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Moviegoers in China, like the rest of the world, have long been accustomed to seeing jingoistic action stars fighting baddies on behalf of America.
But the heroes of the silver screen in the world's second-largest market are increasingly flying the Chinese flag, as the country's newly assertive foreign policy plays out in film.
This month a new action film, Operation Red Sea, hits cinemas as part of the bumper lunar new year movie season.
It loosely tells the true story of the Chinese Navy evacuating hundreds of Chinese and foreign nationals from Yemen during a conflict three years ago.
It is being hailed as China's first modern naval film, and bears many similarities in style and substance to Hollywood action epics.
"These days there is more and more news in China about the military, perhaps reflecting the global environment and China becoming a great power," Beijing-based film and box office analyst Jiang Yong said.
"It's influencing young people more."
Operation Red Sea was co-produced by the Chinese Navy's media arm, and comes hot on the heels of a similar film that smashed Chinese box office records last year.
Wolf Warrior 2 told the story of a Chinese mercenary who protected Chinese workers and local civilians from a villainous Western arms dealer in Africa.
Like Hollywood films in the past, it pumped with patriotic fervour.
"Wolf Warrior 2's success was due to a number of factors," Mr Jiang said.
"The director Wu Jing had a lot of overseas experience including in the US, so the style of the film was very international.
"And at the time when the film was released, China and India had a tense border stand-off, so this helped focus people's attention on these sorts of themes".
New direction for Chinese cinema
Once upon a time, a film about Chinese soldiers or mercenaries intervening in foreign conflicts would have seemed radical.
But under President Xi Jinping, the country has opened its first military base in the horn of Africa and is gradually shedding its foreign non-interference principal to protect its sizeable interests abroad.
"As China moves out into intervention in territories beyond its own borders, it stands to reason, like Hollywood before it, that its films should reflect that reality," American journalist and China Film Insider website founder Jonathan Landreth said.
"It's a bit ham-fisted, but so were American movies during the war period in the middle of the century and later during the Vietnam period, but Rambo was popular the world over."
China's Government wants to spread soft power globally through film, but in the home market — which is on track to eclipse the US for box office size in 2020 — the focus is on promoting the Communist Party's "socialist core values", as much as entertainment.
"While Hollywood blockbusters often push these supposedly universal values as a means to reflect critically upon war, Chinese military movies are built upon the highly nationalistic notion of self-sacrifice for the perceived interests of one's country," Peking University researcher Zhang Huiyu recently wrote in a translated piece for Chinese media outlet Sixth Tone.
"Their plotlines — in which Chinese heroes take the initiative, fight beyond the country's borders, and mete out justice to those who threaten innocent victims — depict China as a powerful nation on the rise."
Promoting Communist Party ideology and nationalism is hardly new in Chinese film — it was the guiding mandate of the Beijing Film Studio established after the Communist takeover in 1949.
But observers say there was now a modern twist.
"The films are largely being made by commercial film makers with commercial intent," said Aynne Kokas, author of the book Hollywood Made in China.
"That's a major shift — the blending of the privatisation of China's film industry with nationalistic visions for the films themselves."
Different portrayal of China in the west
Such nationalistic themes have crept into Hollywood films in recent years as American studios seek to ingratiate themselves to both Chinese censors and audiences to ensure distribution and success in the rapidly growing market.
From a Chinese general who saves the day in sci-fi film Arrival, to the Chinese scientists who save Matt Damon in The Martian, to the Chinese space station astronauts who save Sandra Bullock in Gravity — the Communist Party's rigid requirements on portrayals of China on screen are reaching audiences well beyond its domestic market.
And that is good for China's Government, because many foreign observers believe domestically produced films are unlikely to create the same cultural capital abroad that Hollywood has long enjoyed.
"Films like Wolf Warrior 2 fit well within larger Chinese strategic goals, but those goals are very concerning for a lot of the global audience that might watch these films," Kokas said.
China's production companies now regularly co-produce films with Hollywood studios.
For the Chinese, it is a way of transferring expertise and creating better films.
For Hollywood, it is a way of getting around an annual 34-film import limit designed to ensure Chinese films dominate the domestic market.
In some cases, studios have combined to create cross-cultural features, such as the big-budget fantasy epic The Great Wall, which took in disappointing box office receipts in both the Chinese and US markets.
"American audiences are made up of people from all over the world, and if you read the credits of a Hollywood film, the surnames suggest there are many people who come from somewhere else or their parents came from somewhere else," Mr Landreth said.
"It's very different to China, it's vastly more diverse.
"And in China, they have to tell stories for their domestic audience and have them succeed at home before they can successfully export them."
Topics: film-movies, arts-and-entertainment, popular-culture, china
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