With soaring ticket revenue for "The Battle at Lake Changjin II" since its release on Feb. 1, or Spring Festival, the "The Battle at Lake Changjin" films have become China's top-grossing film series ever, replacing the "Detective Chinatown" franchise.

The development mirrors the advances of patriotic Chinese films in both quality and popularity in recent years -- a noticeable trend, according to film industry observers.

Top-grossing film series

"The Battle at Lake Changjin II," a sequel to the 2021 war blockbuster "The Battle at Lake Changjin," topped 3 billion yuan (about 471.72 million U.S. dollars) in total earnings as of Thursday, the 14th, to hit the milestone in China's box office history, showed data by movie data platforms.

This achievement, in addition to a whopping 5.77 billion yuan from the first film, brings the two "Changjin" films' combined total to 8.77 billion yuan. It is higher than the 8.74 billion yuan generated by the three "Detective Chinatown" comedy movies of Wanda Pictures.

Set during the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea (1950-1953), "The Battle at Lake Changjin" tells the story of Chinese People's Volunteers (CPV) fighting bravely in freezing weather in a vital campaign at Lake Changjin, also known as Chosin Reservoir.

The story of young warriors, willing to risk everything to defend their motherland against the world's best-equipped army despite the lack of food and warm clothing amid the bitter cold, has moved many moviegoers to tears.

Its sequel (of which the Chinese title also roughly translates to "Watergate Bridge") sees actors Wu Jing and Jackson Yee reprise the leading roles. It follows CPV soldiers of the same company as they take on a new task. And this time, their battlefield is a crucial bridge on the retreat route of American troops.

New mainstream films

The landscape of China's box office is now much different than it was years ago, in the early 2010s and earlier, when many of the yearly top earners were Hollywood titles.

With a steady improvement in quality, domestic titles now account for an overwhelming majority of China's yearly box office revenue.

Many quality patriotic films have secured big wins over recent years, becoming what experts are labeling "new mainstream films." They not only convey the prevalent values of Chinese society, like many previous movies, but also achieve impressive box office results.

"The Battle at Lake Changjin" was the indisputable superstar of 2021. It became the top earner of all time at China's box office and remained the highest-grossing title of the year globally until it was overtaken by "Spider-Man: No Way Home" at the end of the year.

Its box office market success was lauded by experts, including Yin Hong, vice chairman of the China Film Association and a professor at Tsinghua University, as a comprehensive review of the outcomes of the industrialization of China's film industry. It also indicated just how successful a quality patriotic Chinese movie could be.

The anthology patriotic film series -- "My Country, My Parents," "My People, My Country" and "My People, My Homeland" -- has also been well-received by Chinese moviegoers.

Still, Yin said that for future films with ambitions to join the "new mainstream," there will be mounting pressure to innovate, as they need to adapt to the changing market landscape and continue to improve.

Holiday moviegoing boom

The week-long Spring Festival holiday, which ended on Feb. 6, is usually a lucrative moviegoing period in China. China's box office total for this year's holiday was 6 billion yuan, the second-highest ever for the same holiday on the record. "The Battle at Lake Changjin II" led the holiday sales chart, contributing over 40 percent of the total.

With just four months between the releases of the two films, the success of "The Battle at Lake Changjin," released in September 2021, could explain the sequel's popularity.

More than 30 percent of the sequel's audiences had seen the first film, according to an analysis note from movie data platform Beacon.

An insight piece by box office tracker Maoyan showed that 42 percent of Chinese moviegoers made their first movie theater visit of 2022 during the Spring Festival holiday, and "The Battle at Lake Changjin II" was the first film that 17 percent of Chinese moviegoers saw this year.

Driven by robust holiday sales growth led by the war blockbuster, China's box office total has so far exceeded 10 billion yuan this year. 

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