Some Chinese insulted by Transformers 2's Shanghai

Really, Chinese netizens? REALLY? Apparently some Chinese are incredibly upset at the Transformers 2 movie, not because it was a two-and-a-half hour waste of time with an egregiously obscene budget for barely a semblance of a plot, but because the beginning scenes are "an insult to China."

From People's Daily Online:

Some Chinese netizens are not happy about this movie because Shanghai appears to be very shabby in the movie which they think is not a real representation of the city.

Moreover, they think bombing Shanghai is an insult to China. They think the movie intentionally tries to uglify China. It is understood that publisher may cut these scenes from the Chinese edition out of consideration for box office receipts.

Some people comment that it is still unbearable for the publisher to only promise to cut these scenes in China. If the "shabby Shanghai" in "Transformers 2" is widely seen by people all over the world, this will mean an even bigger insult to us. Therefore, those people are requiring that those scenes are not shown anywhere in the world.

Even People's Daily thought the netizens who opined this were overreacting, arguing that Shanghai has shabby places like any other city in the world, that it's just as insulting to only shoot prosperous areas, and that "the rational reaction should be to face the unsatisfactory reality and try our best to reform and construct out cities."

But we think even that misses the point. To be honest, we had no idea the opening fight was in Shanghai (though we're sure a subtitle flashed by with that info at some point)... there was no Pearl Tower, no iconic Bund view, just some factory in the outskirts. All we got was that it was a generic city with an Asian theme - and we bet that's what most of the people around the world saw too.

Compare that to its portrayal of Egypt, which was very clearly recognizable as Egypt: an ass backwards country with nothing more than a few goat herders in a vast expanse of desert. This is despite them having roughly the same GDP as China's. Their greatest attractions - the Valley of Kings, the Pyramids of Giza - get ripped to shreds by a joke of a robot who's main punchline is that he has two giant dangling robot testicles.

Compared to them, we really got it good.