Chinese moviegoers are being treated to a slightly different version of "Skyfall" after censors cut a scene and used subtitles that obscure some of the movie's original dialogue.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, a scene in which Daniel Craig's James Bond kills a Chinese security guard was spliced from the film. The altered dialogue appears later in the film, when Bond asks Severine (Berenice Marlohe) about whether or not she was forced into child prostitution. Curiously, the movie's audio is reportedly intact, with invented subtitles that don't match the spoken words.
Much of "Skyfall" takes place in Shanghai and Macau. The film's villain (Javier Bardem's Raoul Silva) apparently turned evil after he was abandoned by MI-6 and placed in Chinese custody. A scene in which Bardem explains his backstory was also tweaked in the Chinese version.
It's not uncommon for Hollywood blockbusters to get a facelift before screening in China. Kate Winslet's breasts were famously censored before "Titanic 3-D" played in the country, which has a long history of entertainment and news media censorship.
Earlier in January, a dispute erupted over China's attempts to censor Southern Weekly. Officials forced the newspaper to change an editorial that called for reform into a celebration of the government. More on China's fraught history with censorship is available in the gallery below.
