Read on Twitter
I'm reading about how the version of Iron Man 3 shown to Chinese audiences is different from the version people saw in every other country. This isn't new. Different countries get somewhat different versions sometimes due to censorship, production deals, etc.
This may or may not be an episode of Renegade Cut. It depends on how many good examples I can find. I'm curious if the tiny, easily-removed gay moments in recent Disney/Star Wars films were shown in certain countries or if they were taken out.
They are so brief that that may have been Disney's intention. A tiny bit of gay that can easily be excised from the film with one edit in case it doesn't pass China's censors or if it might offend the Russian market or even if Disney just gets cold feet for its domestic market.
For example, in Birds of Prey [***MINOR SPOILERS***] a character is seen talking to her same-sex ex, but they never acknowledge it in dialogue. Harley's voiceover narration mentions they dated, but that could so easily not exist in a foreign dub of the film.
Now you might be thinking "Oh, that darn China" and yes, taking the gayness out of your movie through state censorship definitely sucks, buuuut bear in mind that various Hollywood studios are making their gay content easily removable on purpose for this reason. They're complicit.
If they make a gay character and their relationship central to the story, it can't be removed without scrapping the whole thing. So, they make it something that can disappear without affecting the movie in any way. It's genius, really, and also shitty.
And they're not just making it easily removable for China or wherever. They're making it easily removable should the studio get cold feet before domestic release, which is what happened with Valkyrie in Thor Ragnarok.
Valkyrie is presumably going to come out in the next Thor movie, and that's cool, but if it's done in a throwaway line so that it can be easily excised either in foreign markets or if Disney loses its nerve, then it probably won't be a big deal in the movie even if it stays.
Bringing back this thread from a couple months ago because it looks like I'll be making this video soon. If anyone else has examples of easily removable representation put in recent films that could be cut for either domestic or foreign release, I wouldn't mind the recommendation
