The villain in the 1980s fantasy film Big Trouble in Little China is just the sort of character Hollywood wants to avoid these days. Picture: 20th Century Fox Source: Supplied
- Film-makers urged to avoid negative portrayals of China
- Hollywood relies on Chinese box office to make money
- Producer says China's censors are calling the shots
CHINA is now one of the good guys. At least in Hollywood.
The big studios are putting pressure on film-makers not only to avoid any negative or unflattering portrayals of China, but to find ways of working heroic or positive Chinese characters into their movies, the Los Angeles Times reports.
The reason for such active self-censoring from an industry not known for its sensitivity towards foreign cultures is simple: the growing might of China's box office and the country's over-zealous censorship board.
Men in Black 3 is the latest high-profile victim of China's censors, with officials trimming the sci-fi comedy by three minutes.
The censors took the scissors to a shoot-out between Will Smith and a group of aliens who disguised themselves as Chinese restaurant workers and another in which he wipes the memories of a group of Chinese tourists after they witness him wrestling a giant fish monster.
It could have been worse: China's censors once removed a major character from Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End because the idea of a raping and pillaging pirate of Chinese origin didn't sit too well with them. And facing nervous distributors, the producers of the upcoming Red Dawn, starring Chris Hemsworth, digitally changed the origin of the film's aggressors from China to North Korea, a country where no dollars are at stake.
The Los Angeles Times reports that the Men in Black 3's backers, Sony, privately regrets filming the censored scenes and would have changed the location and ethnicity of the restaurant had it known China would take offence.
It has good reason to reflect; MIB3 has taken more than $US500 million at the worldwide box office, but its top market outside the US has been China, where it has made more than $US60 million, even with the cuts. Chinese movie-goers also accounted for a tenth of The Avengers' $US800 million international box office haul.
A screenwriter on an upcoming Hollywood blockbuster told the Los Angeles Times he had been warned not to put any Chinese villains in his script while a leading producer said: "It's a clear-cut case - maybe the first I can think of in the history of Hollywood - where a foreign country's censorship board deeply affects what we produce."
The end result, the paper observed, was that the "suppressive tendencies of a foreign nation are altering what is seen not just in one country but around the world".
According to The Wall Street Journal, China is now the world?s fastest-growing movie market, boosting the Hollywood box office "by as much as $US50 million a film, up from $15 million per film a year earlier".
Michael Berry, a professor of Chinese cultural studies at the University of California, said: "Hollywood has shown increasing reliance on Chinese audiences because of the quick expansion of screens and the incredible market, and this will only grow."
A decade ago, the US market was the dominant force but with American movie audiences shrinking - box-office revenue in the US and Canada dropped 4 per cent last year - the international box office is now calling the shots. Revenue from China, and other emerging markets, such as Russia and Brazil, is keeping Hollywood afloat these days.
Although China is not Hollywood's first stop when casting villains - that's England - the industry's treatment of China has been poor. Historically, Hollywood movies reduced Chinese men and women to crude stereotypes or marginal roles: labourers on the rail roads, house servants, laundry workers or waiters. The men nearly always sport long braids, wear long silk gowns and know some sort of martial arts; the women are either quiet wallflowers or dragon ladies.
When Chinese characters did take centre stage, they embodied America's fear and fascination with the mysterious Orient. The archetypal Hollywood Chinese villain was Fu Manchu, a cruel figure whose mad schemes to dominate the world kept audiences on edge throughout the '30s, '40s and '50s.
The popularity of the character waned but he had a strong influence on the shaping of many a Bond villain and the Oriental bad guys who popped up in fantasy movies throughout the ?80s and ?90s. Insultingly Fu Manchu was always played by a Western actor in heavy make-up.
Now more often it is China coming to the rescue in Hollywood's big budget, ?tentpole? movies. In Battleship, Chinese experts tip off Washington about the alien origin of the invaders pounding the US Navy, and in 2012 Chinese scientists and engineers save the world from extinction.
The upcoming Iron Man 3 is partly set in China and will be full of positive depictions of Chinese life. Marvel Studios, which has co-financed the film with Chinese money, said: "Adding a local flavour ... will enhance the appeal and relevance of our characters in China's fast-growing film marketplace."
The deal with China's DMG Entertainment means Iron Man is unlikely to be going up against his arch nemesis, The Mandarin, as he appears in the comic books, a Chinese super genius who controls a shadow army and draws his super powers from 10 mystical rings. The casting of Ben Kingsley as a yet unknown villain in the film suggests Marvel is blurring the Mandarin's ethnicity.
Sony did a similar financing deal for its remake of The Karate Kid and James Cameron has hinted that he will film the sequels to Avatar in China, where his 3D blockbuster raked in $US200 million and his re-release of Titanic almost $50 million, and is discussing co-financing the films with Chinese money.
Dan Mintz, of DMG Entertainment, said the extensive changes made to Red Dawn highlight the stakes involved. If the producers had kept the Chinese invaders, "there would have been a real backlash. It's like being invited to a dinner party and insulting the host all night long. The film itself was not a smart move."
0 comments:
Post a Comment