Since currently the Marvel Cinematic Universe is streaming in its entirety on Disney+ in front of a whole new audience, Marvel Studios is being extra cautious with the kind of content they put out. Earlier this year, the studio briefly censored two scenes in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier before reversing course a few days later. Then there was the removal of a bizarre tribute to Stan Lee just seconds after Jon Bernthal’s Punisher shot down a group of street-level criminals. Now, it looks like some more edits have been made.
As one eagle-eyed Marvel viewer has noticed, the one-shot for the Ben Kingsley-starring All Hail the King has been edited to remove a line from one of the inmates Slattery is interacting with. The Direct points out the scene once included a prisoner named Herman calling out, “Hey, cracker! What’s up?” Now, that line has been edited so that Herman simply says “Hey! What’s up?”
According to Hollywood insiders, the previous edits of content happened due to “technical glitches,” though that’s likely not the case with the sequence.
“Eagle-eyed fans were right, an episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier had been altered on Disney+,” THR’s Ryan Parker previously explained on Twitter in March. “I hear from a reliable source it was a software control issue and the wrong file was recently published accidentally. It’s being corrected immediately.”
Marvel’s not the only content being censored by Disney+. Right at launch, fans noticed both Splash and Wizards of Waverly Place had been altered to align with the service. Organizations like the Parents Television Council quickly applauded the moves.
“Disney+ has a distinctive advantage over other streaming services in that its business model was designed to be family-friendly,” PTC president Tim Winter said in a statement. “We are grateful to Disney+ for wisely ensuring that nudity in the original film, Splash, was edited. Making those edits does not make the film unrecognizable or unwatchable. Instead, the edits serve to ensure that children who may watch the film aren’t confronted by nudity, and ultimately this makes Disney+ a trustworthy streamer for families.”
“As Disney+ continues to add new content, we want to encourage the company to keep its commitment to families to provide a safe, family-friendly environment – something that is even more crucial as children are spending more time with digital media during quarantine,” Winter’s statement continued. “While the company has promised not to include R-rated content, we ask Disney to go a step further to protect children by adding parental controls and content filtering options. These two steps would make Disney+ even better for families.”