Welcome to MI6 Headquarters

This is the world's most visited unofficial James Bond 007 website with daily updates, news & analysis of all things 007 and an extensive encyclopaedia. Tap into Ian Fleming's spy from Sean Connery to Daniel Craig with our expert online coverage and a rich, colour print magazine dedicated to spies.

Beijing Premiere

By MI6 Staff

Share The Story

After a two month delay, the 23rd James Bond film "Skyfall" finally enjoyed its Chinese premiere on Wednesday night (16th January 2013) in Beijing. Chinese authorities had pushed the release back from the originally planned date of November 2nd, 2012, to protect the box-office performance of native films such as "Back to 1942" and "The Last Supper".

Daniel Craig appeared via a live video link to take questions and introduce the film. When asked who his favourite Bond girl is so far in his three-film tenure, Craig said: "It’s very difficult to answer this without offending anybody. I have my own particular favorite among them, the very beautiful Judi Dench, she is probably THE Bond girl, and always will be."

Two Chinese locations feature in the film: the neon metropolis of Shanghai and the old Portuguese gambling outpost Macau. A splinter unit filmed on location in Shanghai to capture the driving sequence and the skyline shots were captured by helicopter with the help of Chinese authorities. However, Macau was a complete fabrication and built on the backlot at Pinewood Studios.

Craig was up-front with the audience about how these were achieved. "I have been to Shanghai and Beijing in the past," Craig said, "but in this movie, because of the way the movie is shot, I didn’t actually go to Shanghai or to Macao. We faked it. I shot most of my stuff in London. But I enjoyed my time in both Beijing and Shanghai."

When asked about the future of the franchise, Craig said: "I hope the Bond series will last for another 50 years… not with me. I hope it will last for a long time. I think the truth is the movies have always been event movies, exciting, fun to watch and always been about the audiences, more than anything else, and I think that gives them longevity."

"James Bond is, we try to remain firmly in the world of fantasy, a character that doesn’t really exist in the real world. But I think for all of us having the idea that there’s a hero who can save us all, it’s a universal feeling. James Bond has an individuality that we filmmakers try to bring back to this movie."

Licence To Cut
Chinese censorship authorities have made some subtle changes to the film to gloss over themes of torture and prostitution. The changes mostly involve tweaks to subtitle translations to avoid touchy subjects or undesirable themes in the Communist state, but one scene was deleted.

When hitman Patrice enters the skyscraper in Shanghai, the sequence of him shooting the Chinese guard at the security desk was removed.
As Bond grabs Severine's wrist and reveals his knowledge of the Chinese tattoos marking the sex trade and prostitution rings, the English dialog is kept, but the Chinese subtitles allude to her being coerced in to 'the mob' instead.
The Chinese subtitles also blur over Silva's back story and hide the implication that a Chinese intelligence agency imprisoned and tortured him for months after the Hong Kong hand-over.

Sony declined to comment to the trade press on the alterations, which are mild compared to cuts made to other Hollywood films recently.

Above: The subtly altered poster for China includes the Shanghai skyline in the 007 logo.