WAR OVER ARMY EPIC
The summer blockbuster The Founding of an Army has sparked heated discussion on Chinese social media. Xu Fan reports.
The much-anticipated The Founding of an Army has become a hot topic on Chinese social media, also because of opinions expressed by a revolutionary’s grandson.
Ye Daying — the grandson of Ye Ting, the late Communist general — recently made a series of posts to protest the movie on Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.
First, he criticized the producers for casting young pop idol Ou Hao to star as his grandfather. He says he believes Ou is “too sissy” to play the military legend.
Ye Daying also slams Bai Ke, whom he says shot to fame from comic roles and is not fit for serious war epics.
Bai stars as Qu Qiubai, a Communist leader in the late 1920s and early ’30s. Ye Daying, a filmmaker known for his patriotic movies, got more than 20 other descendants of revolutionary heroes to sign an open letter to the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, the sectoral regulator, demanding an apology from the producers.
Set in the late ’20s, The Founding of an Army, a follow-up to The Founding of a Republic (2009) and Beginning of the Great Revival (2011), cast more than 50 pop idols to play New China’s founding fathers or historical figures.
“It could have been a good thing if excellent young actors were hired for this. But the producers recruited heartthrobs for their popularity and the film’s profit,” Ye Daying wrote in the letter.
Directed by Hong Kong filmmaker Andrew Lau, the movie The cast of The Founding of an Army attends the premiere of the movie in Nanchang, Jiangxi province, on July 19. The movie has raked in 270 million yuan ($40 million).
But the producers recruited heartthrobs for their popularity and the film’s profit.” Ye Daying, filmmaker and a grandson of Communist general Ye Ting, protests against the casting of The Founding of an Army
tells four major chapters: Chiang Kai-shek’s purging of Communist Party members on April 12, 1927; the Nanchang Uprising that marks the founding of the People’s Liberation Army in the same year; the Sanheba Battle led by Zhu De in 1927; and the joining of forces on Jinggang Mountain in 1928.
“The Nanchang Uprising is a major chapter in the history of the Party and its armed forces. To give a serious revolutionary tale to a director in the entertainment genre, who knows little about China’s revolutionary history, is a disrespect to that history,” Ye Daying wrote.
Lau, who’s best known for the Infernal Affairs franchise, is the man behind a series of popular gangster thrillers.
For this film, he says he read many books and consulted historians to ensure that history is properly shown.
“I saw the two previous Founding films and watched a number of similar movies. I had to know how such movies were shot on the mainland in the past and what kind of freshness I could bring to the new movie,” Lau said during a promotional event in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, on Saturday.
Ye Daying’s words have led to a heated discussion online, with netizens divided.
While some support his views, others regard the fastpaced tale and its star-studded cast as helpful in drawing the audience to the film and ultimately getting more people to know about the history of the Communist Party’s harsh struggles to found its own army.
The movie had raked in 270 million yuan ($40 million) by Wednesday, trailing Wolf Warrior 2, an action flick based on the special forces, to take the second-highest seat at the box office since both were released on July 27.
Some cast and crew members are on a national tour to promote the film. Since Ye Daying posted his views to his micro blog last week, they have been frequently asked for answers during the tour.
Bai, who stars as the early Party leader, Qu, says he understands.
“He (Ye Daying) is worried that a young man like me may not know and admire the revolutionary heroes. But as a Communist Party member, I have followed their faith (in communism),” Bai said at Saturday’s promotional event in Guangzhou.
As one of the most commercially successful directors in Hong Kong, Lau says he thinks it’s normal to expect good box-office returns for any movie, and this is no different.
The Founding of an Army has been produced by the State-run China Film Group and Bona Film Group, a private company that has successfully developed a formula to use top Hong Kong talent to rework traditional Chinese patriotic movies for a wider viewership and bigger revenue.
Such movies produced by Bona include Tsui Hark’s The Taking of Tiger Mountain and Dante Lam’s Operation Mekong.