One of the most intriguing scenes in Alien: Covenant involves Michael Fassbender snogging himself – or least the androids he plays, Walter and David, lean in for a kiss. However, Chinese audiences won’t get the unusual pleasure of the actor kissing himself, as the censors in the country have cut it from the movie.
As THR reports, Chinese censors routinely cut a lot of the violence from Hollywood films, including 14 minutes from Logan and eight from Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. However, the six minutes that it took from Alien: Covenant wasn’t just about violence, as it also included the android-on-android gay kiss.
The ommission was noted shortly after the movie’s release on Friday, with Yu, a 26-year-old assistant at an advertising agency in Shanghai, quoted as saying, “For the other missing parts you don’t notice or know when it happens, but you can really feel something is missing where the gay kiss is supposed to be.”
Many knew the peck was supposed to be there after seeing media reports, and apparently the way it has been excised from the film is quite abrupt.
The Chinese censors are known to be pretty inconsistent with gay content, allowing it in some films and not in others. Some have suggested this shows divisions between more liberal and conservative parts of the censors’ office, with others saying it’s more political, both internally and externally. For example, allowing the innocuous ‘gay moment’ in Beauty & The Beast was trumpeted in the People’s Daily Worker, while the likes of Brokeback Mountain and even some Chinese-produced movies with gay content have been banned outright.
You can take a look at the Fassbender-on-Fassbender kiss here.
Fox is going all out to say the Alien Covenant will not be like Prometheus, and it will indeed feature lots of the xenomorphs we come to know and love/hate. That continues with the new poster below, which manages to be rather creepy and also unusually artistic (for Hollywood at least).
The new Alien: Covenant trailer is certainly intriguing. After the mixed reaction to Prometheus, it’s certainly keen to show this will be a more typical Alien movie, while also suggesting it won’t be exactly the same as the earlier movies.
Following the muted and somewhat confused reaction to Prometheus, 20th Century Fox has been keen to show the follow-up will be something more familiar. The Alien name has returned, the promise has been made that the better known elements of the franchise will be back, and now the first trailer is here to back that up.
Normally the cast of a movie is announced before it goes into production, but with Alien: Covenant, they’ve waited until several months after production wrapped to reveal that James Franco and Danny McBride will be in the movie. And with Franco’s role, it could turn out to be quite key.
One of the main complaints about Prometheus is that is was marketed as an Alien movie, but it didn’t have any of the familiar killer aliens in it (except at the very end, sort of). As a result they shifted the focus of the follow-up, changed the name to Alien: Covenant to underline that this would indeed include the beloved nasties, and now a poster has arrived to show up front that yes, indeed, the xenomorph will be back.
Ridley Scott is finally back at work on Prometheus 2, which is now known as Alien: Covenant (indeed, they slightly seem to be trying to pretend Prometheus never happened), and he’s now casting who will appear alongside Michael Fassbender in the film. While it appears Noomi Rapace will have a small role, it appears shes passing the main female lead role across to Katherine Waterston, who’s now in final talks for the part.