The hero is back, with what?
- By Luo Laiming
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E-mail CRI, August 7, 2015
The excitement in the movie industry coincides with that in the IT industry. Internet giants such as Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent (the BAT) are anxious to extend their online supremacy to people's everyday lives, and cinemas are a part of their grand scheme. Not only have the BAT started investment in movie making, they are also vying for more users on their ticket-booking services.
At cinema reception counters, a ticket to watch the IMAX 3D version of "Monkey King: Hero is Back" could cost as much as 110 yuan, but on the ticket-booking applications, the hefty price could be cut down to 29 yuan. The generous discount certainly brings a lot of people to cinemas, but also causes a misguided perception of China's film market — when calculating box office incomes, these ticket sales are counted as full price purchases.
So the box office success of "Monkey King: Hero is Back" cannot fully represent quality of Chinese animation films overall. Like China's film industry in general, it is yet to overcome its major obstacle before sporadic success stories become everyday occurrence. As China's animation filmmakers gradually overcome technical obstacles to create ever better images, they continue to be plagued by writer's block.
Every now and then, we read news stories accusing Chinese animation filmmakers of plagiarism. Many lazy filmmakers, while borrowing ideas from Japanese or American animation films, didn't even bother to redesign the pictures. They simply create shoddy copies or replace exquisite background images with second rate ones. In fact, in some cases the imagery in the original and copycat films are almost identical.
But as China steps up enforcement of its regulations on intellectual property, outright plagiarism cases have become scarce. Storywriters now turn to classic texts for inspiration. "Monkey King: Hero is Back" is the latest example. Even the ambitious franchise "Kuiba," whose storywriters have envisioned a fictional world with elaborate historical and cultural settings, is remotely based on "Journey to the West."
And as for the small number of Chinese films that are indeed original, such as the "Boonie Bears" and the "Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf" series, they are blamed for being too childish and unfit for a wider audience. The Chinese animation industry desperately needs some better writers.
Some have noted the huge inflow of investment in the industry and suggest it might just be the key to the prosperity of China's animation film industry. Of course better incentives could attract more talented writers to join the business, animation films above all could always use some extra bucks to beef up on the costly visual effects, and moviegoers don't mind some coupons to cut their entertainment expenditure, but filmmakers must be ware of the risks involved.
Investors tend to expect timely return. If "Monkey King: Hero is Back" had received funding from major investors, Director Tian Xiaopeng may not have had the liberty to insist on quality control, or the luxury of eight years to polish his product. And if the BAT continue to manipulate market demand with generous discounts and targeted advertisements, moviegoers may never discover out what they really want, but settle with whatever lousy film that is shoved down their throats.
At this point, it is still too early to start cheering for Chinese animation films, but the good news is, even as the industry struggles to deal with an increasingly more open market with so many challenges, there are still filmmakers who can stick to the fundamentals of the trade and be duly rewarded for their persistence and hard work.
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