Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film Oppenheimer has set off a wave of excitement among moviegoers in China ahead of the movie’s scheduled release in the country later this month.
On July 25, Universal Pictures’ official account on Weibo – China’s Twitter-like social media platform – announced that the film is set to open on August 30.
The highly-anticipated news for the director’s large mainland fanbase arrived days after the movie’s premiere in Hong Kong on July 20, and global opening on July 21.
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Thousands of people welcomed the announcement on Weibo, with one person commenting: “Better late than never.”
The news has shocked some who thought its mainland release was “out of the question” due to the R rating it received in the United States for sexuality, nudity and language.
Some people also feared that its anti-Communist content would not pass muster with strict political censorship rules in China.
The biopic starring Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt and Matt Damon focuses on the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist who led the Manhattan Project that developed the first nuclear weapons, and is known as the “father of the atomic bomb”.
The film also features a hearing held after World War II, during which Oppenheimer was charged for his past Communist affiliations.
Film critic influencer, Guangying Xintiandi, said in his blog that the news means the film has passed the censorship test, adding however, that “it is unknown whether the mainland version will alter lines or captions.”
Expectations for the film have also been high on mainland social media as the Manhattan Project led to atomic bombs being dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which arguably resulted in Japan’s unconditional surrender and the end of its invasion of China.
As for the nude scenes, some social media observers speculate that the mainland version will copy what was done in India and the Middle East by adding a CGI black dress on topless Jean Tatlock, played by Florence Pugh, in a sex scene.
“It was better done this way than pruning the whole scene,” said one online observer.
Another person guessed the nude scenes would be cropped so there was no “sensitive content” left, referring to the famous example of Chinese actress Fan Bingbing’s 2014 television series Saga of Wu Zetian, in which the cleavages of female characters were expunged, leaving only close-up headshots.
Calls for a film rating system in mainland China have also been reignited online.
Christopher Nolan has built a dedicated fanbase on the mainland thanks to his hit sci-fi features Inception and Interstellar, both of which made the top 10 of the Douban Top 250 Film List - algorithmically ranked according to over 170 million ratings and reviews left by users of the country’s best-known ratings site.
Interstellar earned US$122 million in China, accounting for 26 per cent of the worldwide box office in 2014, according to Forbes.
Some mainlanders have travelled to Hong Kong to watch Oppenheimer even after the mainland release was announced in order to “watch the full version and watch it sooner”.
While film influencers spread the news that several Hong Kong cinemas will exclusively screen the 35mm film of the movie in Asia, some film fans also opted for Hong Kong cinemas for a finer visual experience.
Hong Kong Broadway Circuit has also arranged a special 35mm screening for mainland filmgoers this month.
Despite the fact that China limits the number of overseas films imported each year, mainland filmgoers took advantage of the annual Beijing and Shanghai film festivals, during which hundreds of classic and latest foreign films are screened across the two cities’ theatres.
Another hyped blockbuster Barbie, which sparked the worldwide “Barbenheimer” phenomenon, coined because of the films’ similar release dates, hit mainland theatres on July 21 and instantly took off to rave reviews, especially from feminists.
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