Chinese government pirates Top Gun for "military footage"

[knapplc]

Chinese air force drill looks awfully similar to ‘Top Gun’
By Joe Pompeo

On Jan. 23, China's state broadcaster, CCTV, ran a story about an air force training exercise that contained some suspicious footage.

Around the segment's one minute 12 seconds mark (see above), as the China-U.S.-oriented blog Ministry of Tofu pointed out, "the way a target was hit by the air-to-air missile fired by a J-10 fighter aircraft and exploded looks almost identical to a cinema scene from the Hollywood film Top Gun."

Viewers were led to believe that what they were seeing was a live fire exercise. But according to Ministry of Tofu: "A net user who went by the name "刘毅" (Liu Yi) pointed out that the jet that the J-10 'hit' is an F-5, a US fighter jet. In Top Gun, what the leading actor Tom Cruise pilots an F-14 to bring down is exactly an F-5. Looking at the screenshots juxtaposition, one cannot fail to find that even flame, smoke and the way the splinters fly look the same."

Not convinced? The Wall Street Journal's China Real Time Report put the videos side-by-side.

(Click headline for side-by-side videos)

[scottaa1]

BWAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!! That's hilarious. First they faked the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, now this. I suppose for their next act they will open a China Star buffet on the moon.

That newscaster lady sure is pretty

I'm pretty sure that pilot they interviewed was saying in Mandarin chinese that "Mi llamo Maverick."

[biju]

I was just in Beijing and if you've never seen the CCTV building here it is:



The folks in Beijing have a nickname for it: Big Underwear. Anyway, they seem to really hate that building and thoroughly enjoyed it when it caught fire and burned down from fireworks (it has since been rebuilt).

As for the video footage, this doesn't surprise me. What does surprise me is that they would decide to use a very popular movie instead of an obscure one. My guess is they will look into that for the next video release.

[lmcjaho]

Holy. Crap. I just about peed myself laughing at that. Thanks knapp.