10 Films That Were Totally Changed For Foreign Audiences

2. Pirates of the Caribbean Trims The Fat

We're pretty sure that Chow Yun-fat, star of such hits as Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, was pretty integral to the plot of the third film in the Pirates of the Caribbean series. Pretty sure, but not 100% - we nodded off a few times. That film is long. Maybe the Weinsteins are onto something with that one. Chow played Sao Feng, Pirate Lord of the South China Sea, with whom Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow had had some...disagreements with in the past. As such he is somewhat reluctant to help the salty sea dog return from Davy Jones' Locker, but somehow Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley manage to win him round. Apparently Chow Yun-fat had a ball making Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, really getting his teeth into playing a nasty double-crossing bad guy, and reportedly helping out crew members with props between takes. It was not an opinion shared in China, however, where the nation's aforementioned prickly official censors ordered several scenes cut from the film. All of them involving Chow Yun-Fat as Sao Feng, the guy who does most of the heavy lifting when it comes to pushing the plot along and getting us to that fabled Keith Richards cameo. In most versions of At World's End, Sao Feng is a major player, with Chow Yun-fat's cummulative screentime adding up to a respectable twenty minutes or so (when you look at the size of the cast list, you'll wonder how he even managed that). Around ten minutes of that footage was trimmed for the Chinese release of the film, as reported by the state's official news broadcaster, although no official reason for the edits were given. According to sources in the country it was all down to Sao Feng's character, which some thought gave a negative and stereotypical portrayal of the Chinese people. Which we guess is fair enough - and Chow Yun-fat is actually from Hong Kong, rather than mainland China, if you wanna get technical - but still, that's a pretty major change to go unexplained.