china welcomes the end of the world (the movie)
an entertainment tidbit i found funny is how 2012 is a big hit in china. no, the chinese were probably not more impressed by the effects of the catastraporn movie than other ppl around the world. what made the chinese happy was that they were portrayed as instrumental in saving humanity.
“It’s about time the world sees us as a dominant ally,” said Liu Xinliang, 27, a Beijing-based computer programmer who watched the movie twice.
The movie, currently No. 1 in the U.S., is also No. 1 in China, grossing $17.2 million here since it opened Nov. 13.
Like others in a Beijing theater this week, Liu grinned with pride as he watched Chinese troops in the movie escort wealthy and important citizens onto an ark designed to withstand cataclysmic doom.
In the nearly 3-hour feature, the Earth’s core overheats, threatening humanity. Leaders of the world embark on a mission to build an ark in the mountains of central China to house people and animals that can repopulate the planet — a story line many Chinese have praised.
Chinese netizens on popular blogs have been quick to note scenes in the movie perceived as having pro-China messages — Chinese military officers saluting American refugees entering China, China being one of the first nations to agree to open the ark’s gates to admit more refugees, and a U.S. military officer saying that only the Chinese could build an ark of such a scale so quickly.
“I felt really proud to be Chinese as I was watching our (military) officers rescue civilians in need,” said Zhang Ying, 26, an advertising executive in Beijing. “The movie along with (President Barack) Obama’s visit this week made me realize that China has become a respected country on the world stage.”
At a theater in central Beijing, hoards of people lined up to buy tickets.
“It’s been sold out every night. They all want to watch China save the world,” a ticket attendant said with a laugh.
with that bit out of the way, i’m going to critique the movie a bit. at overthinking it, the blogger notes a really critical piece of engineering stupidity. a major plot point for the finale is that for some unexplained reason, the ark that’s built to save humanity can’t start it’s engines until the backdoor is fully closed. that’s one of the dumbest things i’ve ever heard. why on earth would u link a critical system like the ship engines to the door-is-ajar signal?
the other thing was their plan to save earth’s exotic animals. they flew big asian and african game in pairs up to the arks just like in the bible. and this ark is located in the upper reaches of the himalayas. if those animals didn’t die from losing body parts to frostbite, it should be obvious in this day and age that something like that wouldn’t work. the animal pairs that were saved would probably all go extinct from mutational meltdown. the inbreeding would accumulate and just cause too much disfigurement and genetic disease to be sustainable. even then, what would ppl feed them? their entire habitat just disappeared. would we be feeding pandas some left over MREs?
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