China review bombs Monster Hunter: World following terrible movie "joke"

The recently released Monster Hunter movie adaptation has caused mass uproar in China following a terrible pun about knees.

Monster Hunter fans already felt wary when the movie set to introduce modern military elements to the beautiful, fantasy world, leaving purists none too thrilled about the adaption. With the movie presumed to take off heavily in China before its release — especially considering it’s one of the few countries with heavily populated cinemas – the racist “joke” looks to be the last straw for many potential watchers.

Niko Partners’ senior analyst Daniel Ahmad explains in a Twitter post why exactly it’s a bad “joke” to make. It is linked to a phrase that is inherently offensive to people of Asian origin – used as a racial slur by children in a form of rhymes to taunt their Asian classmates.

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Anyway, this is going down about as well as you'd expect in China where it's being linked to the rhyme / phrase "Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees – look at these?" which is considered offensive. pic.twitter.com/pQCFNQ86Je

— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) December 4, 2020

China has already cancelled all cinema showings of the video game movie and suspended plans to take the offensive scene out, essentially banning the movie in the region.

Following the outcry, 2017’s Monster Hunter: World received an influx of negative reviews on Steam; spilling the controversy onto the video game itself which is a major flagship of the franchise. Capcom released a statement on Chinese social media site Weibo – explaining that the recently released movie adaptation and the video games are produced by two entirely different companies, attempting to quell the backlash.

Here’s a roughly translated version of Capcom’s statement:

Regarding the movie “Monster Hunter”, since the game “Monster Hunter” series and the movie “Monster Hunter” are produced by different companies, after learning your opinions on the movie “Monster Hunter”, we have collected a lot of ideas from everyone, and have already Relevant companies report the situation.

CAPCOM has always been committed to providing high-quality game works for the majority of players, hoping to continue to live up to expectations in the future. Thank you for your support.

Capcom Asia
December 4, 2020