American movies have been the staple entertainment in many households worldwide for decades. We love the heroes, the plots, and the overarching message of freedom and democracy. But what if Hollywood movies aren’t American at all? What if the same industry that seems to stand for emancipation is being censored by none other than the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)?
There’s growing concern that the CCP is taking over Hollywood and financing some of your favorite movies. Hollywood Takeover: China’s Control in the Film Industry is a documentary exposé that premiered on March 8 on EpochTV. It explores this problem.
The film is produced and narrated by NTD TV’s Tiffany Meier. It follows Tiffany, an investigative journalist, along with former Hollywood executive Chris Fenton, as they work to uncover why and how China began working closely with Hollywood.
Hollywood is working to China’s benefit
Hollywood Takeover’s trailer on YouTube begins by claiming: “The Chinese Communist Party is after control. They don’t want anybody to know what they have done.”
In this trailer, Hollywood celebs like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Robert Downey Jr., Tom Holland, and Matt Damon, among others, are shown promoting their movies in China. One of the Hollywood insiders interviewed says: “They said: ‘We get a lot of our money out of China. Is there any way you can make this movie a little bit more attractive to the Chinese?’
This documentary doesn’t target celebrities, but the studios and entertainment industries they claim are contriving with the CCP toward America’s detriment and China’s advantage. The commentator lists several instances where they believe edits and additions following CCP’s interference or to appease the Party.
“They could take over America without firing a shot,” one director says of the CCP in the trailer, “because they control access to our minds.”
Examples of CCP’s interference in Hollywood from the documentary
Chris Fenton was a Hollywood production executive who did business in China for about two decades. In the documentary, he opens up about his work as a “fixer” or “diplomat” who gives China what it wants so that the movies can air in the country.
China is the second-largest market for Hollywood movies after the U.S. In a podcast by The Heritage Foundation called Heritage Explains, Tim Doescher, the co-host, says Hollywood movies must be written with China in mind to gain popularity there and make profits. He says specific themes, products, references, and speeches have to be removed if these movies are to tap into this big market of more than 1.4 million people.
American comedian and political commentator Stephen Colbert mentions the disaster movie 2012 in the same podcast. In this movie, humanity was spared because “China had the foresight to build life-saving arcs. He also mentions Sandra Bullock’s “Gravity,” where she survives by embarking on the Chinese Space Station. He believes Gravity became so popular in China because of this addition.
Other examples are provided in the documentary by Chris Fenton and other insiders. He says one of his earliest successes was making Bruce Willis’ movie, Looper, popular in China even though the CCP shunned time-travel movies because it wanted to censor the past and control the future. He says they added a conversation to appease the Party with characters played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Jeff Daniels. “I’m going to France,” says Gordon-Levitt. “I’m from the future; you should go to China,” Daniels responds.
How the relationship between the CCP and Hollywood began
In the Hollywood Takeover film, Jason Jones, a producer, says this relationship began in 1997 with Titanic. The then chairman of CCP was so impressed by the movie’s emotional power that he insisted on the higher hierarchies of the Party to watch it.
However, Jones believes this alliance became “really perverse” when Hollywood began pushing the CCP’s agenda. He mentions Disney’s 2020 remake of Mulan, where it suggested the Uyghurs are the villains in China. Several media outlets and prominent people have accused China of persecuting the Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities.
Another movie mentioned in the documentary is the trailer for Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick, in which Paramount Pictures removed the patches representing Japan and Tibet from Cruise’s flight jacket. After facing backlash online, they reinstated these patches when releasing the movie, but didn’t release Top Gun in mainland China — just in Hong Kong.
According to Hollywood Takeover, other movies that have seemed to criticize the CCP or support its rivals haven’t done very well in China. They mention Kundun, Red Corner, and Seven Years in Tibet.
YouTube takes the ‘Hollywood Takeover’ trailer down
After being posted online, the documentary’s trailer was taken down by YouTube “for review” because they deemed it too sensitive. However, it was reinstated two days after YouTube confirmed that “the video is not violative of our Community Guidelines,” according to a report by Newsweek.
Tiffany Meier told the outlet she’s no stranger to “hostile treatment from YouTube,” as the platform also demonetized her show and stopped promoting it online. She believes it was because she mentioned China’s “draconian” policies during the COVID lockdown, among other issues surrounding the pandemic. She says her viewership plummeted from 20 million to about 20,000 because of the punitive measures.
“There’s a history: Whenever you say something critical of the CCP, things disappear from various platforms,” Meier told Newsweek.
The Hollywood Takeover documentary trailer concludes by asserting: “People have been brainwashed and without knowing it… They could take over America without firing a shot… because they control access to our minds.”
You can watch the documentary via its official website.
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