Jake Tapper criticized Hollywood studios for censoring American films so that they adhere to China’s strict content censors on Tuesday.
The CNN host announced last week he would spend a portion of his show for the duration of the Beijing Olympics highlighting the “horrors” of the county’s communist regime.
“Behind the fanfare and the glamor of the upcoming Olympic Games are a lot of ugly truths that the Chinese government wants you to ignore,” Tapper said while announcing a segment called “Behind China’s Wall.”
Tapper has hit China’s government for its abuses of ethnic and religious minorities, as well as its treatment of everyday citizens. He saved his criticism on Tuesday for Hollywood, which as an industry creates films with China’s strict censors in mind.
Tapper noted that the jacket worn by Tom Cruise in the Top Gun sequel had been altered to remove a Taiwanese flag, and he asked author Erich Schwartzel to explain why.
“In the time between the original Top Gun and this reboot, China’s box office has grown to be the biggest in the world,” said Schwartzel. “And any movie produced by a Hollywood studio as expensive as Top Gun needs that market often to turn a profit. So that means that even down to something as small as a flag on a jacket might need to be removed in case it offends the Chinese censors who decide whether or not it will get into those theaters.”
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The storyline angered the Chinese, and so the enemy in the film was altered in post-production, at considerable cost, to be North Korea.
Schwartzel said:
MGM spent a million dollars hiring a visual effects firm here in Burbank to go in and swap out the flags, swap out the dialogue and make it a North Korean invasion. Now, critics and even the writers of the film itself pointed out it was a little less plausible than a Chinese invasion. But nonetheless, this lesson was absorbed by all of Hollywood, because ever since then, that came out in 2012. Since then, and it’s been more than a decade, we have not had a major studio put into production with China as the villain.
Tapper concluded of Hollywood, “Of course not. Profits above all else.”
Watch above, via CNN.