Thursday, April 19, 2018

149 minutes, not 156

The vlogger Charlie over at the YouTube cinema/TV/comics-nerd channel Emergency Awesome broadcast a warning that, in some censorious countries, seven minutes of "Avengers: Infinity War" were going to be lopped off the film. According to Charlie, the uncut version of the film runs 156 minutes. When I checked the local listing for "Infinity War," I saw with disappointment that the run time had been trimmed to 149 minutes—the selfsame seven minutes that Charlie had referred to. This is frustrating and infuriating: I had begun to think of Korea as a less prudish, slightly more liberal country than it used to be, but we're apparently still stuck in the 1980s, the era of dictators.

The Russo Brothers, who directed "Infinity War," are reportedly incensed that certain countries are censoring parts of their movie. If it's any comfort to them, I feel all the more motivated to buy the movie when it comes out on home video later this year, just so I can see the full, uncensored version. Take that, Korea.



3 comments:

Charles said...

That pisses me off. Although I'm pretty sure that we will eventually be able to find those missing seven minutes online.

Pretty stupid, though.

Kevin Kim said...

I started wondering whether the countries that are cutting 7 minutes out of the film are cutting out the same 7 minutes. If yes, did they get together and conspire to do so? If no, then how did all these different countries arrive at 7 minutes as the amount of footage to cut out?

Charles said...

Good question. Is there some international handbook for cutting films?

Illuminati!