I usually think of censorship as the act of banning something that the censor doesn’t want people to see. So, for instance, China’s practice of removing criticism of the government from the Chinese internet is that kind of censorship. But censorship can actually be a bit more subtle than that. Sometimes it’s not necessary to hide something completely, only to change it enough that it becomes acceptable. That’s what China has done with the recent animated film Minions: The Rise of Gru.

I haven’t seen the film but I did see some of the previous ones and they all feature Gru as the supervillain/criminal mastermind with a heart of gold, at least when it comes to his family. This installment is a prequel which takes place when Gru was a child and first met his mentor in the supervillain underworld, a character called Wild Knuckles. [spoilers ahead] In the film Wild Knuckles and Gru decide to rob the “bank of evil.” The film apparently has something of a happy ending with Gru and Knuckles ultimately getting away with the heist after Knuckles fakes his own death to avoid being caught.

Enter the Chinese censors who added an additional minute to the end of the film to make it clear that crime doesn’t pay.

According to posts and screenshots from the movie shared on Weibo, a platform similar to Twitter, censors tacked on an addendum in which Wild Knuckles, a main character in the heist film, was caught by police and served 20 years in jail.

Gru, a co-conspirator of Wild Knuckles “returned to his family” and “his biggest accomplishment is being the father to his three girls,” screenshots of the film showed…

DuSir, an online movie review publisher with 14.4 million followers on Weibo, noted that the Chinese version of the film runs one minute longer than the international version and questioned why the extra minute was needed.

“It’s only us who need special guidance and care, for fear that a cartoon will ‘corrupt’ us,” DuSir wrote in a piece published Saturday.

You can see the four slides that were added to the Chinese release here. Universal didn’t respond to questions about the change but they must have approved this.

🇨🇳 censors have altered the ending of Minions: The Rise of Gru

In the original ending, Gru and Wild Knuckles ride off together after Wild Knuckles faked his own death to evade capture from authorities
In the #Chinese version it’s 20 year’s in Prison
Hollywood #Kowtow’s to China pic.twitter.com/oNmNgJa9z2

— the stranger (@thestranger515) August 22, 2022

This isn’t the only time China has made ham-fisted changes to the end of a film. In January of this year, censors changed the ending of Fight Club so that the authorities defeated Tyler Durden’s plan to change society.

The original ending saw Edward Norton’s narrator killing his imaginary alter-ego Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt, before bombs destroyed buildings in the climax to a subversive plot to reorder society, dubbed Project Mayhem…

The new finale tells viewers: “Through the clue provided by Tyler, the police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding.

“After the trial, Tyler was sent to lunatic asylum receiving psychological treatment. He was discharged from the hospital in 2012.”

In China, it needs to always be very clear that crime doesn’t pay and plots to change society always fail. I don’t think I have to explain why it has to be that way. The censors don’t want the public, even the kids going to see Minions movies, to pick up any subversive ideas.