Anyone that was holding out hope that director Paul W.S. Anderson's Monster Hunter film would be good can probably put that positivity to bed. Just yesterday, the film premiered in China and Germany, and viewers were treated to quite the opening segment. If you'd rather not have anything spoiled about the movie, I suggest not continuing further.

As caught by industry analyst Daniel Ahmad, one of the soldiers during the intro sequence in the film makes a rather racially insensitive joke for seemingly no reason. While it could be chalked up to bad writing on the part of Anderson (who is known for this), viewers in China have pointed out that the line links to an offensive phrase that compares Chinese and Japanese people to dirt.

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Devoid of context, this could seem much worse than it really is, but then what possible context would make this joke land? The punchline is a jab at another race because...? What really seals the deal with this is that the Chinese translators altered the Chinese subtitles to read 膝下有黄金, which roughly translates to "Gold under the knee." As you can tell, even they understood this was in bad taste.

At this point, it's unlikely the line will be altered before Monster Hunter has its American release on December 25, 2020. At best, we could maybe expect a complete removal of the line in some sloppy cut, but there's no excuse for including something so moronic in what is meant to be a fun film. If it was being used to make a point about racism being bad, then it could be acceptable, but that's clearly not what Monster Hunter is all about.

Source: Twitter

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