Chinese Censors Change Ending of Minions Movie

Addendum tells audience supervillain was caught and went to prison for 20 years
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 22, 2022 2:54 PM CDT
Chinese Censors Change Ending of Minions Movie
This image released by Universal Pictures shows characters in a scene from "Minions: The Rise of Gru."   (Illumination Entertainment/Universal Pictures via AP)

This story contains spoilers for Minions: The Rise of Gru. At the end of Despicable Me prequel Minions: The Rise of Gru, future supervillain Gru and his mentor Wild Knuckles drive off, with Knuckles having faked his death to avoid capture by the Anti-Villain League. Censors in China decided not to let him get away with it. Reuters reports that the animated movie has an addendum in China stating that police arrested Knuckles for his role in a series of heists and he served 20 years in prison. According to AFP, the new ending also states that he put his "love of acting" to good use in prison and set up a theatrical troupe.

The ending seen by Chinese audiences also says Gru—depicted as an 11-year-old in the movie—"returned to his family" and "his biggest accomplishment is being the father to his three girls." The new ending, which appeared as subtitles over screenshots from the movie, was mocked on social media platform Weibo, with commenters noting that other films in the series show Gru continuing his supervillain career as an adult. "We can only say that the Gru of the main films lives in another parallel Minion universe," one user quipped. Online movie review publisher DuSir asked why Chinese audiences "need special guidance and care, for fear that a cartoon will 'corrupt' us," per Reuters. (Chinese censors also changed the ending of Fight Club and cut an LGBT plotline from Friends.)

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