Netizens hot discussion: Fan Bingbing's micro-movie plagiarizes from 'Assassin's Creed'

Recently, well-known domestic actress Fan Bingbing has teamed up with a mobile phone brand to launch the short film *Non-Follower*, promoting the latest product of the mobile phone while also interpreting her inner world through a sexual image. This conveys to the audience her "non-follower" spirit, which aligns with that of the mobile phone brand. In the short film, Fan Bingbing cross-dresses and provides her own voice-over for the inner monologue, drawing a large amount of attention from netizens and fans.

Fan Bingbing's Short Film Advertisement *Non-Follower*: However, after watching the short film, many careful players recognized its background music as the theme song *Iron* from the latest game in Ubisoft's popular *Assassin's Creed* series, *Assassin's Creed: Revelations*. The original singer's voice was removed and replaced with Fan Bingbing's voice-over monologue. Moreover, the use of black-and-white tones and slow-motion, galloping horses, scattered raindrops, and flying birds in the film all bear a certain degree of similarity and imitation trace to the *Iron* music video.

The theme song *Iron* of *Assassin's Creed: Revelations* is performed by Woodkid, a singer from California, USA, and is also included in his first EP. The music video invited supermodel Agyness Deyn to be the female lead and Matvey Lykov, who has Russian blood, to be the male lead. The director was Woodkid himself. The filming standard of the MV is extremely high, with epic grandeur blending anger and other emotions. Woodkid's weathered yet gentle voice perfectly interprets this song, bringing a strong emotional impact to viewers.

Meanwhile, at this year's E3 Video Game Expo in the United States, the newly exposed promotional trailer of *Assassin's Creed: Revelations* also used *Iron* as background music, combining with the HD CG in the game, making it an audio-visual art piece. At the 2 minutes and 28 seconds mark of the video, when the protagonist is put on the noose, the pause design of the background music makes people hold their breath. Interestingly, at the end of the short film *Non-Follower*, the pause in the music when Fan Bingbing sits in the car flipping through her phone is strikingly similar.

Due to Fan Bingbing's fame and the vigorous promotion of the mobile phone brand, this short film advertisement has already been widely circulated online. Netizens' evaluations of Fan Bingbing and the mobile phone product are mixed. Given these have little relevance to the game, they will not be cited here. However, whether the short film *Non-Follower* using the theme song of *Assassin's Creed* is authorized, whether imitating the *Iron* MV goes against the "non-follower" spirit, and whether the advertisement creativity infringes on the game manufacturer are questions that players are concerned about and are still awaiting answers.