Monster Hunter World has reportedly been the target of a review bombing campaign by Chinese players after a joke in the new film angered moviegoers in the country.
The new Monster Hunter film premieres in the United States on December 25th but is available in Germany and China now. An early scene features an awkward joke early that reportedly hasn’t landed with Chinese audiences.
The film has been reportedly review bombed on
Based on the clip shared on Twitter the joke goes:
“What kind of knees are these?”
“Chi-knees”
The joke is part of friendly banter between two soldiers in the film. However Chinese audiences have reportedly inferred the joke refers to a rhyme that says Chinese and Japanese people have “dirty knees”.
The Chinese subtitles allegedly changed the joke to a saying about “gold under the knees” however audiences still understood the English joke.
Players offended by the joke have taken to the Steam page for Monster Hunter: World to air their grievances. At the time of publishing, the game has received over 1000 negative reviews on December 4th alone.
Many of the recent negative reviews are written in Chinese and a few others reference the death of George Floyd, attempting to attribute the joke to more malicious racism on the part of Hollywood.
Capcom has responded to the controversy on the Chinese social media website Weibo saying:
[About the movie Monster Hunter]
As for the movie “Monster Hunter”, since the game “Monster Hunter” series and the movie “Monster Hunter” are produced by different companies, we have collected a lot of your opinions on the movie “Monster Hunter”, and have reflected the situation to the relevant companies.
CAPCOM has always been committed to providing players with quality game works, and we hope to continue to live up to your expectations …
Translation: DeepL
Writer’s Note: The full statement requires a Weibo account to view. So the available quoted text ends partway through the statement.
The film has reportedly been pulled from Chinese theaters after the backlash. It’s unknown at present if any changes will be made in order to rerelease the film in China, and if so the possibility those changes may affect the US version.