You know what they say: go see a Chinese movie and an hour later you need another one. Something like that. But in fact its almost reaching the point that if you want to see a good movie you need to find only films that are banned in the People’s Republic. Otherwise what you’ll end up with some watered down Hollywoodised shit that is deemed fit for the most populous nation on the planet.

Because artistic expression be damned. Creative freedom: phah! A tale that needs to be told? Bollocks! What movies are always and pretty much have always been about is making money. Lots of it. And there is nowhere in the world that has more money (and more people spending it) than China. And so last year the Chinese overtook the Americans as the biggest spending cinema-goers on the planet.

Because all the time other nation’s people spend engaged in politics, going on marches, campaigning or generally being, kind’a, free and easy, the Chinese go to the movies. That’s all they’re allowed to do. Well, movies and football, as the Beast from the East spends more billions buying up the world’s most overpaid footballing has-beens, n’er-do-wells and other tattooed billionaires to provide them with a late-career pension boost.

Yet because China as now seen as the ‘must be shown’ place for movies (one and half billion of the little fuckers queuing up to see your brockbuster) that is a windfall worth a few tweaks to the script, the plot, the odds and sundries on show in the film. Your masterpiece can make 100 million at the US box office, BUT… with just a little manipulation, it can take another 100 mil in China too. It’s a no-brainier. As long as…

There is absolutely no mention in the film of Tibet, Taiwan or Tiananmen. Red lines. No pun intended. I’m guessing that a movie about the Huawei scandal would be pretty much a no-no. And possibly anyone slagging off Alexa in any meaningful way would render that flick unpassable. As would the current events in Hong Kong, I dare say.

By the time Top Gun made it to China the badge on the back of Tom Cruise’s flying jacket had been airbrushed to remove the Japanese and Taiwanese flags that had originally lived there. Otherwise it wouldn’t have made it past the censors.

Which is as fine as it is trivial. Who the fuck even noticed what was on the back of Tom’s jacket when Kelly McGillis was stuck to the front of it?

But it means that now movies will be made with ‘a view’. With one eye (probably the producer’s) on having absolutely nothing that might upset China.

Apparently what doesn’t upset China is any form of racism (other than against the Chinese, obvs). They love movies about Africans getting slaughtered. The more deaths and the more grotesque, the better for that nation’s film buffs. You simply can’t kill a black man in enough bizarre ways to please the average Chinaman. And they’re all ‘average’. By law.

So for purist movie snobs like me, fans of ‘independent cinema’ and all others pretty much up their own arses about film, any film approved by China must have been seriously compromised to achieve that approval.

I’m going to see Sleepless in Shanghai tomorrow. Then Gone with the Wi.

Happy Friday

A xxxx