Monster Hunter joke deemed racist angers Chinese people

While the movie Monster Hunter was released in China, a grain of sand has spoiled the launch of the Capcom franchise in the cinema with Chinese very upset against an English word game.

A “knee slack” joke?

With a big marketing campaign in China this fall for the feature film (and a trailer that spoke to gamers more than the Western version) of Capcom’s franchise, it’s obvious that Sony has deliberately favored this market territory. juicy. While the rest of the world will be able to see it this month as well, China is privileged to have preview access. However, not everything went as planned.

First pointed out like a schoolboy pun by the Chinese market analyst at Niko Partner, Daniel Ahmad, the above excerpt actually angered Chinese viewers. The conversation between the two soldiers is as follows: « What kind of knees are these ? » followed by the answer « chinese ». This “joke” is indeed based on phonetics since the word “knees” (knees in French) has the same pronunciation as the [nese] of “Chinese” in English and another similar to that of “these”.

A play on words certainly in bad taste but which was considered racist by part of the Chinese audience. This flashback apparently had the effect

Breaking: All showtimes of Monster Hunter are being cancelled in China. Theaters exhibitors got notification in midnight without clearly reason, but industry believe it's because a racist joke about Chinese after audience reflected on social media.

— Gavin (@gavinincinema) December 4, 2020

awaiting a modification even if this statement remains to be confirmed. However, this is unfortunately not the only one.

Monster Hunter World earns a review bombing as a result

While we imagine that Capcom has nothing to do with all the writing of the script, at least when it comes to this kind of dialogue, this story unfortunately has repercussions on the ratings of Monster Hunter World on Steam that were stormed within hours. As you can see from the screenshots above, there is no doubt as to the reason for this “review bombing”. A process which is unfortunately commonplace these days when a controversy affects a game. The Last of Us Part II is perhaps the most telling recent example.

The Asian branch of Capcom even reacted when it is not in charge of the distribution of the film on the territory. There is something to be surprised when you see what a simple prank can do.