What exactly is this controversy about? There's a claim that a map in the trailer shows the 9-dash line, but I read the article, and looked at the screenshot shown in the article, and all I see behind the girl is a bunch of colorful blobs that don't resemble any world map I've ever seen.
The map is ridiculous, there is absolutely zero reason to put such a line there, and the intent is completely obvious to anyone who is aware of the situation.
Well, there are dashes elsewhere, like to the green... um... place? And that indicates paths of travel. I don't object to Vietnam or the Philippines pushing back against China's aggressive pushing for the 9-dash map, so I'm not criticizing what they're doing here. But I don't actually think that's what is going on with this map.
Exactly my thoughts. These censors have much more imaginations than we have. The best I could see is actually a 8 (not 9) dash line right of "Asia" and below a hashtag (whatever that is)
Asia + dash line is obviously a deliberate message on a very controversial subject. Saying that "you are imagining it all, it's all in your minds" is gaslightning them.
No way this is an accident or a mistake. For them, the dash line is as iconic as sporting the Hitler moustache, or having 1488 personalized plates on a car. You can't claim you didn't know.
Except that there are other dashed lines on the map, dashed lines are a common way of denoting travel on maps, and the dashes in question are higher up than the disputed border is. Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." (or in this case, an understandable lack of global knowledge that some lines on an obviously childish map might cause an issue because they are very slightly similar to a real and much more detailed map.)
Did you watch the trailer? There's absolutely no reason for that map to be there (nor situation, nor dialog), it takes the whole frame, and the point in question is perfectly focused.
The best good faith interpretation I could give to it is that someone in the studio is a pro-chinese, or paid by a pro-chinese, and they sneakely included the map + lines without anyone noticing (due to ignorance). All the other bullshit lines, hastags, suns... are there to not make it blatantly obvious and have plausible deniability. But the dashed line is there on purpose.
All I can encourage is that people go look at a picture of the scene in question. It's a childlike drawing with no relation to real world geography at all. Its not "similar but wrong", it's utterly unrecognisable. It's there to show that the main character has no understanding of geography...
That's what I did, and I agree. The only thing recognizable is the text at the top saying "map of the world". Everything else looks to me like just a bunch of blobs that don't resemble any world map I've ever seen, in any orientation, but I just got a bunch of downvotes for writing this. I don't know what everyone else is seeing here.
Of course, I'm just going off the one little photo in the article. I'm not going to watch some stupid trailer. If someone writes an article making a claim about a map in a movie or trailer, it's their responsibility to provide a still image or screenshot supporting their claim. If they can't do this, and they just say "watch the trailer", I'm going to dismiss their claim as ridiculous and frivolous.
Really? Didn't you recognize the word "Asia"? Didn't you recognize the Malaysian peninsulae, almost the only recognizable part of the "Asia" map? And just to its east, exactly like the sea in question, the dashed line. It's clear in the screenshot, and the frame shows that the part they want you to see isn't America, Europe or Africa: it's "World Map", "Asia" and dashed line.
Even if you hosnestly didn't recognize it, this isn't here for you. This is here for the people who knows. I recall menctioning "1488" in a conversation, and there were more people that didn't have a clue than they do. But if you include a VW Beetle in a movie, with the plates "1488-HH"... that's no mistake, even if only 10% of the viewers get it. That will end with someone fired, and nobody could claim they did it unknowingly. Maybe they though it was a clever joke or an easter egg, but it's not possible by chance.
I'm not saying "you are imagining it all", just that one needs a lot of imagination.
If I were Africa, I'd be offended to look like a melting ice cream. As for Europe, can't even see it on the map. Gone? As for Russia, the largest country on earth, it looks more like it's already belonging to "Asia" (good work Xi!), or if it's that small red country on the left of Asia, then I'd be very offended to look that small. Where is Japan anyway, is that the hashtag (#)?
I think that Asia is actually rotated 90º, and that the panhandle pointing down is actually the Kamchatka peninsula. So Japan sunk into the sea and is represented by the waves.
