The Chinese military has published a new propaganda video on the social media platform Weibo that appears to show Chinese bombers attacking a U.S. military base in Guam. Te video is an unexceptional piece of digital saber-rattling between China and the U.S., but the new video might seem oddly familiar to Americans. That’s because the Chinese video includes clips from at least three Hollywood movies: The Rock from 1996, The Hurt Locker from 2008, and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen from 2009.
The video, which was originally posted to the People’s Liberation Army Air Force account on Weibo, is titled “The god of war H-6K goes on the attack!” and shows several planes taking off with the kind of hazy and stylised cinematography you’d see in a professional movie trailer, slowly building to climactic explosions.
The H-6K is China’s upgraded version of an old Soviet plane, but it’s capable of carrying nuclear weapons and was specifically designed to threaten Taiwan and any U.S.-allied ships in the Pacific.
“We are the defenders of the motherland’s aerial security; we have the confidence and ability to always defend the security of the motherland’s skies,” the video’s description says, according to an English-language translation by Reuters.
Several English-language news outlets like Reuters and the South China Morning Post have reported that the target in the new Chinese propaganda video appears to be the U.S. territory of Guam.
The reason to attack Guam (at least virtually) is twofold: First, Guam is the site of a strategic airbase that would be considered the frontline of any potential shooting war with U.S. military adversaries in Asia, including China and North Korea. But obviously the second reason is that the footage is pulled directly from Hollywood movies where Guam, or a landmass somewhat resembling Guam, was the target.
For example, the Chinese video uses a short clip from the 2009 Transformers movie where a huge catlike robot is sent to Earth. But in the Chinese military version, it looks like a missile being directed at a target that eventually explodes. Some of the clips don’t show Guam at all, as the explosion from The Rock, which is set on Alcatraz, off the coast of San Francisco.
(Source: https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2020/09/chinese-propaganda-video-rips-off-hollywood-movies-to-fake-bombing-of-u-s-base/)
