After Vietnam, the Philippines could be next to ban 'Barbie.' Here's why
npr.org
npr.org
The map looks indeed ridiculous. And I don't know if the movie was trying to appeal to China, or whether it was actually some misguided sarcasm, but the whole dashed-line isn't just some small controversy. It is a big deal, if not the deal for the whole area. Just last year, Uncharted (another AAA movie I believed) was also banned by both Vietnam and Philippines.
At this point, if your movie is banned due to this issue, I don't think it was accidental anymore. This is the third hundred-million dollars movie that was banned for this reason just in the past few years.
I have no opinion on whether movie should try to avoid the issue itself, but I do think it's justifiable and non-surprising (ie. it's good) that the government bans the movie. Geopolitics is both hard and weird, and being consistent is good.
...or we could apply Hanlon's razor ("Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"). One way or the other, I imagine a poor graphics artist at Mattel Films (or whatever company was responsible for that map) is in very hot water right now...
https://www.reuters.com/world/china-russia-launch-joint-air-...
That dotted line is not just a claim, it's where Chinese gunships will patrol and where Chinese bombers do exercise flights. I am actually surprised that the US government is so happy to tolerate large US companies completely undermining their own geopolitical position just to increase profits, like with Blizzard.
"The public's response, which included a boycott and a letter from United States Congress representatives to Activision Blizzard, prompted Blizzard to reduce the punishment, but not to eliminate it."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy
I believe what all those movies and the Blizzard incident show is that the dream of large profits from China appears to be extremely successful at influencing US companies to help with China's agenda. And the US government appears to be not too successful at preventing that. Also, there is some history w.r.t. that line in movies and on merchandise:
"In pursuit of this goal, China uses any means it can to promote the visibility of the nine-dash line, displaying it on passports, maps, exported globes, movies, books, online games, clothing, tourist leaflets, booklets, television shows, and more. A case in point—in October 2019, a nine-dash map was visible in “Abominable,” an animated family movie jointly produced by China-based Pearl Studio and America’s DreamWorks Animation. In 2018, a group of Chinese tourists wearing T-shirts with a nine-dash line drawing arrived in Vietnam."
https://amti.csis.org/science-journals-a-new-frontline-in-th...
That means in my opinion, this is mostly the CCP showing off their political clout. "Look we can make them include our line!"
They tolerate it because it doesn't affect the politics of the situation, and because the 1st amendment guarantees freedom of speech, so any action to try and stop them would be struck down by the courts.
Well that's because until Pompeo, US had no formal position on sovereignty claims - US historic position was neutrality and now just whatever is anti PRC. It takes time for US to manufacture consent and decouple / "derisk" markets until companies get the hint or are forced to.
If this surprises you, I don’t think you’ve considered who the ruling class of capitalist society is, and whose wishes the government, therefore, naturally embodies, and what that implies its actual interests are.
Fun times, got stopped by gun boats from multiple nations, swamped by monsoon, had to listen to a nerous BP observer bang on about pirates.
For background:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spratly_Islands
Interactions with gun boats were stop, talk, stand aside while people wander about, passport inspections, and (allegedly!) envelopes of cash and stacks of soft core magazines disapeared (after being left out).
If you check the Spratly Dispute link we're talking Chinese, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Borneo, etc. anybody with an interest. Often with Russian, US, UK observers | advisors from major petro companies.
Survey wise; Sea floor, subsea floor layers (for petro exploration), tidal movements.
Logging:- GPS, Differential GPS, LORAN, multichannel returns from streamer arrays (seismic) - building real time corrected 3D imaging on the fly.
Never saw a pirate, did often observe a sea of bobbing lights after dusk as "sea gypsy" ([1] et al) fisherfolk went out to catch squid in the dark.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sama-Bajau
Maps showing borders are best avoided in disputed areas - just map the physical earth forms and leave poltical boundaries off if you want to avoid trouble.
I had the same issue in the disputed areas between Pakistan and India - not the place to travel with a map showing boundaries, someone will always disagree with any line drawn.
I'm wondering if the firms already calculated that appeasing China brings in more than $10 million.
They removed the Taiwan and Japan patches in the first trailer to try to see if China would bite.
China was never going to allow a movie that made the American military look so damn cool.
Then they put the patches back after the writing was on the wall.
Money over everything.
Even in Europe I saw they're not that comfortable with it. In Austria they had recruitment posters ads outside the theater entrance and they played ads about joining the Austrian airforce before the movie, to try convince you to join the Austrian airforce so you can fly the only two functioning Eurofighter Typhoons in service lol.
China did their own Top Gun movie featuring their own Chendu jets.
Budget: $200,000,000 (estimated)
Gross US & Canada: $342,411
Opening weekend US & Canada: $105,768
Gross worldwide: $902,548,476
Battle at Lake Changjin was literally commissioned by CPP's government, literally including its department of propaganda and is part of a concerted government effort.
Also have in mind that the Chinese government imposes actual bans on content, such as "can't have this and that flag, or this or that line, or your movie can't be shown in China" in a way similar to Vietnam and Philippines. Actual Chinese propaganda movies can be shown in the US - they don't get shown often, if at all, because nobody wants to see them.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-05-30/top-gun-mav...
Sure, the movie advocates the interests of the military, that's why they accepted to share the equipment, and they wouldn't share if the movie was against their aims. In the US, you can create movies for or against the aims of the government. Private initiative here was seizing an opportunity to do business with the government and pay less for realism.
These two movies wouldn't exist without military approval due to their planned use of military resources for realism/quality. It's a business deal to get low cost, top quality props. Have you seen Maverick? It looks awesome, even if you disagree with the theme. Actually, getting approval from the military is a good thing for the business purpose of the movie, it gives the movie credibility. If I was creating a movie about military success, I'd beg the military to approve it formally!
But in reality, the movie wouldn't exist if the filmmakers hadn't had the idea to produce it, rather than a government commissioning a literal propaganda movie to further their aims. It's a somewhat subtle, but major difference.
We need to immediately end the false moral equivalency between China and the US. It's very easy to come with a fallacious argument and say "it's all the same here as it is there". It's not. Go create a major blockbuster movie in China documenting the government's failures like, let's say, the old "Born on the 4th of July" with the same Tom Cruise and see what happens.
Hero debuted as #1 in the United States
Think about the easter eggs found in all manner of serious software put in by engineers for a joke. I think anyone in Vietnam can easily pirate it if they actually want to see the movie so there’s little actual damage, as long as they don’t care about the economic impact at the box office.
If your base requirement is that propaganda be obvious, you’re never going to be able to discern propaganda when you see it.
If you were inserting the nine dash line into a map like this, you would want some plausible deniability.
It’s not about the number of dashes, it’s about what the depiction is meant to represent.
No way this is an accident or a mistake. For them, the dash line is as iconic as sporting the Hitler moustache, or having 1488 personalized plates on a car. You can't claim you didn't know.
The best good faith interpretation I could give to it is that someone in the studio is a pro-chinese, or paid by a pro-chinese, and they sneakely included the map + lines without anyone noticing (due to ignorance). All the other bullshit lines, hastags, suns... are there to not make it blatantly obvious and have plausible deniability. But the dashed line is there on purpose.
Of course, I'm just going off the one little photo in the article. I'm not going to watch some stupid trailer. If someone writes an article making a claim about a map in a movie or trailer, it's their responsibility to provide a still image or screenshot supporting their claim. If they can't do this, and they just say "watch the trailer", I'm going to dismiss their claim as ridiculous and frivolous.
Even if you hosnestly didn't recognize it, this isn't here for you. This is here for the people who knows. I recall menctioning "1488" in a conversation, and there were more people that didn't have a clue than they do. But if you include a VW Beetle in a movie, with the plates "1488-HH"... that's no mistake, even if only 10% of the viewers get it. That will end with someone fired, and nobody could claim they did it unknowingly. Maybe they though it was a clever joke or an easter egg, but it's not possible by chance.
If I were Africa, I'd be offended to look like a melting ice cream. As for Europe, can't even see it on the map. Gone? As for Russia, the largest country on earth, it looks more like it's already belonging to "Asia" (good work Xi!), or if it's that small red country on the left of Asia, then I'd be very offended to look that small. Where is Japan anyway, is that the hashtag (#)?
Why would a random dashed line be the one they don't like to talk about?
Red Carpet, by Eric Schwartz.
Something nobody over here cares about (or nobody that matters cares about) scribbled down like a 4 year old just got the executives infinite social credit points and a $100 million dollars.
And Beijing doesn't even notice this is the most insulting way to cater to them, that’s so funny.
Reminds me of that time an American got the nearest nomads to watch some oil for a moment and then split the proceeds with them for the next 60 years while the nomads got to run a sovereign monarchy with all the money. Americans dgaf! Goated.