Watch Empire of the Sun (1988) together, long-distance
drama film · coming-of-age film · war film · 152 min
Open in HeraeAbout the film
Empire of the Sun is a 1987 American war drama film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Tom Stoppard, based on J. G. Ballard's semi-autobiographical 1984 novel of the same name. The film tells the story of Jamie "Jim" Graham (Christian Bale), a young boy who goes from living with his wealthy British family in Shanghai to becoming a prisoner of war in an internment camp operated by the Japanese during World War II. The film also stars John Malkovich, Miranda Richardson, Nigel Havers, Joe Pantoliano, Masatō Ibu, Leslie Phillips, Ben Stiller, and Robert Stephens. Harold Becker and David Lean were originally to direct before Spielberg came on board, initially as a producer for Lean. Spielberg was attracted to directing the film because of a personal connection to Lean's films and World War II topics. He considers it to be his most profound work on "the loss of innocence".
Where it streams
How to watch it together from different places
Each of you opens Empire of the Sun on your own account. Herae keeps the two players in sync, so a pause or a skip happens for both of you, and puts a video call in the corner of the film so you can see each other react.
How watching together long-distance works
Title details from Wikidata (CC0). Description from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Artwork from TMDB and Wikimedia Commons. This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.