In Walt Disney's summer blockbuster, Pearl Harbor, which opened in the United States at the weekend, the ace American fighter pilot played by Ben Affleck says: "Danny, let's play some chicken with these Jap suckers."
In the version of the film to be shown in Japan the line has been changed to, "Danny, let's play some chicken with these Japs, all right?"
Even without such sensitive trimming, the much-hyped movie about Japan's attack on the US fleet on December 7th, 1941 will cause little offence to cinema-goers in Tokyo.
The Japanese pilots are portrayed as brave patriots. One even waves from his cockpit to shoo children away as the bombing starts. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer also took care to convey why the Japanese launched the attack.
The film shows a Japanese general explaining sadly that because of an American oil blockade against Japan, "We have no choice but war", but it gives no hint of the naked Japanese aggression in Asia which provoked the oil embargo.
Thus Hollywood, which once crudely demonised America's erstwhile enemies, nudges history in the opposite direction in the interest of the bottom line.
Home box office receipts are simply not enough to keep the big studios afloat any more, and Tokyo in particular has become a major market for Disney, a conglomerate of theme parks, soft porn cable and movie studios run by Michael Eisner. Disney's space adventure movie Armageddon, also produced by Bruckheimer at a cost of $135 million (#158 million), got 40 per cent of its overseas sales from Japan.
It grossed $550 million worldwide but was still only modestly profitable.
Foreign sales accounted for two-thirds of the record $1.8 billion grossed by Titanic, and of that, $225 million came from the Land of the Rising Sun. Fox Entertainment Group's hit film, Castaway starring Tom Hanks, generated most of its $420 million gross from worldwide sales, which rescued the studio from its disasters like the $75 million flop, Monkeybone.
Pearl Harbor opens in Japan on July 14th at a premiere for 25,000 people.
It is being billed in Tokyo as a day when "love alone was the last paradise left to young people", rather than "a day that will live in infamy" in the immortal words of President Roosevelt. The emphasis on the romance angle reflects the use of focus groups in Japan. They liked the Titanic formula, where a turgid love story is overshadowed by a major disaster.
In Pearl Harbor the build-up to the bombing concentrates on a love triangle with dialogue so turgid that the 40 minutes of ear-piercing pyrotechnics comes as a temporary relief.
One bad movie will not destroy a studio, as Heaven's Gate did to United Artists in the 1970s, but the market value of the parent company can be influenced by the length of the queues at the box office. Fox, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, suffered a write-down in the first quarter, and earnings fell as several movies bombed.
Pearl Harbor, which cost $140 million to produce, making it the most expensive film ever, could add up to 25 cents a share to Disney stock if it justifies the hype, predicted analyst Jill Krutick of Salomon Smith Barney. She upgraded Disney to a buy last week and said Pearl Harbor could lift the gloom that has settled upon Disney, which has seen its stock slump 25 per cent from a 12-month high. Pearl Harbor does seem to be on track to make a profit though it failed to shatter any records, pulling in $75.1 million on Memorial Day weekend compared to $90.2 million for The Lost World, Jurassic Park in 1997.
Disney's satisfaction may be tempered by the stunning success of the number two film at American cinemas this week. Shrek, an animated cartoon from the rival DreamWorks, deconstructs the classic Disney fairy tale by having a smelly ogre win the heart of a foulmouthed princess, much to the fury of the would-be prince, the vain Lord Farquaad. After a record-breaking debut two weekends ago it has taken in $110 million in 10 days and could earn $200 million, double what analysts are predicting for Disney's next cartoon Atlantis which comes out on June 15th. Disney is being beaten in the animated art form with which it is synonymous and from which it makes huge profits - the video-cassette version of Disney's Junglebook made more money than Jurassic Park at the box office. Worse still, Shrek is a brilliant satire on Disneyland.
The dimunitive Lord Farquaad tyrannises a sterile Magic Kingdom and like Michael Eisner refers to his subjects as "cast members". To Hollywood insiders it is a delightful parody, as if Dream Works decided, "let's play some chicken with these Disney suckers".
