China's Transformers 5 Two Extra Minutes for Product Placement

A few weeks before release it was discovered that the China version of Transformers: The Last Knight had a two extra minutes of footage. Thanks to an article from The Hollywood Reporter, we now know that the reason was for product placement. Really bad product placement that caused unintended laughs in China theaters. Hopefully the deleted scenes will be included on the digital and Blu-ray releases so the rest of the world can enjoy the jokes.

...throughout the film, the intentionally comedic moments don't seem to elicit much reaction from the crowd. Instead, their biggest laughs are almost universally reserved for the moments of blatant product placement by Chinese companies.

With the audience quickly learning to play spot-the-brand, giggles start rising in the cinema as the Chinese dairy drink Mengniu makes an appearance at Mark Wahlberg's very-much-in-America scrap yard. Smartphones from LeEco, the financially strapped Chinese tech company, appear to be the brand of choice in the film. And the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China is for some reason everywhere. The biggest laugh, however, arrives at the most unsubtle piece of pandering: the moment when the Autobots and their American friends are looking up 'car porn' on a Chinese used-car website.