Chinese fans loved the original so much there just had to be a remake. But, writes Nicolas Groffman, that’s when the military got involved
In the summer of 1986, my friend Charles and I saw a trailer for the most amazing film conceivable, with F-14s landing on carriers.
They crashed down amid the steam in super-modern all-grey livery. The film came out a few months later and only those with large reserves of intellectual snobbery failed to enjoy it. It was Top Gun.
In mainland China and Hong Kong, the movie was called “Zhuang Zhi Ling Yun”, a good metaphorical name implying reaching for the clouds. It is a perennial favourite in China, and many know the movie scene by scene, as became apparent when in January 2011 the PLA Air Force released footage of aerial combat exercises, including a scene of a successful attack on a drone.
Except it wasn’t.
It was a clip from Top Gun. Chinese internet users spotted this immediately, exposed the trick, and humiliated the air force, which removed the clip from its website and presumably told off whoever was responsible – but the seed of an idea had been planted. China must have its own Top Gun!
The 2017 film Kong Tian Lie, or Sky Hunters, which stars Fan Bingbing and her boyfriend Li Chen, was billed as being the first movie to have the full cooperation of the PLA Air Force. It was not.
That honour goes to Jian Shi Chu Ji, or Sky Fighters, released in March 2011. It did not get good reviews from ordinary cinema-goers, because it managed to strike that special blend of cliché and tedium that robs even potentially exciting situations of all passion.
You would think that filming J-10s in dogfight sequences would inevitably be thrilling.
But all suspense is removed; no one is ever in danger for more than 30 seconds, and scenes of the inquiries into dangerous flying last longer than the scenes of the actual dangerous flying.
Sky Fighters does however have moments of comedy. At a press conference for obsequious civilians, the film’s hero, General Yue, answers a foreign woman who throws him a tricky question. “You are the bravest pilot I have ever seen,” she says, “but what do you think of George W Bush?” to which Yue replies, “I’m better than him, because he can’t speak Chinese, and I’m a better pilot.”
He also explains to another foreign reporter that “war is best avoided, but if it comes, it is better to be prepared”. The reporter is at first surprised but then nods as he slowly comprehends these sage words.
Other reviews of this film have noted its scene-by-scene mimicking of Top Gun – granted it has a motorbike-along-the-runway scene, and it has the two male protagonists at odds who are reconciled at the end.
