Chinese Censorship Makes Sure Minions Rise of Gru Villain Wild Knuckles Gets His Due Comeuppance Baffling Social Media

Chinese censorship is making its periodical way through memedom again, as recently, viewers discovered that censors in China apparently found the ending of Minions: The Rise of Gru incompatible with the state's notorious rules for media and hastily tacked on a written alternate ending to help it show in theaters (spoilers for Rise of Gru ahead).

In the actual film, the mildly villainous Gru and Wild Knuckles ride off together after Wild Knuckles faked his own death to avoid capture by the police. In the Chinese version of the film, explained via a series of text images, Wild Knuckles was caught by the police and served a 20-year prison sentence. Gru, meanwhile, "returned to his family" and "his biggest accomplishment is being the father to his three girls."

It's not uncommon for Chinese censors to radically alter the messages of Western films in order to get them shown in the country.

Earlier this year, social media users guffawed at a hastily tacked-on message on the Tencent version of Fight Club, which erased the film's actual ending and instead said the police quickly foiled Tyler Durden's plan, which struck many as a poor attempt at undercutting the film's strong anti-state message. Tencent then restored the original ending after backlash.

Once word of China's alternate ending of Minions circulated on Western social media, users rolled their eyes at what they saw as an extreme and unnecessary censorship measure.

There are reports that Chinese viewers were exasperated by the change, particularly in a film as morally vanilla as Minions: Rise of Gru. The Guardian reported that DuSir, a film review blogger on Weibo with over 14.4 million followers, bemoaned the changes, writing, "It’s only us who need special guidance and care for fear that a cartoon will ‘corrupt’ us."