I'm linking the article but the actual dunk is on redditors who see this and cheer, completely ignoring that this is an extension of how much power/influence the American military has over hollywood film. Want to film anything that might have the military in it? You gotta play ball babyyyy! Ever notice how weirdly patriotic and jingoistic almost every film that features a tank is? They played ball babbyyyy!!!
there was a good comment on reddit at least though https://old.reddit.com/r/entertainment/comments/14o3xt8/defense_department_declares_it_wont_work_with/jqbfo50/
"militant US regime threatens to censor media that doesn't bow to it's demands."
Since all the
Sinophobes love to say the only reason there isn't more LGBTQ representation in movies is because of the Chinese market, I'm sure we'll start getting lots of big action movies with queer romances right?Actually yeah, is there any truth to that at all or is it all projection?
There is some truth to movie posters having the black character resized smaller/removed, but westerners like to omit some things.
- The Star Wars poster that popularized this conspiracy theory was actually made by the west and used as official promotional content in the west. It’s one of the various posters made and all sorts of versions were used, including in China
- The black character in Dune was removed in the Chinese posters, but that Chinese poster was in Taiwanese theaters lol
I don’t know how Chinese fans reacted to John Boyega, but I believe one of his reasons for leaving Star Wars was because of China IIRC. Though the biggest reason was because of English speaking fans, so whatever racism China might have, the vitriol is much more present and readily available in the western world.
To add to that, Star Wars isn't a big deal in China anyway, and never has been. The original film came out less than a year after Mao died at the very beginning of the Dengist period and was not screened in the mainland. Because of that, there is zero nostalgia for the two or three actually good films that powered the west through decades and decades of awful worthless Star Wars movies. John Boyega being in some of those movies has nothing to do with their lack of popularity in China.
It is unfortunately not all projection, at least on race issues.
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/6/8/chinas-backlash-against-little-mermaid-exposes-hollywood-dilemma
"We only work with films that bow to our censorship, thank you very much"
Imagine, a Transformers movie where the US military tried to fight a Decepticon and just eats shit immediately…
US military in the South China Sea gets attacked by aqueous deceptions
Chengdu J-20s are dispatched to save the Americans
Americans start firing on the J-20s assuming they’re deceptions
Chinese military urge their pilots to be brave by withstanding fire without retaliating so they can rescue their foes
American soldiers are saved without any of them being killed by the Chinese
That kind of happens in the first one before Optimus helps them out. In general it's shown that they get their asses kicked if Autobots aren't around until the fifth film, and even then its because they've got Galvatron on side.
Some obviously corrupt and incompetent commanding officer orders a jet to intercept Starscream. A 5'8" first Lieutenant with an obvious inferiority complex gets into his F-35, hyped to prove he's a REAL MAN™, but crashes on takeoff. Some other equally unlikeable pilot is sent up in an F-22, which does actually manage to fly, but gets hopelessly outclassed by Starscream who ends up grabbing the pilot out of the jet by the head, popping it like a cherry, and dropping his corpse into a veterans living room from 12000 feet up, and trigger his PTSD.
Lol I bet they'll choose China. Replacing the prop military weapons that they get loaned doesn't sound too difficult nowadays
Imagine a timeline where China exploits the film industries’s greed to mirror the relationship the DoD currently has. China has lots of nice military equipment to showcase on camera.
They’ll likely make the US military less important in order to minimize the CGI used and the Chinese DOD will likely loan them their military for propaganda lol. Americans are truly idiots
I want to propose to China funding giant films/series with multi ethnic casts that use vast numbers of extras and involve massive constructions and destroying them in giant set piece battles.
I want the Bronze Age Collapse on the big screen!
How much of this is going to be an issue going on? For starters, it's looking more and more like the (live-action) superhero movie trend is finally on its last legs, and while Top Gun did well I don't think that military action movies are going to have any sort of come-back. On the other hand, idk the current appetite of Chinese movie-goers for American films as Cold War II continues to drag on. In addition, the Chinese film industry doesn't seem to have taken the same hit from Covid as the American film industry did (due to the mostly competent response), so I don't know if there's a lot of room for a glut of US imports.
If I had to randomly pick a new trend to replace superhero movies, I'd probably guess it going to be video game adaptations with the success of the Mario Bros. movie. Video game movies have the potential for pre-built international cultural appeal, you have massive IP back catalogs that have yet to be tapped, and video game companies already have pre-developed merchandising networks to work with for those IPs. While some of those films would want DoD toys/money, a lot would probably prefer working with Chinese film studios or video game publishers.
Yeah video game movies might be the next big thing. The Pentagon will absolutely help fund a shitload of Call of Duty films at the very least - they already send advisors to consult for the games. Any Hollywood executive would greenlight that series immediately just based on all of the free US govt funding it would get.
I know everyone knows this, but it’s pretty insane how CoD barely advertise their story now lol. I went on the steam page and every screenshot and video is just colorful guns and punk rock operators lol. And maybe at the end it’s a screenshot of the story.
I can see a Call of Duty movie franchise, but those movies probably wouldn't sell well in China in the first place. I just don't know how many film-makers are actually going to have to choose between the Chinese market and DoD slush.
I guess it will affect Fast and Furious franchise, I remembred John Cena speaking in fluent mandarin apologizing about Taiwan.
Even then that doesnt use pentangon budget.
Just looking at a list of the most likely candidates to get film adaptations from the videogame world...I can only find a handful that would really benefit from DOD support in the first place. Quite frankly it would be a red flag if some of them (Metal Gear) got it in the first place.
Although then again we shouldn't forget the fucking Monster Hunter debacle, lol. I can't wait for the Legend of Zelda film where Link calls in air support from the united state navy.
They don't exactly work with a lot of films to begin with. If they do, they have a stipulation that the movie needs to depict military service in a positive light. They won't help you make an anti-war movie. Which while I guess is fair from their perspective, they are stating this like it is a game changer.
The funniest outcome of this is movie studios looking at this declaration and just saying "I guess we are not using defense dept assets, because we want China's money."
Thank you Department of War for bravely defending the nude scene in Titanic from Chinese censorship.
Incredibly funny how fox news criticizes the Chinese communist censors for requesting movies to remove references or acts of homosexuality while championing Ted fucking Cruz.
Gotta support Rainbow capitalism to attack communism from every possible angle.
Shitty American movies are quite popular in China, and their market is much bigger than the US. The next Top Gun movie will be Tom Cruise and Jackie Chan from the PLA Air Force teaming up to fight some nondescript Eastern European enemy
In the US any show or movie must have at least one soldier/vet or soldier/vet sympathetic character or else it isn't allowed to air.
Defense Department declares it won’t work with Hollywood films
that bow to Chinese censorship
