Venom: There will be carnage began hitting theaters last October. The sequel, directed by Andy Serkis, harvests a good collection of negative reviews and notes below five on a multitude of platforms. Despite this, his billboard figures are not going astray, since, both in the United States and Spain, he has become the Most viewed premiere of the year 2021. However, there is a small detail that has escaped Sony and can seriously threaten its sales figures, and that is that the film may never be released in China, losing a market of 1,400 million people.
Censored in China
The chinese market it is very special. Products that work perfectly in the West such as Avengers: Endgame, there they pass without pain or glory. Film production companies usually analyze this market very well, and when they get a product that works there, they usually exploit it by working their marketing specifically for this huge market. In this aspect, Venom (2018) it worked spectacularly in that country, so it is most likely that Sony Pictures planned the second part taking into account the collection of Chinese citizens who were delighted with the first installment.
But things get complicated for Sony. China has decided to apply censorship to Venom: There will be carnage. And the reason is none other than the very loudmouth of Venom Tom Hardy. Apparently, some statements by Hardy have offended some other Chinese, and little less than he has been awarded the medal of persona non grata.
What did Hardy say?
The middle Variety ensures that all this goes back to two interviews of Hardy in the year 2012. A bit strange, since the first Venom movie was released six years later.
In that year, Hardy was doing the promo for Lawless and a journalist asked him if Marlon Brando had influenced his professional career. Hardy replied that he had only seen one movie of the actor – who sends noses – specifically “one in which he played Chinese».
The movie the actor was referring to was a The August Moon Teahouse (1956). Brando played Sakini, a Japanese that he would help Captain Fisby (Glenn Ford) interpret. A year later, he repeated the same mistake in another interview with Vulture where they asked the same question. “I’ve seen ‘the Shanghai tea house’ or whatever it’s called. Where Brando plays Chinese.
Mistake, absentmindedness or premeditated offense?
For most Chinese, mistaking them for Japanese is a offense for the episodes they suffered at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Army at the beginning of the 20th century, such as the well-known Nanking Massacre.
By the way, that interview did not end there. The interviewer congratulated Hardy on not be politically correct, so Hardy decided to screw it up one more time. The conversation drifted a bit and they started talking about America’s debt. He joked that in a few years, all Americans would have to learn cantonese to be able to negotiate with its new owners, the Chinese creditors. Again, some unfortunate statements, since China’s official language is Mandarin.
