Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Emoji Movie... snuck one past China? =updated=

A friend flipped me these stills from the US version of The Emoji Movie. Note that in the collection of flags displayed there is a PRC and an ROC flag.

Searching for more information on this led me to Josh Feola's piece explaining why it was much better received in China than in the US. To wit:
In fact, a common thread running through critical hatred of The Emoji Movie was the film’s egregious use of product placement — Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other favorites are featured prominently in the plot of the US cut. They’re all gone in the Chinese version of the film, however — Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (which are all blocked in China, incidentally) are replaced with their Chinese equivalents, a major edit that filters down to the level of the film’s dialogue (“We have to escape to Baidu Netdisk Cloud” is said at one point).
I found the film on Tencent in its Chinese version. I didn't purchase access to Tencent so I can't be sure, but if you mouse over the status bar thumbnails will pop up, and sure enough, around 1:09 it seems the ROC flag was missed by the Chinese censors and is still present in the background. My friend captured this thumbnail, look to the left above the male emoji's head...

Striking a blow for Taiwan there...and to think I thought there was no reason to respect that movie...

UPDATE: Got some confirmation from China: the ROC clearly visible in the PRC version in the lower corner:

Nice work, Emoji movie....
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can't see it.

Anonymous said...

" I didn't purchase access to Tencent so I can't be sure, but if you mouse over the status bar thumbnails will pop up, and sure enough, around 1:09 it seems the ROC flag was missed by the Chinese censors and is still present in the background."

They know about it now!