Movies

From Shrek 2 to 300: 20 Movies You Never Realized Were Banned

From Shrek 2 to 300: 20 Movies You Never Realized Were Banned
Image credit: Legion-Media

Sometimes censorship is blatant and outrageous; other times, it's subtle and unnoticeable — at least, for certain audiences.

These 20 movies were banned in cinemas around the world — and for completely different reasons. How many of these have you caught in their pristine glory?

Censorship and Hollywood have been going hand in hand for the majority of the time, it's just at first censorship was pretty openly stated, while later it became a bit more subdued in its appearance.

The regional restrictions came in handy, and countries started banning movies from being released just because some parts of the story didn't correlate with the beliefs of the government. And while some markets don't make a huge dent in the worldwide box office of the movies, others, — namely China, — are quite important, and not only for blockbusters.

So the censorship became local. But, thankfully, now we have access to the World Wide Web and can learn about that — and maybe, if we're lucky, catch the banned or censored film on the streaming services sometime after its official release.

Shame that the general moviegoers probably won't be ready to rummage through the Internet learning what exactly has been changed or wasn't even screened.