The Chinese government has been in the news a lot lately, busily censoring it's film industry and driving directors like Ye Lou right out of the country. Artistic oppression in that country continues unabated. Now they're persecuting their greatest natural resource: Jackie Chan.
IESB has dug up a story in the Xin Kuai Bao newspaper which says that Jackie's latest project, Rob-B-Hood, was toned down in order to get Chinese censors off their backs. Not for sexual content, or because there was too much violence, but because they thought Chan's villainous character was too evil.
Apparently, the Chinese government just doesn't like Jackie playing a baddie. He told the paper that the first drafts of the script portrayed him as a full fledged villain, but that the character he was to play was watered down in order to get the government's essential seal of approval.
So how evil is evil? Jackie says that originally his character hit all the usual super-evil clichés. "He hits women, burns people with cigarettes." The kind of really bad character you see at least once a month in Hollywood movies. "The Chinese government said Jackie Chan can't be so evil," affirms Jackie.
