Monster Hunter director apologises as Chinese cinemas pull film over controversial scene

Line in the film’s dialogue has caused a huge backlash in China

Monster Hunter director Paul WS Anderson has apologised after his film was pulled from Chinese cinemas over a controversial line of dialogue.

“I am absolutely devastated that a line from our movie, Monster Hunter, has offended some audience members in China,” he said in a statement to Deadline. “I apologise for any anxiety or upset that this line and its interpretation caused.

“Monster Hunter was made as fun entertainment and I am mortified that anything within it has caused unintentional offence. We have respectfully removed the line from the movie. It was never our intention to send a message of discrimination or disrespect to anyone. To the contrary — at its heart our movie is about unity.”

According to Variety, the offending clip depicted two characters, a white man and an Asian man, played by Jin Au-Yeung, driving together.

Jin says “Look at my knees!”, to which the other character replies: “What kind of knees are these?” “Chi-nese!” jokes Jin.

The offence caused by the scene appeared to have been derived from two issues – that the dialogue recalled racist schoolyard taunts, and that the translation into Chinese had Jin making an entirely different comment.

The subtitle reportedly had Jin’s character say: “Men have gold under their knees, and only kneel to the heavens and their mother.”

However, the replacement suggested to some viewers that the filmmakers were trying to cover up a racist joke. After the controversy began to pick up, “Monster Hunter Insults China” trended on social networking site Weibo.

Jin, an Asian-American actor and rapper (also known as MC Jin), has also issued an apology in the form of a three-minute Instagram video.

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“I felt a need to address this situation because what is at stake is not my career but something even more dear to my heart — my roots. I’ve spent the last 20 years using my platform to embrace and be a positive voice for my community. I am and will always be proud of my heritage,” he said.

His co-star Milla Jovovich wrote in a reply: “I’m so sad that you feel the need to apologise. You are amazing and have always been so outspoken about your pride in your Chinese heritage.

“The line you improvised in the film was done to remind people of that pride, not to insult people. We should have researched the historical origin of it and that’s 100 per cent on us, but you didn’t do ANYTHING wrong. None of us had ever heard the ‘dirty knees’ reference. You included.”

She continued: “It was an unfortunate mistake and the Chinese translation didn’t help. We adore you Jin and are so proud to have worked with you on this fun and exciting project and I hope you don’t let this get you down man. It was our fault for not doing our due diligence and finding the WW2 era rhyme that’s caused this uproar. We love you Jin.”

The offending line is being removed from all versions of the film. It is scheduled for a UK release in 2021.