'Django' abruptly pulled from Chinese theaters
- By Zhang Rui
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E-mail China.org.cn, April 11, 2013
How "Django Unchained" passed the censorship bar
"Django Unchained" was said to have challenged Chinese censorship standards, but now it certainly seems to have lost that battle.
Quentin Tarantino himself cut the Chinese version to bypass censorship.
Due to his style of black humor, violence and blood, Tarantino's films, including "Kill Bill" which features several scenes shot in China, have never landed on the Chinese mainland. To bypass the nation's censorship, the violent and bloody "Django Unchained" had already undergone several changes.
Zhang Miao, an executive of Columbia Pictures' China office, told the press days ago that the director himself had agreed to adjust the film a little for a different market.
The cut scenes include the bloody shooting between Django (played by Jamie Foxx) and Calvin Candie's (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) people towards the end of the film, as China.org.cn observed during the movie premiere on Tuesday night.
"The adjustment is a kind of progress, rather than saying it is a compromise. The so-called 'bloodshed and violence' scenes are actually serving the movie's theme. The adjustments, such as darkening the color of the blood and cutting down on the movie’s blood spill, will not affect the movie's quality," said Zhang.
Recent Hollywood movies that have been forced to cut some scenes or had them removed by the authorities include the latest James Bond movie "Skyfall" and fantasy epic "Cloud Atlas." "Cloud Atlas" even lost a whopping 38 minutes and the then co-director Lana Wachowski said "it sucks" at a Chinese press conference -- before later retracting her statement and stating the directors loved the Chinese parties' efforts.
As "Django Unchained" had passed the censorship-bar with no more than a two-minute cut, the many scenes of violence and bloodshed in the film might not only excite Tarantino fans and movie goers, but also cause social concern about how to protect the youth since China does not yet have a film rating system.
Jiang Wen's blockbuster "Let the Bullets Fly," with a similar style of black humor and violence, attracted crowds of Chinese viewers to cinemas, making more than 600 million yuan (US$96.8 million) at box offices. However, many careless parents brought their children into theaters -- who often ended up in tears.
One film critic under the pseudonym of "Tübingen Carpenter" said, "If someone told you 'Django Unchained' would be showing its almost full-on version in China, it would not be a good thing. Who would then protect our underage audience?"
But just on April 9, the China's Film Director Guild held its annual forum. Director Li Shaohong said she was not optimistic about launching a rating system in a few years. "The Western film industry has a very mature system from shooting to showing to supervision. But China just doesn't want anything inappropriate for showing and this traditional thinking cannot be changed overnight." She said that if China's film industry doesn't change its overall system, it will be more troublesome to set up a rating system.
Besides the cut and adjustments, Hollywood also finds other ways to market its films and please audiences in China, the second largest film market in the world.
Recent reports have stated several blockbusters such as "Iron Man 3," "Transformers 4" and "World War Z" will have their own Chinese versions specifically edited for this market.
The "Iron Man 3" Chinese special version will feature actress Fan Bingbing, who will not appear in other versions of the film screened around the world. Michael Bay also said Chinese actors will have ten minutes on-screen time in "Transformers 4," but he will cut those scenes for the U.S. and international versions.
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