Reports confirm that the Chinese government censored the mention of “Shanghai” in the latest Transformers movie.
Media regulators bleeped the city’s name in the soundtrack of the DreamWorks film, which debuted in the past week. Reports say that this was done to protect the image of China against Hollywood perception—not just within the country, but in a global scale as well.
In the opening battle sequence, the Autobots and US soldiers infiltrate an industrial zone in Shanghai. But the scene was actually shot in an abandoned steel mill in Pennsylvania.
Once the Autobots locate Demolisher, a lone Decepticon, a chase around the Shanghai highway takes place. During the scene, a billboard of Metersbonwe—China’s first publicly listed fashion retailer—appears. The product placement is the work of Norm Marshall Associates.
Then a US military commander says that some people are not happy about the fight. He mentions, “not after all the damage done in S****hai [the city name is garbled].”
An official from United International Pictures declined to comment about the censorship, saying that the company is not tracking the box office of the film in China.
Reports say that Chinese moviegoers in Beijing were “nonplussed” at the augmentation. Upon seeing the censored scene, a member of the audience asked aloud, “why’d they cut that?”
On the Web, some Chinese citizens commented about the sequel. One said that citizens were not happy about the movie, because “Shanghai appears to be very shabby in the movie which they think is not a real representation of the city.”
However, one website defends the film by asking, “Aren’t some Chinese overreacting to this science fiction movie?”
In uncut versions of the film on DVD, which are considered illegal, are available on the streets of Beijing
Source: Hollywood Reporter