Shocking Ways China Decided To Change The Endings Of These Movies

Fight Club

Fight Club is iconic in a hundred different ways but what makes it standout and make it legendary is its ending.

Spoiler Alert: The movie ends with Edward Norton shooting Brad Pitt in the head although  they play the very same character.

Source: IMDB

Norton and Helena Bonham Carter then watch on as Tyler’s bombs continue to blow up buildings as background music plays.

Minor NSFW warning for YouTube video.

In the Chinese release of the video, streaming on Tencent Video, the ending went almost as planned until an on-screen text appears.

“Through the clue provided by Tyler, the police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding,” the title card read. “After the trial, Tyler was sent to lunatic asylum receiving psychological treatment. He was discharged from the hospital in 2012.”

While China’s motives for changing the ending are vague at best, the ending is coincidentally true to Chuck Palahniuk’s original vision in the books where he shows Durden’s bombs malfunction as he waked up in a mental hospital.

He even seemed enthused by China’s changing of his ending, tweeting this.

The streaming site Tencent has since taken down the modified ending after receiving backlash for their heavy handedness.

MI3

Although Mission Impossible 3 was actually recorded on several locations in China, they had a difficult time getting approval for its release within the country based on what they called ‘inappropriate moments’ such as ‘flashes of underwear’.

The ‘flashes of underwear’ in question were the clothes hanging of a laundry line as Tom Cruise passes them by.

Upon release, the laundry was edited out as it was deemed ‘harmful to China’.

Source: YouTube

They also considered one moment to be ‘truly insulting’ when Tom Cruise distracts and kills two henchmen of Chinese origin and runs by two old men playing Mahjong.

The censor board said that the situation made it seem like "common Chinese people were insensitive to a hostage situation." At the end of the censor process, more than 6 minutes had been cut from the film.

Lord of War

This movie about international arms trafficking shows Nicholas Cage being finally caught by Ethan Hawke playing an Interpol agent.

Cage, at this point remarks that someone powerful will always come along to bail him out. The movie which was sponsored by Amnesty International aimed to raise awareness as to the reality of illegal arms dealings in the world and how governments often willingly turn a blind eye to them.

As one can imagine, this message did not sit quite right with the censor board in China. At the end Cage says his iconic line, "My family has disowned me. My wife and son have left me. My brother's dead. Trust me, I fully appreciate the seriousness of my situation. And I promise you, I won't spend a single second in a courtroom."

In the Chinese version, however, he never proceeds beyond ‘I fully appreciate the seriousness of my situation’ to be followed by this inserted image.

“Yuri Orlov confessed all the crimes officially charged against him in court and was sentenced to life imprisonment in the end.”

The part where Cage is released and the reveal of the top 5 illegal arms dealers being part of the UN security council was removed.

Source: Tencent

Internal Affairs

This Hong Kong movie which was a remake of The Departed, showed a young gangster Lau sent to act as a mole in the HK police. Chan on the other hand is a mole working in the gang. In a high intensity movie, the two double agents run into one another on a roof where one of the police agents is killed by another officer who aslso turns out to be a mole.

Just before returning, Lau kills the other officer and makes himself out to be the only mole. In simple terms, the bad guy comes out on top.

The Chinese govt however is of the view that showing a criminal go free is as bad as encouraging crime itself. The solution? Film an entirely dfferent ending.

The alternate ending showed Lau being arrested just as he walks out of the elevator as he’s being cornered by the police with ‘proof’.

The Departed on the other hand was straight banned.

Brokeback Mountain

It’s not just law, police, and laundry that brings the ban hammer crashing down on you, it's also gay people.

When Bohemian Rhapsody was released, all mentions of Freddie Mercury’s homosexuality were removed. Brokeback Mountain on the other hand wasn’t even shown because of its same-sex romance scenes.

It wasn’t until the movie won lots of Oscars that China showed appreciation for the Taiwanese Director. They said, "Ang Lee is the pride of Chinese people all over the world, and he is the glory of Chinese cinematic talent.”

The movie while not commercially available was easily procured through bootlegged means, and soon the word ‘brokeback’ became a synonym for being ‘gay’.

Source: IMDB