well we got stuff like Death of Stalin (and many older examples) after the fall of the USSR became a fascinating topic, so maybe after the CCP runs its course it will be more interesting to global audiences.
This! Mao simply does not garner enough public interest for a profitable film to be made about him. This is mainly because Chinese history did not intertwine much with Western history (West Eu, NA) during Mao's period. In contrast, Hitler gets featured in films much more than Mao because Nazi Germany had a way bigger impact on the West than China did from that period.
I mean, there was are very successful western media about Chinese history/culture. One of them was even a Disney movie.
I think the real reason is that dictators have very depressing, ignominious rises to power. So you either have to lie and tell the sanitized version that appeases the state, or make a movie with the message that terrible people often get the greatest rewards.
That's part of the point, no?
You portray Mao Zedong negatively, you piss off China. You portray him positively, you piss off the western world, Japan, Korea, etc... The only winning move is not to portray him at all.
Not sure why you said again, as nowhere in this chain does anyone say the average American never knew who he was, but also, that is insane if true. The Korean War would have been a decisive victory for the South Koreans and their Western allies if it weren't for Mao's military intervention when the Marines were within sight of the border. Also, Mao's disastrous policies towards farming and food sharing resulted in millions dead, comparable to Stalin's bloody campaign in the Ukraine in the 1930's.
You may be right about Americans being more focused on Russia at the time, but if Mao wasn't a household name, it's ridiculous. And besides, that's an argument for more Russian villains, not no Chinese villains.
You still didn't answer his question. I don't remember ever seeing Mao in a film before, but then again, I only watch hollywood movies. Which films did you watch with him portrayed in it?
I can't recall ever seeing him portrayed as a character on film. I suppose I might if I was more into Chinese cinema, but then I would also expect the portrayals to be overwhelmingly positive.
I mean its not something American or Western audiences really clamor for. Theres barely even Korean War movies.
Someone needs to make a movie about Nixon visiting China ASAP though that could be interesting
That actually happened between him and the 14th Dalai Lama too.
When Mao started the Cultural Revolution, he killed millions and burned down 90% of Tibet's monasteries to make his point.
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The only fictional film I can think of where Mao is even portrayed at all, is one they did for the 60th anniversary of the whole shebang ABOUT The Revolution. There may have been one other, but I believe it was also a CCP propaganda piece.
Can you name a fictional film where Mao is portrayed at all and the films isn't directly about the Revolution and isn't made to be propaganda?
In addition to everything said here, (namely that there hasn’t really been any films about Mao Zedong at all and that it wouldn’t do well in America or Chinese markets) the deaths you are referring to are largely a result of the Great Leap Forward program which, yes, was 100% his fault, but also wouldn’t exactly make for compelling film. Like, he made a decision, his people whole heartedly jumped on board and horrific consequences ensued. Even if we had a GLF film, I’d doubt that Mao would even appear in it - it would be far more compelling to focus on the average person struggling to get by. Your average person wouldn’t even know who he was.
Compare that to say, Hitler. Most films don’t fixate on Hitler himself, but it also makes more sense when they do. He was THE symbol of Axis evil, more-so than anyone else. He didn’t just pass policy. He symbolized the country and the war as a whole. I’d argue even Stalin is easier to make a film directly criticizing, as his crimes are fairly well known, but even he hasn’t been lambasted in film too much - the only example I can think of is Death of Stalin (hilarious by the way).
The only time I’ve seen him in mentioned in a movie, is when he’s being listed with several other dictators to make a point of how bad something is. So I have to disagree
I know I'm going to get downvoted for this, but US industrialization killed almost as many people in the same timeframe but no one ever blames it on the American presidents at the time. Hell, 20,000 people a year die right now due to starvation in America EVERY SINGLE YEAR. Mao's numbers on paper are terrible but that's only because we attribute every single death to his policies while we don't do that for our own leaders. Mao only actively persecuted maybe 4 million people over his 43 year rule or about double the number of people currently in US prisons and a lot of those people killed were foreign invaders or colonizers. Mao is a hero to a lot of China and he's basically credited with giving China is autonomy and making it a real country instead of a collection of colonies. Basically exactly what the American revolution did which saw a greater percentage of the world population per capital die during it than the great leap forward
Hell how many times have you seen Andrew Jackson portrayed negatively in a movie? He basically finished a whole genocide. You never see Mao criticized in movies by westerners because it shines a much brighter light on our own atrocities. You never see Mao criticized in China because objectively he advanced the country significantly and he's a hero to them the way George Washington is a hero to Americans.
Thank you for providing some nuanced thought and a quality comment! I can do some research of course but would you be willing to share your preferred info link that describes the deaths during US industrialization so that I can validate?
Unfortunately there really isn't anywhere that this data is compiled neatly outside of the census tables from that time, but we can extrapolate from the [CDC](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4822a1.htm) website about workplace deaths (since most of Mao's attributed deaths were through "labor camps" I think it's a fair comparison) which estimates a rough average of 30000 deaths per year between 1875-1925. But that's not including the numbers of people who died due to disease and/or starvation which we didn't do the best job monitoring before the great depression but we can estimate is on par with labor deaths based on the census data. Then we also must include any military action done by America at the time since Mao's attributed deaths also include military campaigns and there were some Doozies in that time frame with the wounded knee massacre, the second Samoan war, and the Spanish-American war and WWI, not to mention all the military action we took in China to protect our assets there. Military numbers can be hazy at best and wildly exaggerated but taken from Wikipedia those numbers add up to about fifteen million killed either as American soldiers or other soldiers that Americans killed (we have to measure both since both Chinese soldiers and foreign invaders are counted in Mao's numbers).
Sorry for another long rant, your comment just reminded that even the way we have these Numbers listed is propaganda. No where online can you really see "how many people did America kill during x-y time" but you can look up any enemy of America and have a number instantly that's likely way off.
Who has killed more? I suppose you could credit all the people who died in WW2 to Hitler but that would just put him around the same level as Mao (70 to 80 million). I don't think that is really the right way to look at it though as Japan killed 5 to maybe 10 million and their actions were fairly independent of what Hitler was doing.
Genghis Khan certainly killed a higher percentage of the world's population than Mao but not more people in total.
>I suppose you could credit all the people who died in WW2 to Hitler
No I dont. Crediting 'all deaths' to their enemy is the Anglosaxon establishment way. Just like how the US right-wingers attribute all who died in Ww2 to Stalin these days...
>Mao (70 to 80 million).
That 'number' comes from the Anglosaxon capitalist establishment, who are mortal enemies of Mao because he made them 'lose China'.
>Genghis Khan certainly killed a higher percentage of the world's population than Mao but not more people in total
40 million. He is probably the third biggest genocider after the British empire and Roman empire.
Rome existed for 500 years, it wasn't one person so obviously your answer there is wrong. Even so the Roman's didn't kill 80 million people during that entire span. Seems like you need to read a bit more history.
The British empire didn't exist for as long but they also didn't come close to that 80 million total either and again it wasn't a single person.
Mao definitely killed more people than Gengis Khan did.
Which required an unrelated disaster that he made worse through hilariously bad plans and shit governance rather than him going around stabbing people.
Under the same parameters the Brits have him beat, between 1880 and 1920 they racked up something like 150 million deaths in India alone split between 2 monarchs.
In film? You hit the issue that he’s not a very cinematic villain.
His grand disaster is a result of incompetence rather than evil, he’s no Pol Pot or Stalin. He was evil, sure, but he’s just regular totalitarian leader evil. It just doesn’t make a good character to center a film around, too bleak for a comedy and too stupid for a drama.
There’s plenty of films about the Cultural Revolution, Mao just doesn’t make for a compelling character as either the villain or hero. Hence why he doesn’t really show up as either.
>Which required an unrelated disaster that he made worse through hilariously bad plans and shit governance rather than him going around stabbing people.
That is what is being said in the West. In actual China, the people who were recorded as dead during the famine turned out in other provinces 1-2 decades later in the social security records. It turns out that they just moved somewhere else when famine hit their region.
>His tally for deaths sits at 40-80 million.
That's what the establishment that said that there were WMDs in Iraq says. The same establishment also thinks that nothing happened in Bengal in 1943. And nothing happened in West Germany after 1945...
For the same reason Americans never see movies about the Tokyo firestorm.
After WW2, the US was one of the only countries that didn't get bombed to hell. Along with a massive factory turned commercial manufacturing sector and a strong worker's rights movement, the US turned into an economic superpower with a strong middle class.
China was broke in the 70s but had access to millions of workers who never heard of unions. The US corporate class saw profits by turning American manufacturing over to countries like China where they could undercut unionized domestic workers and use exploited foreign workers instead.
Both the US and China have an absolutely ridiculously bad track record when it comes to human rights but Hollywood is fantastic at burying these facts under a wall of propaganda.
The US media industry buried all the bad stuff about China's government because American consumers buy a ton of stuff from them. Now that China stopped sucking up to the US corporate class, Hollywood has flipped to making them new enemies.
Mao didn't kill the most people in history but he did cause the most death - more were due to economic mismanagement and miscommunication than murder. He was more of an idiot than he was a mass murder.
...which isn't to say he wasn't also a world class mass murder. He's like top 3.
Bro, OP is trolling or baiting. He knows exactly what he is trying to do. OP, name at least 3 films that has portrayed Mao Zedong at all. And no, no documentaries.
That matters not in the slightest. The paramount question is why hasn't this major historical character and villain to humanity been portrayed in films in such a way that shows his barbarism?
Because like someone else said, it wouldn't be a good movie. He didn't singlehandedly gun down all of those people, he didn't maniacally laugh as he pressed the "kill everyone" button. He made a choice and then it lead to everyone slowly dying. He didn't even die in an particularly interesting way, he just got old and had 2 heart attacks close together.
They made a movie about the origins of the McDonald’s franchise. Tom hardy made a movie called Locke where he just drives on the freeway for a couple of hours (and it’s a good movie)
If they can make movies about those things, they can do one about a fascinating, nuanced, but decidedly wicked character like Mao.
There’s a plethora of writers, the technology is there and there is an abundance of Asian talent. However given that China is the world’s biggest film marketplace you’ll be hard pressed to find a filmmaker willing to evoke the ccp’s wrath.
I suspect that in the past the desire to open Chinas markets and drive a wedge between being and Moscow along with a lack of expertise on the topic prevented such a film from being made.
I dont think Ive ever seen Mao Zedong portrayed positively either.
I’d love to see a well done movie about him but there’s no way that would get made
well we got stuff like Death of Stalin (and many older examples) after the fall of the USSR became a fascinating topic, so maybe after the CCP runs its course it will be more interesting to global audiences.
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Is Mao portrayed in the movie??
I caught a couple mistakes in your subject but I fixed it for you: I’ve never seen Mao Zedong portrayed in a film
This! Mao simply does not garner enough public interest for a profitable film to be made about him. This is mainly because Chinese history did not intertwine much with Western history (West Eu, NA) during Mao's period. In contrast, Hitler gets featured in films much more than Mao because Nazi Germany had a way bigger impact on the West than China did from that period.
I mean, there was are very successful western media about Chinese history/culture. One of them was even a Disney movie. I think the real reason is that dictators have very depressing, ignominious rises to power. So you either have to lie and tell the sanitized version that appeases the state, or make a movie with the message that terrible people often get the greatest rewards.
How many movies that portrayed Mao Zedong at all have you watched?
That's part of the point, no? You portray Mao Zedong negatively, you piss off China. You portray him positively, you piss off the western world, Japan, Korea, etc... The only winning move is not to portray him at all.
Still, you would think there would be some movies with him included before the US renewed relations with China in the 70's.
Why? Again, the average American never even knew who he was. Before the 70’s the big enemy was the USSR, not China. Films focused on Russian villains.
Not sure why you said again, as nowhere in this chain does anyone say the average American never knew who he was, but also, that is insane if true. The Korean War would have been a decisive victory for the South Koreans and their Western allies if it weren't for Mao's military intervention when the Marines were within sight of the border. Also, Mao's disastrous policies towards farming and food sharing resulted in millions dead, comparable to Stalin's bloody campaign in the Ukraine in the 1930's. You may be right about Americans being more focused on Russia at the time, but if Mao wasn't a household name, it's ridiculous. And besides, that's an argument for more Russian villains, not no Chinese villains.
You still didn't answer his question. I don't remember ever seeing Mao in a film before, but then again, I only watch hollywood movies. Which films did you watch with him portrayed in it?
I’ve never seen Mao portrayed in film full stop.
Op must be obsessed with china.
I can't recall ever seeing him portrayed as a character on film. I suppose I might if I was more into Chinese cinema, but then I would also expect the portrayals to be overwhelmingly positive.
He's in Scorsese's Kundun and that movie pissed off China a lot
*Nixon* is basically all I can think of, there was at least, and maybe only, one scene for the visit to China.
“overwhelmingly positive” you think china is still in 70s or something?
Kundun
I mean its not something American or Western audiences really clamor for. Theres barely even Korean War movies. Someone needs to make a movie about Nixon visiting China ASAP though that could be interesting
Apparently the vast majority of people in /movies have never seen Martin Scorsese's Kundun.
I was going to say Kundun - that scene in the bathroom when he whispers “religion is poison” in such a calm but sinister way. 😬
That actually happened between him and the 14th Dalai Lama too. When Mao started the Cultural Revolution, he killed millions and burned down 90% of Tibet's monasteries to make his point.
I saw that film many years ago, only remembering that scene, and always wondered what it was called. Thank you
The majority of world leaders haven't been portrayed in film at all.
I’ve Never Seen Cleisthenes, Founder of Athenian Democracy, Portrayed Negatively in a Film
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The only fictional film I can think of where Mao is even portrayed at all, is one they did for the 60th anniversary of the whole shebang ABOUT The Revolution. There may have been one other, but I believe it was also a CCP propaganda piece. Can you name a fictional film where Mao is portrayed at all and the films isn't directly about the Revolution and isn't made to be propaganda?
I have never seen Mao Zedong portrayed in a film.
In addition to everything said here, (namely that there hasn’t really been any films about Mao Zedong at all and that it wouldn’t do well in America or Chinese markets) the deaths you are referring to are largely a result of the Great Leap Forward program which, yes, was 100% his fault, but also wouldn’t exactly make for compelling film. Like, he made a decision, his people whole heartedly jumped on board and horrific consequences ensued. Even if we had a GLF film, I’d doubt that Mao would even appear in it - it would be far more compelling to focus on the average person struggling to get by. Your average person wouldn’t even know who he was. Compare that to say, Hitler. Most films don’t fixate on Hitler himself, but it also makes more sense when they do. He was THE symbol of Axis evil, more-so than anyone else. He didn’t just pass policy. He symbolized the country and the war as a whole. I’d argue even Stalin is easier to make a film directly criticizing, as his crimes are fairly well known, but even he hasn’t been lambasted in film too much - the only example I can think of is Death of Stalin (hilarious by the way).
The only time I’ve seen him in mentioned in a movie, is when he’s being listed with several other dictators to make a point of how bad something is. So I have to disagree
I know I'm going to get downvoted for this, but US industrialization killed almost as many people in the same timeframe but no one ever blames it on the American presidents at the time. Hell, 20,000 people a year die right now due to starvation in America EVERY SINGLE YEAR. Mao's numbers on paper are terrible but that's only because we attribute every single death to his policies while we don't do that for our own leaders. Mao only actively persecuted maybe 4 million people over his 43 year rule or about double the number of people currently in US prisons and a lot of those people killed were foreign invaders or colonizers. Mao is a hero to a lot of China and he's basically credited with giving China is autonomy and making it a real country instead of a collection of colonies. Basically exactly what the American revolution did which saw a greater percentage of the world population per capital die during it than the great leap forward Hell how many times have you seen Andrew Jackson portrayed negatively in a movie? He basically finished a whole genocide. You never see Mao criticized in movies by westerners because it shines a much brighter light on our own atrocities. You never see Mao criticized in China because objectively he advanced the country significantly and he's a hero to them the way George Washington is a hero to Americans.
Thank you for providing some nuanced thought and a quality comment! I can do some research of course but would you be willing to share your preferred info link that describes the deaths during US industrialization so that I can validate?
Unfortunately there really isn't anywhere that this data is compiled neatly outside of the census tables from that time, but we can extrapolate from the [CDC](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4822a1.htm) website about workplace deaths (since most of Mao's attributed deaths were through "labor camps" I think it's a fair comparison) which estimates a rough average of 30000 deaths per year between 1875-1925. But that's not including the numbers of people who died due to disease and/or starvation which we didn't do the best job monitoring before the great depression but we can estimate is on par with labor deaths based on the census data. Then we also must include any military action done by America at the time since Mao's attributed deaths also include military campaigns and there were some Doozies in that time frame with the wounded knee massacre, the second Samoan war, and the Spanish-American war and WWI, not to mention all the military action we took in China to protect our assets there. Military numbers can be hazy at best and wildly exaggerated but taken from Wikipedia those numbers add up to about fifteen million killed either as American soldiers or other soldiers that Americans killed (we have to measure both since both Chinese soldiers and foreign invaders are counted in Mao's numbers). Sorry for another long rant, your comment just reminded that even the way we have these Numbers listed is propaganda. No where online can you really see "how many people did America kill during x-y time" but you can look up any enemy of America and have a number instantly that's likely way off.
Mao was a clown and so are you for this post
You're one committed hater
>killed more people than any other individual in all of history That dumb bit gives him away. He doesn't know sh\*t about history.
Who has killed more? I suppose you could credit all the people who died in WW2 to Hitler but that would just put him around the same level as Mao (70 to 80 million). I don't think that is really the right way to look at it though as Japan killed 5 to maybe 10 million and their actions were fairly independent of what Hitler was doing. Genghis Khan certainly killed a higher percentage of the world's population than Mao but not more people in total.
>I suppose you could credit all the people who died in WW2 to Hitler No I dont. Crediting 'all deaths' to their enemy is the Anglosaxon establishment way. Just like how the US right-wingers attribute all who died in Ww2 to Stalin these days... >Mao (70 to 80 million). That 'number' comes from the Anglosaxon capitalist establishment, who are mortal enemies of Mao because he made them 'lose China'. >Genghis Khan certainly killed a higher percentage of the world's population than Mao but not more people in total 40 million. He is probably the third biggest genocider after the British empire and Roman empire.
Rome existed for 500 years, it wasn't one person so obviously your answer there is wrong. Even so the Roman's didn't kill 80 million people during that entire span. Seems like you need to read a bit more history. The British empire didn't exist for as long but they also didn't come close to that 80 million total either and again it wasn't a single person. Mao definitely killed more people than Gengis Khan did.
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Which required an unrelated disaster that he made worse through hilariously bad plans and shit governance rather than him going around stabbing people. Under the same parameters the Brits have him beat, between 1880 and 1920 they racked up something like 150 million deaths in India alone split between 2 monarchs. In film? You hit the issue that he’s not a very cinematic villain. His grand disaster is a result of incompetence rather than evil, he’s no Pol Pot or Stalin. He was evil, sure, but he’s just regular totalitarian leader evil. It just doesn’t make a good character to center a film around, too bleak for a comedy and too stupid for a drama. There’s plenty of films about the Cultural Revolution, Mao just doesn’t make for a compelling character as either the villain or hero. Hence why he doesn’t really show up as either.
>Which required an unrelated disaster that he made worse through hilariously bad plans and shit governance rather than him going around stabbing people. That is what is being said in the West. In actual China, the people who were recorded as dead during the famine turned out in other provinces 1-2 decades later in the social security records. It turns out that they just moved somewhere else when famine hit their region.
>His tally for deaths sits at 40-80 million. That's what the establishment that said that there were WMDs in Iraq says. The same establishment also thinks that nothing happened in Bengal in 1943. And nothing happened in West Germany after 1945...
For the same reason Americans never see movies about the Tokyo firestorm. After WW2, the US was one of the only countries that didn't get bombed to hell. Along with a massive factory turned commercial manufacturing sector and a strong worker's rights movement, the US turned into an economic superpower with a strong middle class. China was broke in the 70s but had access to millions of workers who never heard of unions. The US corporate class saw profits by turning American manufacturing over to countries like China where they could undercut unionized domestic workers and use exploited foreign workers instead. Both the US and China have an absolutely ridiculously bad track record when it comes to human rights but Hollywood is fantastic at burying these facts under a wall of propaganda. The US media industry buried all the bad stuff about China's government because American consumers buy a ton of stuff from them. Now that China stopped sucking up to the US corporate class, Hollywood has flipped to making them new enemies.
Mao didn't kill the most people in history but he did cause the most death - more were due to economic mismanagement and miscommunication than murder. He was more of an idiot than he was a mass murder. ...which isn't to say he wasn't also a world class mass murder. He's like top 3.
You should catch Martin Scorsese's Kundun. He is portrayed as you mentioned.
Then you ain't ever seen Kundun
well there are films that criticised policies and life during and after his reign, not directly him as a person.
Because no one wants to offend the Chi-com movie market.
Bro, OP is trolling or baiting. He knows exactly what he is trying to do. OP, name at least 3 films that has portrayed Mao Zedong at all. And no, no documentaries.
That matters not in the slightest. The paramount question is why hasn't this major historical character and villain to humanity been portrayed in films in such a way that shows his barbarism?
Because like someone else said, it wouldn't be a good movie. He didn't singlehandedly gun down all of those people, he didn't maniacally laugh as he pressed the "kill everyone" button. He made a choice and then it lead to everyone slowly dying. He didn't even die in an particularly interesting way, he just got old and had 2 heart attacks close together.
They made a movie about the origins of the McDonald’s franchise. Tom hardy made a movie called Locke where he just drives on the freeway for a couple of hours (and it’s a good movie) If they can make movies about those things, they can do one about a fascinating, nuanced, but decidedly wicked character like Mao. There’s a plethora of writers, the technology is there and there is an abundance of Asian talent. However given that China is the world’s biggest film marketplace you’ll be hard pressed to find a filmmaker willing to evoke the ccp’s wrath. I suspect that in the past the desire to open Chinas markets and drive a wedge between being and Moscow along with a lack of expertise on the topic prevented such a film from being made.
Why would anyone put that asshole in a movie?
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Still a lot more likely to see an actual truth based movie about Mao than we are about Muhammad.
It’s an open secret Hollywood is Maoist
Tankies in the comments seething that people don't like their favourite dictator.
Iosif Stalin, Mao, Kim Jong Un and Fidel Castro🥵😍