Andrew Blackie
China’s cinematic market works on a different logic to Hollywood. Star Wars: The Force Awakens stormed in on a wave of collective nostalgia across the Western world to become 2015’s year-end phenomenon. But in China, the hype surrounding the space opera was over in about a week, despite shopping malls in Shanghai being decked out grandiloquently with stormtroopers and spaceships.
Cinemagoers in China are an unpredictable crowd: they saved Terminator: Genisys from being an embarrassing flop (at least in box office terms), but scorn the clumsy, ostentatious Chinese marketing grabs that American execs keep inserting into a parade of blockbusters, from Iron Man 3 to The Martian to Transformers. Far removed from the Hollywood tradition of January/February being the dumping ground for movies too poisonous to be released at any other time, in China, February is establishing itself as peak movie-going season for families during Chinese New Year. And now a manic knockabout Chinese fantasy that you’ve never heard of, The Mermaid, has grossed US$400 million in less than two weeks of wide release, besting Hollywood to become the highest-grossing film of 2016 to date, and the most successful Chinese movie ever, to boot.
By cinematic standards, The Mermaid is a pretty awful movie, a smutty and ill-conceived blend of genres with some of the worst CGI that you’ve ever seen in your life, and a sappy eco-conscious message that is artlessly and insistently shoved down our throats. The plot supposedly concerns a tribe of mermaids that schemes to assassinate an unscrupulously rich developer to halt the destruction of their homeland, but seems really to be an excuse for the cast to eagerly surrender their dignity to don silly outfits for a parade of extraordinarily unsubtle jokes. And yet, its success underscores the fact that Chinese cinema is currently in a position roughly comparable to Hollywood in the early 70s: the market is flooded with a glut of unashamedly high-concept new releases, with a different movie coming along every few months to knock the previous record-breaker off its perch – just as the original Star Wars followed Jaws and The Exorcist, The Mermaid in China replaces Monster Hunt, a middling combination of live action and animation that was a huge hit last year. There’s a dizzy excitement surrounding cinema-going in China at present, backed up by the explosive growth in domestic box office and the expanding number of cinema screens nationwide. The entertainment industry, however, hasn’t yet grasped how to craft blockbusters in a steady, dependable sense.
What, then, does The Mermaid’s record-breaking run say about Chinese cinema in 2016? China’s box office has been dominated recently by three broad templates of movies: the wish-fulfilling, chocolate-box romantic drama; the meandering comedy; and the historical epic (you could include wuxia kung-fu epics in this latter category, although they don’t have that much purchase with Chinese audiences these days, despite the unshakable association of them with Chinese cinema in the West). Historical fare is clearly on its way out, tainted by its association with leaden government propaganda, and a little too rousing and earnest to connect with the modern crowd. Incessant programming of anti-Japanese shows on TV has also arguably contributed to over-saturation of the market.
A former mainstay in Chinese cinemas, historical epics are ceding predominance to loose, raucous comedies, wildly popular since Lost In Thailand became a runaway success in 2012. That movie was casually structured, was slightly risqué by Chinese standards, featured a trip to an exotic location, and threw in a couple of guest star cameos to distract from the waning narrative. And that has been the standard since, though two movies released last year introduced some novelty into the genre. Jian Bing Man was an affectionate parody of the American superhero movie, but also an implicit admission that China’s cinematic industry doesn’t have the firepower to make something on that level yet. Its premise is that a fallen movie star makes his own superhero movie on the cheap, naming himself Jian Bing Man, after the cheap pancake-type snack ubiquitous in Beijing. And then there’s Goodbye Mr. Loser, an update of It’s A Wonderful Life for a modern Chinese audience (with shades of Groundhog Day thrown in), in which an average guy has a second shot at life and gets everything he ever dreamed of, only to regret giving up his ordinary life with his shrewish, uncultured wife. The way that women are portrayed in the movie is deeply unsettling, but either because of its “money isn’t everything” moral or its sentimentality, Goodbye Mr. Loser was a huge hit.
Chinese romantic dramas, meanwhile, are almost exclusively excruciating; their model is borrowed wholesale from South Korean soap operas, with high-end settings, smatterings of fashion porn, and a tasteful death for the female lead after her paramour has declared his undying love, sometimes after several months of no contact. The genre also has a frustrating habit of sucking the life out of otherwise talented actors. There’s also the high school coming of age sub-genre, triggered by the Taiwanese rom-com, You Are The Apple Of My Eye, a word-of-mouth sensation across Asia in 2011. Movies like Fleet Of Time and Our Times (another Taiwanese film that found a receptive audience on the mainland) are at the forefront of this trend, manipulating the audience’s nostalgia for their high school days.
The homegrown success of The Mermaid and Monster Hunt before it, as well as the recently released The Monkey King 2, also a big hit, signifies a potential new genre emerging in the Chinese cinema space: let’s call it “CGI fantasy.” Chinese effects are still a long way behind Hollywood in believability, artistry, and the creation of a convincing world. But if the current crop of Chinese directors is able to consolidate concepts that have cultural appeal, back these up with stars who are locally popular, and include just enough technical wizardry to approximate their American competitors, they may launch a run of name recognition franchise blockbusters in China. Of course, as The Mermaid shows, quality is another matter.
