Doctor Strange 2 banned in Saudi Arabia because gay, in China because politics

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is Marvel’s next big movie, poised to entertain people around the world and haul in hundreds of millions of dollars while it’s at it.

But not everywhere. The movie has been banned in at least one big market and probably shut out of one of the biggest. First up, The A.V. Club reports that the film is banned in Saudi Arabia because one of the characters, dimension-hopping teenager America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez), has two mothers. Homosexuality is illegal in Saudi Arabia, as it is in several Gulf states. And they have an absolute monarchy there, so unless King Salman changes his mind, this sort of nonsense is probably going to keep happening. Eternals was banned for similar reasons.

To its credit, Disney has stuck to its guns and included some (very light) LGBT+ elements in its movies despite the knowledge that they will get the movie banned in parts of the world. Not every studio is so willing; for instance, Warner Bros. edited out dialogue about the title character’s homosexuality in The Secrets of Dumbledore to appease Chinese censors.

China hasn’t allowed a Marvel movie into theaters since 2019

That said, at this point there’s probably nothing Disney can do to get Marvel movies released in China. The last Marvel movie in Chinese theaters was Avengers: Endgame, which made $629 million there. So there’s clearly an appetite for Marvel stuff among the Chinese public, but the Chinese Communist Party has been unhappy with the company for years; Black Widow, Eternals, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Venom: Let There Be Carnage and Spider-Man: No Way Home were all shut out of the territory.

Why are Marvel movies being shut out? People aren’t really sure. Per Deadline, it could have started when Black Widow portrayed Communism in a less-than-flattering light. Comments made by Shang-Chi star Simu Liu and Eternals director Chloé Zhao may be behind the ban. Or maybe the CCP just didn’t like that Iron Man died; it’s hard to tell with authoritarians.

In any case, the chances for Doctor Strange 2 aren’t good, especially after fans on social media pointed out that, in the background of an early scene, you can see a copy of The Epoch Times on a newsstand. The Epoch Times is an international, multi-language newspaper and media company that opposes the Chinese Communist Party.

True, the presence of The Epoch Times is an incidental detail that you wouldn’t see unless you were really looking for it and that has nothing to do with the scene — it’s a fight sequence on the streets of New York City — but the Chinese propaganda state is very sensitive and they’re already mad at Disney, so they don’t need much reason to crack down.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness comes out in theaters this Friday, May 6…in most places.

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