Imagethief blog reviews the cuts made in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End and concludes that “like all Chinese movie edits its really more symbolic than functional.”
…Nevertheless, passing the film with cuts was an improvement over what happened to the second installment of the series, which was banned altogether for reasons of “feudal superstition” nominally having to do with scenes involving cannibalism. But more likely for reasons having to do with commerce, politics and China’s tight restrictions on the total number of foreign films allowed into the country in any given year (twenty at last count). Compared with that, the current edits seem pretty forgiving.
In fact, considering that there is still a substantial amount of Chow Yun Fat’s role in the film, including a scene in which he essentially threatens to rape Kiera Knightley’s character, one is left to wonder what SARFT considers demeaning behavior in a Chinese pirate character. There is also a second round of conspicuous cutting during a “pirate council” scene that is essentially a smorgasbord of global ethnic stereotyping, including a female Chinese “pirate lord” who apparently escaped into the movie out of a Peking Opera troupe. I have no idea what got cut there. [Full Text]
