Thursday, August 16, 2012

China’s Grip on Hollywood

China’s Grip on Hollywood:

by DAVID AXE
The movie studio behind the Red Dawn remake switched the film’s antagonists from Chinese to North Korean to make nice with the Chinese government and audience. The New York Times has more:
A number of studios have tweaked or edited their films to get them approved by the censors. Don’t tell the World Trade Organization, but China only allows 34 foreign films to be imported each year.
When Beijing’s censors took a dislike to a bald and bearded Chinese pirate — played by the splendid Chow Yun-fat, no less — the filmmakers edited him out of the version of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End that was shown in China.
A scene of laundry hanging outside in Shanghai was excised from Mission: Impossible III. Scenes from a shootout in Chinatown were whacked from Men in Black 3. In a remake of the cult classic Red Dawn, Chinese invaders targeting the United States were digitally turned into North Koreans.
David Axe, writing on Wired magazine’s Danger Room blog, suggested that “it’s bad business to portray one of the world’s fastest growing film markets as brutal world conquerors, so the producers swapped in North Korea, a country no one counts on for ticket sales.”
Related posts:
  1. AOL Defense: China’s ‘Ripples of Capability’: An Interview with Andrew Erickson
  2. Danger Room: China Convicts Spy Blogger, Lets Others Keep Leaking
  3. Axe on Stop Imperialism

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