PC: The Kathmandu Post

Social media users in China observed over the weekend that the finale of the popular animated feature “Minions: The Rise of Gru” had been changed by censors for its domestic distribution.

Some fans bemoan the alterations because the editing is another another instance of how Chinese authorities have altered a well-known Hollywood movie to make it more politically correct.
Weibo, a social media site akin to Twitter, has postings and screenshots from the film that claim the censors added an epilogue in which Wild Knuckles, a central figure in the heist film, was apprehended by the police and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Screenshots from the movie revealed that Gru, a Wild Knuckles accomplice, “returned to his family” and that “his finest success is becoming the father to his three kids.”

The movie’s two robber anti-heroes, Gru and Wild Knuckles, ride out together in the international version after Wild Knuckles faked his own death to escape authorities’ grasp.
The update was criticised by many online commenters who claimed it looked like a PowerPoint presentation.

The Chinese version of the movie is one minute longer than the international version, and DuSir, an online movie reviewer with 14.4 million followers on Weibo, questioned why the extra minute was required.

DuSir stated in a post that was published on Saturday that “It’s only us who require particular guidance and care, for fear that a cartoon may ‘corrupt’ us.”
A request for feedback made outside of regular business hours was not answered by the US distributor of the movie, Universal Pictures.
The movie’s distributors in China, Huaxia Film Distribution Co. and China Film Co., did not reply to a request for comment.

The number of foreign films that can be screened in domestic theatres is capped in China. A lot of Hollywood movies that are screened in the nation leave out or change crucial sequences.

Some moviegoers have observed that alternate endings occasionally deviate greatly from the original.
A pair of skyscrapers are destroyed in the original finale of the iconic 1999 movie “Fight Club,” which Chinese viewers of the film “Fight Club” discovered was missing from the version aired on domestic streaming service Tencent Video last year.

As an alternative, a screenplay for the show stated the police “rapidly found out the whole plan and apprehended all culprits, successfully stopping the bomb from exploding.”
Chinese moviegoers were quick to criticise the revisions, and the director of the original movie and the writer of the novel it was based on both responded. Later, Tencent brought back the original conclusion.