While this past weekend at the box office was a huge win for Barbie, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer helped make it one of the biggest box office weekends in history. In addition to its over $80 million taken at the box office domestically, the movie brought in nearly $100 million overseas. But it turns out not all those countries saw quite the same movie as the rest of us, as a scene of a topless Florence Pugh was censored throughout the Middle East, as well as in India.
Florence Pugh is topless in a couple of scenes in Oppenheimer but nudity is forbidden in movie theaters throughout the Middle East. In the case of most movies with nudity, this simply results in the offending scenes being edited from the film. But THR reports that in the case of one scene, which sees Pugh’s character and Cillian Murphy’s Oppenheimer having a conversation while both are naked, a CGI black dress was added to Pugh to cover her up. The same version of the scene was also used in India, where the movie has been given a UA rating, approximately equivalent to a PG-13.
Some countries are censoring #Oppeneheimer by putting a CGI black dress on Florence Pugh 😭 pic.twitter.com/Bt0Ymxd859July 24, 2023
Considering edits of one kind or another are not uncommon to allow films to be released in other countries with different cultural sensitivities, this is perhaps one of the more unique ways that a studio has gone about making such a change. While it certainly won’t work in the case of every scene with a naked actor, it allows the movie to go out with fewer edits to the overall film, which is a positive for both the director’s vision and those in the theater who aren’t losing more of the movie.
There are a couple of other nude scenes in Oppenheimer. It’s unclear exactly what happened to them though it’s possible they were simply removed from the film, as the CGI solution might not have worked there. In those scenes, the characters are actually having sex, which likely means they would still run afoul of censors even if they were able to cover things up.
It’s far from uncommon to see other nations ask for changes to films, from nudity to violence, to the inclusion of LGBTQ+ characters, due to laws in the nations in question. We’ve frequently seen gay characters removed from films, though in recent years we’ve sometimes seen studios simply refuse to release movies in certain countries because of the edits requested. Sometimes the offending scenes are so vital to the film that it would make no sense if they were gone. Other times studios simply decide not to make changes.
This looks to b a new tool in the arsenal of filmmakers that might allow more movies to be seen around the world without making fundamental changes. It will be interesting to see if the use of this method increases going forward.
