Born to Fly is a film with a backstory much more interesting than the movie itself. One quick glance at the poster tells you everything you need to know: this is a Chinese version of Top Gun, right down to the basic story elements, characters and even color palate – think bluish gray and golden yellow. That similarity has proved to be one of its chief problems both creatively and financially. Born to Fly was conceived to be a cinematic rival to 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick, a celebration of China’s military strengths and ingenuity. Instead, Top Gun: Maverick almost destroyed it entirely.
Apparently, when Joseph Kosinski’s long-awaited legacy sequel hit the eyes of Born to Fly’s writer-director Liu Xiaoshi, as well as the movie’s producers and even the Chinese government, it was decided that their film was so much worse than Maverick that it may be better not to release it at all. This would’ve been quite a blow, considering the expensive tentpole film had already been slated for a September 30th release date, just before National Day. Additionally, the film stars Wang Yibo, a multihyphenate popstar-turned-actor currently amongst the biggest in China. Months after an unceremonious delay, Born to Fly has finally jetted onto our screens, but whether this thinly veiled military advertisement truly takes flight is another matter.
Like Top Gun before it, Born to Fly is pure propaganda. Xiaoshi previously produced promotional videos for the Chinese military, and that slick, dramatically lit “recruitment ad” aesthetic carries over into nearly every scene. Yibo plays Lei Yu, a talented but impulsive pilot whose skills find him recruited to an elite test pilot program for the Chinese air force. Their mission is to successfully develop and test an advanced, “fourth generation” J-20 stealth jet for use on the frontlines, thus putting them on equal footing with the foreign aerial technology that’s so far kept them at a strategic disadvantage. Along the way, Yibo forms a close relationship with his boss and mentor, pilot Zhang Ting (Jun Hu), and struggles with notions of bravery and selflessness as each new test flight brings him closer to the limits of his endurance.
Comparing Born to Fly to Top Gun: Maverick, such as the Chinese Film Bureau did in 2022, does it no favors. From the opening scene, a hectic aerial dogfight between Chinese and ambiguous invading forces (they have vaguely American accents and utter stock dialogue like “we can come and go whenever we please”) Born to Fly’s deficiencies in both CGI and general action-based coherency become immediately apparent. In contrast to Maverick’s impressively practical spectacle, the planes here appear to be rendered models, whilst the actors are airborne only as much as a green screen allows them to be. There’s a distinct lack of clarity to the editing during these action sequences that makes it difficult to understand who’s who or why they’re doing what they’re doing.
From here, the film essentially becomes a series of test flights, and to be fair, these are among Born to Fly’s best scenes. Xiaoshi demonstrates an ability to generate palpable thrills through several sequences that carry white-knuckle tension, such as a scene in which Lei Yu must rescue his jet from a tailspin after a bird strike, or a second act set piece involving mid-air engine failure over a residential district. But in between these tense moments are countless scenes in which characters talk repetitively about jets, or the process of properly folding parachutes. Any attempt at characterization for Lei Yu or otherwise goes only as a deep as “this character has a family” or “this character wants to prove something to his dad.” There’s a somewhat morbid focus on the fatalities that come with this line of work, but instead of framing these deaths as tragic, they are nearly always framed as a noble sacrifice for the greater good. The film ends with a bizarre series of audio recordings containing what appear to be the last words of several different pilots who are about to endure fatal crashes. Whether or not these recordings are real, the decision is in remarkably poor taste. In spite of some decent performances, it becomes depressingly obvious that Xiaoshi’s film is barely interested in crafting a story as much as it is advertising one specific model of plane.
A quick glance at Born to Fly’s IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes pages will reveal a suspiciously high propensity of 5-star ratings, many of which come from accounts that have this as their only listed review. With reviews like, “I know that some Americans still dont [sic] believe that China can make 4th gen fighter jets, well, theyve [sic] made it for real” (taken verbatim from RT), there’s certainly something phony about the film’s overall presence. Still, viewers looking for some aerial thrills may find that Born to Fly satisfies their requirements. And it’s not as if the original Top Gun wasn’t intended as an advertisement – the Tom Cruise vehicle led to a reported 500% increase in naval recruiting. But at least that film contains some iconic imagery, and a surprisingly potent, albeit unintentional, layer of homoeroticism. You’d be hard pressed to find that here. The problem isn’t that Born to Fly is propaganda, it’s that it’s boring propaganda.
Photo courtesy of Well Go USA
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