Otherwise, Hollywood is struggling to please Chinese audiences
Even if it did not boast a character called Captain America, the superhero film “Avengers: Endgame” is a very obviously American spectacle. Beyond its swagger and expensive special effects, the Marvel comic book film series, of which this is the final instalment, celebrates flawed, individualistic superheroes. That the film just broke Chinese box-office records for its opening weekend could lead outsiders to assume that the American and Chinese film markets—the world’s two largest—are converging. In fact China’s film world is becoming more distinctive and self-confident.
Hollywood producers have bet fair sums of money, over the years, on the idea that American and Chinese audiences are not so very different, and will laugh, weep and cheer at the same, carefully globalised movies. China has a habit of proving them wrong. The “Avengers” series has a large but distinctive set of fans in China, who often say they love the films precisely because they identify with its misfit heroes, struggling with a harsh, judgmental world.
Over 1.7bn cinema tickets were sold in China last year, a domestic record. Most sales were driven by locally made hits in which the stories ranged from Chinese military heroics overseas (“Operation Red Sea”) to a bittersweet drama about cancer (“Dying to Survive”). Though Hollywood had a respectable 2018 worldwide, revenues in China for imported films were down year on year.
Before “Avengers: Endgame”, the world’s most successful film this year had been a Chinese science-fiction epic, “Wandering Earth”. But it owed this mainly to its popularity at home. By the end of its American cinema release less than 1% of its revenues came from the American box office. Western reviewers struggled to relate to a film that involved saving the planet, and in which the only speaking role for a non-Chinese was given to a Russian.
Americans flocked to “Crazy Rich Asians”, a frothy romantic comedy about Chinese-Americans and Singapore’s high society. Despite its supposed crossover appeal, in China it flopped.
Celina Horan, a Chinese-American actor, speaks with authority about the two film markets. Educated in Hong Kong and at the London School of Economics, she is fluent in Cantonese, English and Mandarin. Known professionally as Celina Jade and in China as Lu Jingshan, she played the female lead in “Wolf Warrior 2”, released in 2017 and to date the highest-grossing Chinese film ever.
It is a revealing hit. A patriotic action adventure set in war-torn Africa, “Wolf Warrior 2” depicts a lone Chinese commando rescuing Chinese and African hostages from wicked American mercenaries. The film plays on a story often pushed by Communist propaganda officials, namely that China is a growing yet peace-loving military power that—for now—is content to lend its strength to UN peacekeeping missions and other benign tasks. A tense scene shows the hero battling tank-driving baddies on the ground, while awaiting help from a Chinese warship out at sea. Stern Chinese naval officers launch their missiles only after the UN Security Council in New York approves their use of force—a plot device that is hard to spot in Hollywood action flicks. In another scene Ms Jade’s character, a Chinese-American doctor, telephones the nearest American consulate for help. She hears an answering-machine, for the Yanks have run away.
Chaguan met Ms Jade in Beijing after her return from a work trip to Los Angeles, as she prepared to visit Norway for a television travel show. Two years ago Hollywood producers sought projects that would work in both America and China, she says. That might involve adding a Chinese actress to an American blockbuster in a “decorative role”. Now her American meetings are “all about China”. By this she means co-productions using American know-how, but squarely aimed at Chinese audiences.
The actress would not mourn if Hollywood were to drop projects crafted to appeal to all cultures, and offend in none. She compares the approval process for such films to dipping the same tea bag in ten cups, then drinking from the last. On the Chinese side, she sees studios growing less anxious about foreign success: “Why serve the global market when there’s so much demand here?”
She is unsurprised when crossover hits struggle. Whereas Ms Jade’s American side related to “Crazy Rich Asians”, she says her Chinese side found it over the top, and even “fantastical”. Chinese audiences like to see romantic heroes showing their love in subtle ways, she says; “It might be how he serves her food.”
State planners are playing a role. China opened 9,303 cinema screens last year, says ihs Markit, a consultancy. Government targets are for 80,000 screens nationwide by 2020, up from 60,000 today. Some will struggle amid an oversupply of screens and a shortage of good titles. But expansion has boosted the clout of smaller cities where audiences relish films with local themes.
The propaganda bureau is not amused
Modern China’s first big American import, “The Fugitive” starring Harrison Ford, was allowed into just six cities in 1994. It prompted a spat between state film distributors that took on a nationalist edge. One distributor grumbled about “using socialist money to fatten the capitalist pig”. Officials still resist Hollywood’s charms. A rampant piracy problem is largely resolved. But quotas continue to limit the number of foreign films shown each year (President Donald Trump’s trade negotiators are trying to improve Hollywood’s market access). Foreign studios pre-emptively pander to China’s censors, avoiding taboo subjects like Tibet. The Chinese version of “Bohemian Rhapsody”, a biopic about Freddie Mercury, a flamboyant musician, excised most references to his sexuality.
Ms Jade says she is proud to work in today’s assertive, self-confident China. Unbidden, she pays tribute to one-party rule. When tackling environmental challenges, “democracy kind of slows things down”, she says. Ms Jade questions the idea that censorship makes for bad movies: “Sometimes having limitations forces people to be more creative.” She is in the right place.
转载自：“Avengers: Endgame” has been an unusual hit in China
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