General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Born to Fly

Born to Fly (长空之王) is a 2023 Chinese drama-action film directed by Liu Xiaoshi (刘晓世) about air force test pilots who fly prototype fighter jets to establish their performance limits. It stars Wang Yibo as the young pilot Lei Yu, Hu Jun as squadron leader Zhang Ting, and Yu Shi, with Zhou Dongyu in a special starring role, and was released in mainland China on April 28, 2023.¹^•² The film earned 850 million yuan at the Chinese box office and won Liu Xiaoshi the Golden Rooster Award for Best Directorial Debut.³^•¹

Key fact	Detail
Chinese title / English title	长空之王 / Born to Fly
Director and writers	Liu Xiaoshi (director and co-writer), with Gui Guan as co-writer¹
Cast	Wang Yibo (Lei Yu), Hu Jun (Zhang Ting), Yu Shi, Zhou Dongyu (special starring role), Bu Yu, Zhai Yujia, Wang Zichen, Lu Xin¹
Release	April 28, 2023 (mainland China); 127 minutes; Mandarin¹
Box office	850 million yuan final total after a 121-day run, with 20.314 million admissions and six box-office records broken³
Awards	Golden Rooster Award for Best Directorial Debut (36th Golden Rooster Awards); five nominations including Best Feature Film; 17th Five One Project Award¹
International release	Simultaneous release in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and Canada; Japan release on June 28, 2024⁴

Spoilers

Plot and subject

The film follows Lei Yu (Wang Yibo), a "Golden Helmet" fighter pilot who, together with elite pilots from other war zones, is selected as a test pilot and sent to the test flight academy at Yanliang, an aviation city in northwest China. Under squadron leader Zhang Ting (Hu Jun), the group takes part in test flights of the newest fighter aircraft, gathering "envelope data," the term for an aircraft's极限 performance limits, while facing engine shutdowns and fires, stalls, and ejections at high altitude.⁵ The film presents the test pilots' selection, testing, training, and flying in detail, and was described by the Beijing Youth Daily as the first large-scale popularization of the test pilot profession on the big screen.⁶

Director Liu Xiaoshi explained at the premiere that the "king" of the title refers not to one person but both to the country's newly commissioned stealth fighter and to the generations of designers, engineers, test pilots, flight surgeons, and families behind every aircraft that enters service.⁵

Production

Liu Xiaoshi graduated from the directing department of the Beijing Film Academy and then joined the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), where he shot research and test footage for new aircraft types from 2008 onward, including promotional films for the carrier Liaoning and the Y-20 transport. Born to Fly was his first independently directed feature film.⁷^•⁵ For the script, begun in 2019, he interviewed more than a hundred people, including flight academy cadets, front-line fighter pilots, and test flight bureau personnel, producing 1.5 million words of written material; he spent three days in conversation with Li Gang, the first-flight test pilot of the J-20.⁷

Many scenes were shot on location at the Yanliang test flight academy, including ground tests for extreme cold and heat, test pilots' daily life, and training; the film also shows the martyrs' cemetery for test pilots for the first time on the big screen.⁵ With support from the air force and AVIC, the production filmed real aircraft including the J-10C and J-16, and the J-20 appears in the film; ground shots of the J-20 were real, while aerial sequences combined live footage with visual effects.⁸^•⁷ The actors prepared by studying materials and attending aviation lectures, and experienced test pilots coached their performances on set.¹ Han Han served as one of the producers through his company Tingdong Pictures.⁹

Release and box office

The film was originally scheduled for the 2022 National Day holiday slot but was withdrawn shortly before release, with reports at the time citing unspecified reasons; it was later rescheduled for May Day 2023.¹⁰ Pre-sale tickets passed 100 million yuan before the April 28 opening, leading a crowded May Day slate.⁷ It led the holiday's first days but was overtaken by the comedy Godspeed (人生路不熟) from May 1, finishing the holiday with 466 million yuan in second place.¹¹ After three extensions of its screening license, the run ended on August 27, 2023, at 121 days with a final gross of 850 million yuan and 20.314 million admissions.³

Reception

Audience scores on Chinese ticketing platforms were high, with Taopiaopiao at 9.7 and Maoyan at 9.6, while the review site Douban settled around 6.8, a spread that drew commentary.¹²^•¹³ On Rotten Tomatoes the film reached 56 percent freshness from nine reviews, below the qualifying threshold for a fresh rating.¹⁴ Chinese critics generally praised the aerial footage and the film's choice of subject while faulting the dramatic writing: the Beijing Youth Daily's review found the action competent but the emotional scenes weak, and Xinhua's commentary noted that military enthusiasts disputed some details, such as helmet visors and climatic chamber scenes, even as ordinary viewers responded to the real aircraft and the closing tributes to fallen pilots.⁶^•¹⁰

At the 36th Golden Rooster Awards in November 2023 the film received five nominations, including Best Feature Film, and Liu Xiaoshi won Best Directorial Debut.¹ It also received the 17th Five One Project Award, a national honor for cultural works.¹

Context in Chinese aviation cinema

Chinese air-combat films have been infrequent: Defenders of the Sky (冲天飞豹, 1999), J-10 Attack (歼十出击, 2011), and Sky Hunter (空天猎, 2017) preceded it. Commentators placed Born to Fly in this line and noted that its static live photography and aerial effects marked clear progress over its predecessors, reflecting both the director's experience with aviation footage and a more mature Chinese film industry.⁸^•¹⁰ Hu Jun, who played a young test pilot in Defenders of the Sky in 1999, returned as the squadron leader, a casting choice read as emphasizing the generational continuity of the test pilot corps.¹⁰

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Action and adventure films (individual works) › Adventure films › Released 2005 to 2026

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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