Outshining Tom Cruise isn’t easy. Taking note of the success of the Top Gun phenomenon, Chinese producers—teaming up with the Chinese Air Force—decided to film their own fist-pumping, feel-good blockbuster. Piquing the interest of both the foreign press and those within China, the fighter jet-themed 长空之王, aka “King of the Sky” (marketed outside China as Born to Fly), was immediately dismissed as “China’s Top Gun.”