don’t know if pronounced chi or more like chai, either way it was a dumb joke to have someone put in that movie. On the other hand, how many times do these studios intend to bend over backwards to cater to China to get their movie over there only to have it completely yanked like this? I thought making movies were a big enough gamble as it is, but to do these partnerships AND have all be for nothing…
The Chinese are just hypersensitive to anything but they’ll happily officially tweet doctored photos and double down on them. The hypocrisy is staggering.
We all realize that. This discussion is about whether the adults in the room should’ve known better.
Personally, I’m not seeing it.
I’m not seeing the racism in the joke. I mean, it’s just a bad joke playing on the word Chinese.
That said, given that we all know how sensitive some Chinese are, I would have killed the joke as a studio exec.
It’s an insensitive joke which likely adds nothing, like zero, to the scene they put it in. They were dumb to leave something like that in there. Just because every movie with stuff like this in it doesn’t get straight up banned doesn’t mean several individuals shouldn’t really, really consider why something like this is in the movie and what it really adds, even in a silly MHW movie.
It’s in the movie so they can acknowledge there are Chinese people in the movie to appeal to the Chinese market. It just backfired is all.
You think the joke was added specifically to appeal to the Chinese market? Heh. This was one of the Tencent partnership movies right?
Yes, and yes.
As I said upthread that makes a hell of a lot more sense to me than the idea that someone would have intentionally put a racist-against-Chinese allusion into a big budget movie that would very obviously be hoping for a Chinese market payday and everyone else involved in this massive undertaking signed off on it.
Oh my.
In order to intentionally put something racist in a movie, you have to acknowledge that it’s racist in the first place. This is how a lot of unfortunate content gets into various forms of media, often because the diversity isn’t there to say hey… this is coming off not well at all. It’s not because they said well let’s be racist today.
I don’t know how the partnership group, team, whatever that relationship is wound up being involved and didn’t say something. I am not surprised they are not taking the fall for it though since, well… with that government, who would?
I guess I’ll be clearer and say that I do not think it’s a reference to the schoolyard rhyme just because it’s a knees/Chinese “pun”. I think you would have to be extremely stupid to not know that schoolyard rhyme was racist, primarily because it always seemed to be accompanied by finger gestures mimicking epicanthic folds in an outrageous way.
Whelp, somebody misjudged, terribly, and it cost them the Chinese market and led to several people targeting the wrong company about it. It’s also a stupid joke, even if some people don’t see it as racist.
Yes, the absolute inanity of it is really the one thing that gives me pause and a glimmer of, “well, maybe…?” re: the rhyme. I mean…it’s just…such a terrible joke even totally divorced of any potentially racist context.
The movie is a hit with critics.
There are killer film openings and then there are the first five minutes of Monster Hunter . Kicking off with a scene of a pirate ship careening through an ocean of sand toward a mysterious dark tower, a grizzled and fur-draped Ron Perlman at the helm, all backed with a wild synth-heavy score, the beginning of Paul W.S. Anderson’s video-game adaptation is peak fantasy-thriller cuckoo-bananas madness. I had to stop myself three times from yelling out, “Hell yeah!”
Anderson and his wife Jovovich prove that their long-running Resident Evil franchise was no fluke: this is a couple who know how to take the flimsiest of video games and turn them into self-knowing slices of cinematic ridiculousness.
after those first few outlandish minutes, Monster Hunter settles into … well, not exactly a more mundane narrative speed, but certainly one less enjoyably bonkers.
Monster Hunter 's visual effects really do capture the spirit of the games.
The dialogue is hammy, exposition-filled and just absolutely terrible on pretty much every conceivable level. Characters are so poorly developed that they have to find obvious ways to indicate they didn’t just pop into existence at the start of the film and that they actually have some semblance of a personality. This makes it hard to get really invested in any character or even identify anything resembling an interesting arc, idea or theme.
With a title like Monster Hunter , you want a ton of monster mayhem, and Anderson more than gives you your money’s worth. The VFX, creature designs, and cinematography by Glen Macpherson are excellent, making it Anderson’s most stunning and polished effort yet. The score perfectly captures the video game tone, matching the visuals.
Dialogue is often clunky at best and cringeworthy in its worst moments. Character arcs or depth are nonexistent, save for a few fleeting nonverbal moments. You can also expect Anderson’s trademark hyper cut editing to make its reappearance during some of the most frenzied action sequences.
Monster Hunter runs just over an hour and a half but feels about twice that long thanks to its listless, meandering plot devoid of a central focus or any meaningful world-building.
This ain’t no Sonic the Hedgehog.
That’s not even damning with faint praise, it’s just mean.