Movie Thread

[Guest]

From my understanding, it was Germany's fault why the Rambo and Arnie-looking guys in Contra were replaced with robots in the Yuropoor versions.

[Guest]

re: censorship in Germany
Once a rating is given, the rights holder or publisher would have to pay and apply for a new evaluation. That's how you end up with old stuff that today would release no problem still being on a list.

We have that in Bongland too. A lot of these old movies have to be re-submitted to the BBFC for classification if they want to release an uncut version.

Whereas in America there's no legal requirement to send films to be rated by the MPAA and I don't think there's any obligation by cinemas not to show films that haven't been rated

[rabidtictac]

From my understanding, it was Germany's fault why the Rambo and Arnie-looking guys in Contra were replaced with robots in the Yuropoor versions.

I thought Probotector was its own series this entire time.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

From my understanding, it was Germany's fault why the Rambo and Arnie-looking guys in Contra were replaced with robots in the Yuropoor versions.

Not just in Contra. C&C Generals is another infamous example where every human on-screen got turned into a robot. Soldier of Fortune 2 is also hilarious because they gave everyone a metal skin texture with bolts on it and replaced blood splatters with sparks 'n shit so now the entire game is about a world full of almost-androids.
One of the most infuriating example however comes from the Kraut-approved version of Half-Life. Dead people just sit down and shake their head until the fade out of existence, and the soldiers that attack later on have all been turned into weird robots whose distorted voices make it very hard to make out wtf they're talking about.

But don't get me started on German vidja censorship. That stuff is even more arbitrary, but it has greatly eased up over the years. Probably helps that we hadn't had a proper school shooting (the traditional German event to kickstart discussions about how Counter-Strike, Doom and sometimes Final Fantasy are all Columbine simulators) in ages, and that we have more and more adults who are actually familiar with the dark world of vidja(which let to some attempts to move the discussion over to manga for a bit until they realized normies don't give a shit; good thing they never discovered guro).

[jpakke]

We never had vidja censorship in here, nor ratings till the ELSPA ratings became a thing, mostly due resources and the size of the market, the board could barely handle the movies by that time. I do remember that in mid 90s there were attempts to get the state "To do something!", in one of our current affairs programs where they have bunch of people talking, they had show about horrible violent vidja games like Doom in our publicly funded broadcaster's tv-channel, and I fucking missed it at the time, I've heard that it was hilarious. No one has uploaded it to youtube and they have never put it in their website.

[Le Redditeur]

Our vydia censorship prohibited the sale of exactly three he's in total: Duke Nuke 3D (in response to a theater mass shooting), Bully (in response to a mainstream media piece on bullying), and for some reason, Everquest.

Too bad piracy was always rampant and no one cared about any lists.

[veris leta facies]

Americans have no idea how lucky they were that they had MPAA instead of the state run censorship like many yuropoor countries have (or had), like in Germany, Sweden, UK, Finland, Norway and a few other countries. Sure MPAA has (or had) their own problems, but when compared to our VET, Sweden, UK, Germany etc they were so fucking hands off. Films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and a lot of other films were outright banned in here, I remember counting days when the film/video censorship was finally lifted at the start of 2001 when the first previously heavily cut or banned films would be released on DVD, like Evil Dead, which was cut by over 10 minutes on VHS, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead etc. IIRC Dawn of the Dead and Evil Dead were released quite soon after the censorship was officially lifted. UK and Germany still suffers from the censorship to some extent, which is fucking ridiculous, but not surprising. I think aussiecuckland too.

I still have many hilariously poorly cut VHS from the time, like the completely ruined release from Robocop that cut off virtually all the violence. In the drug factory raid scene Robocop raises his weapon and in the next cut everyone lay dead. Emil's death scene was also completely cut off, during one scene Clarence is driving his car (before colliding with Emil) and in the next cut his car is on its roof in a mud pit. Rambo 3 was also completely mutilated, I think they cut off something like 15 minutes from that one. I also still have many illegal (of the time) VHS copies of banned films like Exterminator (with Greek subs).

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

I once watched a Temple of Doom cut on TV where they cut out the entire voodoo scene for some reason.
There is also a delightful TV cut of Braveheart where the old guy is suddenly missing a hand with no explanation.
Not to mention a TV cut of The Thing where any scenes with the titular Thing are effectively incomprehensible.

[Kugelfisch]

TV cuts are always awful and even exist in nations that don't usually censor that hard. The TV cut of Scarface is a good (bad) example.
Because showing a movie with the word "fuck" being used as interpunctuation in the afternoon on TV seemed like a good idea, somehow.

[Liar Revealed]

I remember when Robocop first aired on TV, there was an alternate cut where Clarence drives around Emil and doesn't hit him. Naturally, the swear words were all redubbed.