Chinese gamers review-bomb Monster Hunter: World following a racist pun made in the film

Some things are better left unsaid.

Image: Capcom

Image: Capcom

Hey, I appreciate bad puns as much as the next guy, but even I admit that some of them are better left unsaid. 

Case in point, Capcom's hit RPG Monster Hunter: World has received a massive slew of review-bombs on Steam from Chinese gamers after an extremely racist pun was made in the recent film based on the franchise. Starring Milla Jovovich and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, the film premiered in China last Thursday (Dec 3), and the offending one-liner, which was made by one of the American soldiers from Jovovich's squad goes a little something like this:

"What kind of knees are these? Chi-knees."

My word. Not only did the pun fall completely flat with audiences, it's also extremely offensive considering it ties back to another controversial rhyme targeted at Asian people, which reads, "Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees - look at these?". So, as a result of the scriptwriters' poor attempt at a joke, Capcom's game suffered an entire nuke's worth of review-bombs immediately following the movie premiere, and we estimate that the numbers are within the high four-digits range by now. 

In response to the review-bombing, Capcom published a statement on Chinese social media platform Weibo to clarify that it had nothing to do with the film's script and production. Rather, the film was made by Tencent, Constantin Film and other entities, and from the looks of it, an edit is in order. Actually, it's quite odd that a statement of this nature even made it past the Chinese regulatory board in the first place, but that's hardly an excuse for shoddy and racially inconsiderate scriptwriting. In retrospect, this whoie incident could probably have been avoided if someone hadn't tried so hard to be funny. 

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