Marvel Star Simu Liu Leads Harsh Criticism of Disney's 'Moon Knight' over Ethan Hawke's Mandarin

Paul BoisApril 12, 2022

The latest Marvel vehicle Moon Knight — now steaming on Disney+ — got hit with an avalanche of negative reviews, including from one of the studio’s very own stars in response to the Mandarin spoken by Ethan Hawke’s character in a recent episode.

This past week, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings star Simu Liu took to Twitter to publicly criticize the show for apparently using broken Mandarin.

“Alright, Arthur Harrow needs to fire his Mandarin teacher,” Liu said in reference to Hawke’s character.

Alright Arthur Harrow needs to fire his Mandarin teacher

— Simu Liu (刘思慕) (@SimuLiu) April 9, 2022

Liu’s followers immediately jumped into the fray, arguing that the Mandarin came off as if the writers copy/pasted the dialogue from Google Translate.

YES. EXACTLY. @MarvelStudios what happened here? 😭 What is this?? pic.twitter.com/Yb9IwBSshJ

— Zhen Wei (@so_zhenwei) April 9, 2022

Perhaps it was done on purpose. People who are in cults do little to no questioning of what they do or believe.

— Edward Ramos (@RexFut) April 9, 2022

haha this made me actually laugh out loud

— Wendy Lee Szany (@WendyLeeSzany) April 10, 2022

But what does he say back to her?? ¯_(ツ)_/¯

— james hong (@jhong) April 12, 2022

It was really really bad. They need a dialect coach. Try Aaron Bluestein. I hear he’s very good one will know someone who is.

— Dr. Jon (@MJon30) April 11, 2022

“I am insulted,” said YouTuber Disney Wayne. “I tried to listen very carefully to the words, and it basically is there, I figured it out. However, the way it was translated shows that there was not enough care in how it was translated, because it was like a direct Google translation.”

The YouTuber added that it showed the “little effort” that the writers and makers had put forth for those few words in Mandarin.

“It’s not an easy language, but the fact that the words and the script are just so inaccurate is insulting,” he said.

Disney flubbing a few brief lines of Mandarin comes as the studio has been bending over backward to get business from Communist China, from its censoring black actors out of movie posters to its collaboration with local officials engaged in an active genocide against the Uyghur Muslim minority.