Monster Hunter Movie Director And Actor Apologize For “Chinese” Joke In The Film

Earlier this month, the Monster Hunter movie was pulled from Mainland China’s theaters – after a single line of dialogue was construed by outraged audiences as an offensive line about Chinese ethnicity. The dust hasn’t quite settled since then, but some of the movie’s leading voices are now speaking up about the situation.

For context, the “offensive” line involved an Asian-American soldier (played by actor Jin Au-Yeung) who utters the pun “What kinds of knees are these? Chi-nese!” to a fellow soldier. A number of Chinese viewers and observers saw this as alluding to a World War II racist rhyme: “Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees” – and this was apparently made worse by translators localizing the joke in reference to an old saying that seeing a man kneel was as precious as gold (“Men have gold under their knees, and only kneel to the heavens and their mother.”)

Speaking to Deadline, the film’s director Paul WS Anderson has apologized for the offense that the film caused – while clarifying that this was unintentional. He also confirmed that this line would not be in subsequent screenings of the film:

“I am absolutely devastated that a line from our movie, Monster Hunter, has offended some audience members in China. 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.”

Jin Au-Yeung himself would go on to address the outrage in an Instagram post – stating that the line was actually meant to be a proud proclamation of his character’s heritage, instead of a racist joke. Nevertheless, he apologized for the misunderstandings that emerged due to the line:

“Monster Hunter movie was recently released in China and there has been severe controversy due to a line my character says. It’s unfortunate that it has escalated to this level, especially since the line was intended to be uplifting.”

“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.”

“It’s a pun and the way I portrayed the character and the emotion of it is, this is a moment for him to proudly proclaim that he is a Chinese soldier, not just his knees, but his arms, his head, his heart. And this has nothing to do with that stupid ‘Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees,’ whatever the heck that is, has nothing to do with it. If anything, why I’m so frustrated and it’s eating at my heart is that I felt this was a scene that was supposed to be a moment for Chinese people to be like, ‘Yes! There’s a Chinese soldier!’ That’s all. So for it to be flipped upside down like this, it really, really, really is eating at me. But I will say, at the same time, for anybody that misunderstood or thought that it was meant to be belittling, I sincerely apologize, I do.”

Following this, the film’s female lead Milla Jovovich rose to Jin’s defense – adding that none of the movie’s staff knew about the offensive rhyme in the first place:

“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.

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.”

We’ll just have to wait and see if this controversy continues to bog down the movie after its western premiere on 18 December 2020. Stay tuned.