Butterboom

Why is Jet Li Banned in China?

The Lethal Weapon takes issue with China’s movie censors.

China-born kung fu superstar Jet Li (李連杰) is mad. And he has every right to be. Did you know that not one of his Hollywood movies in the past 7 years has ever been screened legally in his home country:

“I remember back after I finished filming The Bodyguard from Beijing, the movie was banned from China due to the fact that, in reality there would be no situation as depicted in the film.”

Former kung fu champion Li has seen a string of his Hollywood films banned in his home country. In 2000 Romeo Must Die did not make it past the censors because it featured gangsters, whilst 2001′s Kiss of the Dragon was blocked because Li’s Chinese policeman character is seen to kill people abroad.

The strictness of Chinese censorship only allows an average of 20 foreign films to be shown officially each year, and those which do make it through can be heavily cut.

“It is my hope that audiences can mature and develop to see the difference between a movie and real life; not everything needs to be realistic,” said Li.

As we reported in June, Chow Yun-Fat’s character in this Summer’s Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End was trimmed because of the “demonizing of Chinese” that it seems only these Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon type movies ever get made in China which is sad, because we believe that to be a world power China needs to at least understand what the rest of the world is seeing in at least the fictional movie world, if not true history. But we digress…

We don’t know what is more surprising, that China would ban a Jet Li movie or the fact all this info comes from Jet Li’s own blog?!!

In other movies news, today is Thursday so that means new movies in cinemas. Besides our look at Blood Brothers earlier this week, we’d have to say a big pass to the 2 Hollywood offerings: Evan Almighty and The Invasion – while both films look great in their trailers, they both received near bottom level ratings at RottenTomatoes (24% and 20% respectively) leaving us to banishing them to “rental” viewing.