‘Deadpool’ Gets Banned In China, But Does He Care?

Miguel Rodriguez
Staff Writer

Deadpool. The Merc with a Mouth. The supervillian-turned-hero-turned-antihero that killed the entire Marvel universe.

In Marvel’s seemingly endless sea of superheros (of which I could list half of them and exceed my word limit for this article), Deadpool is a character that’s been overlooked for years and years of superhero films. Until recently.

After the official announcement in 2014, the Deadpool movie has been gaining traction in the cinema world, exciting comic veterans who knew about the merc from long ago and enticing newcomers to the Deadpool universe. However, China doesn’t have nearly as much support for the film as the rest of the world. China has banned the film from distribution in their country.

In many countries, movies have a rating system that determines their content. In America, for example, G-rated movies are good for everybody, and you would probably want the kids asleep for anything NC-17. China, however, doesn’t have a rating system. Rather, all movies released must be appropriate for all audiences, meaning graphic movies are often edited heavily until China’s movie-governing body approves it. Sometimes movies can make it by without too much trouble, but others, like Iron Man 3, are met with huge criticisms. And some, like Deadpool, were deemed so explicit that they were beyond editing redemption.

Probably won’t stop Deadpool though.

Some of the things that make Deadpool so memorable as a character is that he A) is aware that he is a character and B) never stops talking. Once he has a thought, it’ll come out of his mouth before realizing what he just said. For the movie, the producers of Deadpool wanted to stay as true to the character possible. as opposed to putting him through significant personality changes (Wolverine was much less brooding in the comics, as opposed to the dark character we see portrayed by Hugh Jackman).

Depending on how close they stay to the character, we may very well see a commercial from Deadpool talking about his own movie’s ban in China. While some may think this to be unethical and that using offical government choices as advertisement is in poor taste, consider Donald Trump. While he isn’t promoting any movies, all of his controversy has gained him an immense amount of media presence, which is exactly what movie advertisers want: a large media presence.

In addition, Deadpool may be the only character capable of using controversy to his advantage: given his self-awareness, it only seems right that he’ll appear on TV and say “too bad China won’t be seeing this.” It wouldn’t have been the first time that controversy was intentionally used to garner public attention, such as The Interview in its entirety and pretty much every Carl’s Jr. commercial ever.

Regardless of what Deadpool‘s marketing team decides to do with China’s decision, we can expect the Merc with a Mouth to somehow make a reference to the real world.