Ailing Wushang Cinema’s Next Films Plagiarize Foreign FlicksLin Haodang
2022 July 23
It is no secret that Wushang Cinema Group has had serious financial trouble in the last decade. Since 2014, they have produced little but flops, from the critically panned
The Scholars, and culminating in an 2021 adaptation of
Knights of 1946 that our own critics called “insulting to the source material” and “demeaning to democracy”. However, in a new shareholder meeting held yesterday, they have promised to turn this trend around, announcing five new films in development set to be released in the next couple years.
Wushang has recruited top talent from around the world to write these films, which they say will represent what they are calling the main line of the ‘New Wushang’. But there is only one problem: these foreign top talents were all recruited without their knowledge.
In fact, each of the new films seems to be based heavily on a foreign film, and in some cases blatantly copies their plots. For example, the first of these new films,
Vector World, which is set to release in December, is about a hacker, Xinxin, who, spurred by the mysterious Zhou Gong, discovers that humanity was forced by robots to live in a simulation called the Vector. With the help of Sanqing, the movie’s love interest, he fulfills a prophesy to fight against the machines.
This plot is essentially the same as a movie released in Achkaerin called
The Matrix, right down to the names:
The Matrix’s Neo has the same meaning as Xinxin,
The Matrix’s Morpheus is named for a god of dreams, like Zhou Gong, and
The Matrix’s Trinity is named for the Christian trinity, just as Sanqing is named for the ‘Three Pure Ones’ of traditional religion.
The other announced films are similarly plagiarized.
Romance of the Star War is a copy of East Moreland’s
Star Wars,
TV World is a copy of Tytor’s
The Truman Show,
Miss Huo is a copy of Achkaerin’s
Trixy Holmes, and
Quintelian Vacation is a copy of Mktvartvelo’s
Midsommar.
Vector World
, a copy of Achkaerin’s The Matrix
, is set to release December this yearWhen pressed for comment on allegations that they have simply plagiarised their latest line of films, an Wushang spokesman simply said, “The themes explored in these films are international and part of the human condition. Why should it be a surprise when two countries produce similar movies?” He added that he was particularly excited for
Romance of the Star War, which he hoped would launch a franchise exploring the plotting and archetypes of old in a fresh setting.
Because none of the countries targeted by the plagiarism have treaties with The Democracy, there is little they can do to enforce their copyright in our nation. However, the blatant theft will make it unlikely that these films can be released in the international market. According to a private source near Wushang’s upper management, Wushang is not worried. “Targeting the international market sounds like a good idea, until you realise that you have to translate everything, and even then there’s a chance that you don’t succeed. The board knows exactly what they’re doing.”
Still, this doesn’t seem to have improved the mood of Wushang’s shareholders. Its stock price dropped by 5% shortly after the announcement, and has remained low since. Perhaps copying foreign films has only proven what we thought all along: Wushang Cinema Group has run completely out of talent.