Thanks to the growing market for American films in China, it has suddenly become commonplace for Hollywood films to create a cut specifically for Chinese theaters. The most extreme example of this came earlier this year when we found out that the Asian nation was seeing a completely different version of the comedy 21 & Over. Shane Black's Iron Man 3 is the latest film to shoot extra material to help it sell in China, but now it's been revealed what that additional footage is... and it doesn't seem to add anything to the movie or change it in any significant way.
Be warned: there are Iron Man 3 spoilers below! Don't continue reading if you don't want to know about the ending of the movie.
The Hollywood Reporter has done some digging and has discovered that there are only two extra scenes included in the China version that weren't included in the cut everyone else in the world gets to see. The trade says that the first scene features the character Dr. Wu (Wang Xueqi) making a telephone call from his office in Beijing while a TV in the background shows Iron Man "cheered by schoolchildren in one of the Chinese capital’s landmarks." The other is an extended version of Tony's surgery at the very end of the film and has Dr. Wu talking about the surgery with an unnamed assistant (played by X-Men: Days of Future Past's Fan Bingbing).
While I'm sure there will be some obsessive fans out there who will die unless they can see the China cut of Iron Man 3, it sounds like the rest of the world isn't missing out on much.
