Why you won’t see a Chinese villain in a Hollywood film any time soon
- China’s Hollywood influence remains firm despite rejected changes in Top Gun: Maverick and Lightyear
- Hollywood studios’ exposure to China and desire for access to its box office mean films will keep tiptoeing around Beijing’s sensitivities for years to come
Does this mean film fans might see a return of the Chinese villain on the big screen? After all, Chinese filmmakers often depict Americans as the bad guy. Not likely. If the mainland Chinese film market opens up again, Hollywood won’t want to risk getting shut out by offending Beijing in the meantime.
To be sure, studios might stand firm on small things – thus avoiding a backlash at home – but steering clear of storylines that could anger Beijing is now baked into the DNA of modern-day Hollywood.
Before it was seduced by China’s box office, Hollywood’s depiction of Chinese people on the big screen ranged from admiration to fear and loathing, depending on the political climate of the times. Big stars such as James Stewart and Van Johnson featured in World War II films such as The Mountain Road and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, respectively, where the Chinese were shown as US allies. “You’re our kind of people,” Johnson’s character says to a Chinese doctor who saves his life.
That all changed when Mao Zedong’s Communist Party took power in 1949. Cold War-era films pitted Americans against the “red menace” – whether Soviet or Chinese – in films such as John Wayne’s Blood Alley and The Manchurian Candidate, in which communists brainwash an American soldier in a plot to overthrow the US government.
It was a loss for film fans. Screen villains enhance a screen story, provided they are not one-dimensional stereotypes like Fu Manchu. Chinese nationalists might even enjoy seeing a strong, smart Chinese villain pitted against an American protagonist, especially if their guy lives to fight another day.
The original script for Red Dawn, a remake of the Cold War-era story of the Soviet Union invading the US heartland, depicted Chinese as the invaders. The backstory, however implausible, was that Beijing ordered the invasion to “repossess” America after Washington defaulted on its Treasury debt to China.
Outside of Netflix, which has little to lose financially because it has no presence in China, we are unlikely to see a Chinese villain on the big screen any time soon.
It seems Hollywood is still paying the price for decades of yellowface and stereotyping. If a writer turned that into a script, the working title could be Revenge of the Chinamen.
Craig Addison was an independent filmmaker in Hong Kong before joining the Post as a production editor