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The terrible films Chinese movie-goers
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The terrible films Chinese movie-goers had to watch during October Golden Week 2022
China’s National Day holiday from October 1 to 7 is traditionally a box office bonanza. Last year, despite COVID-19 still lingering on people’s minds, tickets sales during the seven-day break, also known as “Golden Week,” topped 4 billion yuan ($562.1 million), only 5% short of the revenue recorded in 2019, the last year before the coronavirus pandemic disrupted the global film industry. To get more news about chinese movie, you can visit shine news official website.
But 2022 has been a massacre, even by zero-COVID standards. As of today, domestic box office revenue has only reached 1.5 billion yuan ($210.8 million), the lowest takings for the National Day holiday in seven years.
How did that happen? At face value, it’s a case of zero-COVID. Before the holiday kicked off, the National Health Commission urged people to stay put and exercise caution in public places. But in Beijing, people still filled bathhouses, malls, and public squares the past week. Meanwhile, three cinemas I visited at peak-time in busy shopping malls were mostly deserted.
That’s partly an industry problem. According to Bào Biàn 豹变, a WeChat social media account that covers Chinese films and the entertainment industry, fewer movies were released this year than in the past, with studios withholding flicks, fearing that surprise COVID spikes would deter cinemagoers. Promotion periods were shortened, with some marketing departments given just a week to drum up interest before the Golden Week. And all of this happened against the backdrop of declining interest in theater-going among young Chinese: A report from People’s Daily Online last year concluded that a trip to the cinema had become a harder sell than it used to be as China’s Gen-Z preferred to consume entertainment digitally.
But most likely, this year’s films are just boring. “I wish the site had a ‘I don’t want to watch’ label. I would put it on all of the movies during this year’s National Holiday!” reads one popular comment on Douban, China’s premier reviewing site.
The cream of the crop, Born to Fly 长空之王, a Top Gun-esque tribute to the Chinese military’s air force, starring heartthrob Wáng Yībó 王一博, was abruptly withdrawn from distribution on September 27. The rom-coms, actions, dramas that usually pack out theaters during the week-long break were absent, replaced with a few kids’ movies and propaganda films, which are also known as “main melody” (主旋律 zhǔ xuánlǜ) movies because they sing the tune the Communist Party wants to hear.
A commander of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) falls in love with smelting. It’s 1948, and the Anshan Steel Plant in snowy Shenyang has been liberated from the Kuomintang (KMT), who had failed to revive the plant from Japanese sabotage.
Once experts say something can’t be done, you can bet your bottom yuan this PLA commander will not only get it done, but better and quicker than the KMT did. Only because, as it is regularly spelled out, the people are on the CCP’s side.
Douban users have overwhelmingly voted down this title, complaining about its slow plot, superficial characters, and eye-rolling melodrama. “I left after twenty minutes, it was too red,” a reviewer on Maoyan, a Chinese movie-ticketing and film review platform, said of the film’s excessive patriotism. Another Maoyan user pointed out that although data on Mouyan showed 90% of tickets for each screening were sold, he was the only person in the theater when he arrived. “Is it because the government bought it with their own money?” the person wrote.
Set in 2015, the film revolves around the Republic of Noumia (It’s so obviously Libya one wonders why they bothered to rename it), which is ravaged by civil war. In streets strewn with litter, corpses and exoticist stereotypes, two Chinese diplomats swear to “bring everyone home” (as long as they’re Chinese), leading a group of miners through the desert to the promised land of the Tunisian border.
Bombastic patriotism is the name of the game: For the safe release of citizens, one of the diplomats plays Russian roulette twice with a swashbuckling big boss who looks ready for his audition in Pirates of the Caribbean. It ends with the whole group marching up the airplane gangway, joyously waving little Chinese flags, past Libyans desperately reaching out for help.