On its opening weekend, the movie “Gravity” grossed $55.8 million, the highest October opening ever. While its Chinese release remains unconfirmed, clearly the producers had the Chinese market in mind, and for good reason.
Joan Johnson-Freese
Hollywood has had a conundrum since the Cold War ended. Who would be the new “enemy” for the United States, James Bond and all the good guys to take on? By 2002 CIA analyst Jack Ryan was no longer locked in a “Hunt for Red October,” but trying to stop terrorists from triggering a catastrophic US-Russia conflict in “The Sum of All Fears.” That evidenced the shift to having terrorists, of many varieties, and North Korea, an easy mark, as the standard movie “bad guys.” But not China or the Chinese; that would be far too costly.
The 2009 film “Avatar” brought in over $180 million from the Chinese market and is among the highest grossing films in China, even after the 2nd version was pulled from Chinese theaters, apparently to reduce competition with homegrown films like the biopic “Confucius,” released around the same time, and because the forced eviction of a people theme is a sensitive topic in China. “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” in 2011 was not far behind “Avatar” in 2011, grossing about $145 million in China. The Chinese love action movies. But the second “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” movie, in 2003, lost out, as it was banned from China for what censors deemed its unflattering portrayal of Chinese society.
With 1.3+ billion people, China is the ultimate international market that everyone wants to tap into, and nobody can afford to be cut out of. It is the second largest movie market, behind the United States. While there is a Chinese imposed quota on how many foreign films can be released in China annually to protect the domestic film industry, industry analysts say foreign movies account for 40% of the Chinese box office take. Consequently, Hollywood must consider triggers likely to get unwanted censor attention, and the cultural likes and dislikes of the Chinese people.
What the censors at SARFT (State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television) will or won’t allow changes, and sometimes fairly arbitrarily. The 1985 family favorite “Back to the Future” is banned in China, and the ban extends beyond Marty McFly. In 2011 Chinese officials banned (“discouraged” was the official word, which in China is a euphemism for “banned”) television and movies that included “fantasy, time-travel, random compilations of mythical stories, bizarre plots, absurd techniques, even propagating feudal superstitions, fatalism and reincarnation, ambiguous moral lessons, and even a lack of positive thinking.” Sex, religion, or “anything that could threaten public morality or portray criminal behavior” is also “discouraged.” Anything favorably depicting Tibet, Tiananmen Square, the Dalai Lama, Falun Gong (a spiritual group, or cult, that coincidentally claims time travel abilities), Uyghur separatists or Taiwan is typically banned as well. Chinese officials say they want the progress of China to be stressed.
Censorship considerations extend beyond movies and television. The band Coldplay’s song “Spies” from its 2000 album Parachutes was banned in China. It was considered anti-government and anti-Communist.
Besides the movie, television and music industries worrying about getting past censors, there are also Chinese cultural proclivities to consider, proclivities difficult if not impossible for Westerners to fully grasp. Time travel movies and television shows were hugely popular in China until banned. So too is fantasy. Yet, though “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” was a 2001 box office blockbuster in the US and much of the world, in China it was considered somewhat of a snoozer. Many Chinese felt it was too slow, with not enough action – too akin to stories that grandma told. What some analysts name as the highest grossing film ever in China, a 2012 Chinese movie called “Let the Bullets Fly,” is described as a Western, an action comedy, a critique of corruption — that somehow got official approval.
The lure of the Chinese market has led to what many consider Hollywood taking a soft, even flattering approach to China in films. Some blockbusters, like “Iron Man 3,” even have Chinese versions made in cooperation with Chinese authorities, and featuring Chinese actors and actresses. Brad Pitt’s “World War Z” changed the original storyline, in which the zombie outbreak originated in China.
The new movie “Gravity” clearly intends to please Chinese audiences as well. The Chinese space program is a source of great pride to the Chinese people, especially the Shenzhou human spaceflight program. China hopes to have a large space station as depicted in the movie in orbit by 2023 – though it’s not there now. China currently has a small, 15 cubic meter test bed facility in orbit, called Tiangong. But in the movie it’s the Chinese space station that provides refuge for stranded US astronaut Ryan Stone, played by Sandra Bullock, and a Chinese escape pod that provides her way back to Earth.
Also, the movie begins with a Russian missile destroying one of its own satellites, with speculation in the movie that they were doing so to destroy defunct hardware. Not the best way to do it, as pretty much everyone in the space field knows. Destroy it they did, generating what is called a Kessler Effect, or a chain reaction of high velocity debris hitting and destroying other spacecraft. In reality, it was China that in 2007 tested its ability to destroy a satellite, targeting and hitting one of their own, creating massive amounts of debris that the space community (including China) has had to dodge ever since, though luckily no Kessler Effect resulted.
Though American audiences might see a jab at China for ripping off Russian spacecraft technology in the movie, China sees no harm or foul in not reinventing the wheel by taking a basic Russian spacecraft module design and upgrading it to make it their own, which is largely what they have done in the Shenzhou program.
Whether Chinese audiences will take to the movie is another matter. Billed as a “thriller,” it is beautifully filmed, has moments of suspense and action, but is also sometimes slow paced and focused on being “poignant.” Whether “poignant” will sell in China remains to be seen.
Joan Johnson-Freese is a Professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College. The views presented here are those of the author only and do not represent the views of the US Department of Defense, the US Navy or the US Naval War College.
