Steven Spielberg’s China-set Empire of the Sun – the first American film to be shot in Shanghai since the 1940s – forgot one important element: the Chinese

The movie adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s novel starts strong but ultimately falls short, with questionable creative decisions rendering it dated

Convincing depictions of war-torn Shanghai give way to overly sentimental scenes underscored by underrepresentation of Chinese, despite being shot in China

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Christian Bale in a still from Empire of the Sun.

Published: 7:15am, 8 Jul 2022

The year 1987 was pivotal for international co-productions. Two huge Western films grappling with the intricacies of Chinese history – and shot on Chinese soil – were released, and pitted against each other at the Oscars.

The first was Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor, which risked alienating its hosts with some harsh political home truths. The second was even riskier: a US$30 million Steven Spielberg epic shot partly on location in Shanghai, with a cast of thousands and no stars. No wonder the original director lined up for the project, David Lean, passed.

Based on J.G. Ballard’s 1984 novel of the same name, Empire of the Sun tells the story of English schoolboy Jim Graham (a young Christian Bale), who grows up in Shanghai’s International Settlement expat community. “We’re awfully lucky aren’t we?” he muses, “Living here and having everything.”

In 1941, however, the Japanese occupation of China turns his world upside down. While trying to escape the city, Jim is separated from his parents and is forced to fend for himself, first on the war-torn streets, and later in a POW camp.

Perhaps because of Spielberg’s involvement, the film received unprecedented cooperation from Shanghai Film Studio and the China Film Co-Production Corporation – two of China’s biggest film enterprises – to become the first American film to be shot in Shanghai since the 1940s.