The arrival of controversy

The poster (as seen in the image) depicts an alien spacecraft superimposed next to a Shanghai landmark in Hong Kong. The humongous spacecraft is seen hovering over Victoria Harbour. Unfortunately, the image of the Oriental Pearl Tower, which is located in Shanghai’s Pudong district, has been photoshopped onto the front of the iconic skyline. So what exactly is the big deal? Why are people freaking out over a poster going viral? By Thursday, there were over 1,500 comments left on the film’s official Facebook page. As you can guess, they were not too kind. One hashtag said it all: #HongKongIsNotChina. If you still can’t pick up on the error, Shanghai is a city in the county of China. Hong Kong, on the other hand, is a city in south-eastern China, which also happens to be a former British colony. Shanghai is in the far north-east and very Chinese, while Hong Kong has always had a very tense past with the mainland. This, no doubt, is a huge blunder by the marketing team of Arrival. This is where being ‘too Western’ comes back to bite you in the you know what. It’s a bigger problem because it comes in a time when the city is preparing for its September Legislative Council election. Dubbed as the ‘Godfather of localism,’ Horace Chin Wan-kan is running in the upcoming election and went on to voice his opinion by saying, “The movie adaptation of the sci-fi novel Arrival, which obtained the Nebula Award, has a decent director Denis Villeneuve and actors Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner. However, everything is ruined by this improper poster.” Unaware of the current turmoil between Beijing and Hong Kong over the past several years, Arrival is set to be released in North America on November 11 of this year. The film is about the main lead played by Amy Adams, an expert linguist, who is called upon by the US government to solve this new alien mystery. Also starring Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker, we’re actually in for a treat, as this film seems to be very different from the current crop of sci-fi films. We’re given a movie where aliens aren’t bull-headedly wanting to destroy our world from the get-go. As promising as the film may look, it just goes to show how carelessness can stir up the wrong type of attention on the other side of the world. A little consideration never hurts anyone, Hollywood. Let’s not get lazy with our research, folks.