It would be difficult to find anyone in the world who doesn't think the air combat scenes in "Top Gun" are some of the most impressive aerial stunts ever captured on film. That definitely extends to the People's Republic of China, which thought they were so awesome, they tried to pass it off as their own air force.
The Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force, a group known to be knowledgeable about copying the work of others, tried to do it once more in a 2011 video. Aired on China Central Television (CCTV), China's state broadcast network, the footage claimed to be from a recent PLAAF air combat exercise.
CCTV broadcast the story featuring interviews with senior Chinese military leaders, edited with footage of fighter planes hitting targets with missiles, which then exploded. When the story was published to the internet, commenters began noticing they'd seen this footage before.
The fighter in question was supposedly a Chengdu J-10 Vigorous Dragon air superiority fighter. All seemed to be a standard military story until just after one minute into the clip, when the missile destroys its intended target.
One commenter pointed out that the J-10's "target" was actually an American Northrop F-5 light fighter plane, destroyed by Maverick in the last scene of the 1986 film "Top Gun." The commenter put the two shots side by side, noting that the flames, smoke and debris all exploded the same way.
At the time, spokespeople from CCTV declined to comment on the story, but it was taken down from the Chinese state broadcaster's website.
According to the BBC, using footage from other sources, even American entertainment sources, is a common occurrence at CCTV. The company uses "inappropriate" sources, says the BBC, because the real footage isn't good or compelling enough to fit the story or because it is simply being lazy in its reporting.
In the past, Chinese state media has been fooled by "reporting" from the satirical news website The Onion, and in 2007, the state-run Xinhua news agency used a photo of a Homer Simpson X-ray in a real story about genetic testing and multiple sclerosis.
The story of stolen "Top Gun" in Chinese propaganda footage sent the internet ablaze, prompting The Wall Street Journal to run video of the two scenes in a side-by-side comparison. It went so viral that even Chinese bloggers and websites showed the story, despite the Great Firewall of China that shields so many of its citizens from external influence.
They may be able to steal designs for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, but there's no way even the Chinese Communist Party can get away with stealing scenes from the most popular air combat movie of all time.
-- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on Facebook.
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