Many of the exports that they have turned into hits in China of late were explicitly foreign films, like distinctly American fare like Captain America: Civil War ($181 million in China), the Japanese animated flick You Name ($83m in China), the Indian mega-smash Dangal ($193m in China) or Pixar’s Mexican-set folktale Coco which outgrossed every other Pixar flick in China combined. Watch On Forbes: How The NBA And Its Players Are Scoring In China They helped make Life of Pi ($90m in China) and Interstellar ($122m in China) into global hits and eventually grew weary of the Transformers movies. They didn’t fall for Warcraft ($217m in China/$48m in North America) any more than we fell for Batman v Superman ($95m in China/$330m in North America). They rejected Independence Day: Resurgence ($75m in China/$103m in North America) casting Angelababy as a paper-thin love interest for the comic relief sidekick. Wu shows up to remove Tony’s chest reactor and has a chat with Fan Bingbing. They laughed at the added Iron Man 3 scenes of where Wang Zueqi’s Dr. It doesn’t have a few somewhat famous Chinese actors in throwaway roles, or extra scenes where a Chinese actor shows up to save the day. It doesn’t have a detour where the characters go to China just because.
But what it doesn’t have are patronizing and pandering efforts to appeal to the so-called regular Chinese audience member. It’s a long, sprawling, big-budget sci-fi fantasy action flick that partially takes place inside a video game, one littered with video game tropes and related (Japanese) anime-ish art and character designs. That is perhaps part of why it’s so appealing.
#Box office mojo ready player one movie#
Despite the demographic targeting/pandering, it’s getting clobbered by a movie that explicitly panders to North American pop culture nostalgia that makes no real effort to (stereotypically) appeal to Chinese moviegoers. The movie (slight spoiler) kills off fan-favorite Mako Mori (played by Japanese actress Rinko Kikuchi) in a plot that then allows Liwen Shao (played by Chinese superstar Jing Tian) to essentially take over for the duration of the second and third acts.
It only exists because the first one did well there five years ago. Not to pick on Pacific Rim: Uprising, but that movie was genetically engineered to score in China.
For all the talk about how Hollywood must tailor its blockbusters and would-be event films for Chinese audiences or make them exceptionally generic, the blow-out success of Ready Player One is, like Captain America: Civil War and Zootopia, more evidence that this strategy is a falsehood. That’s partially why Legendary’s Warcraft was a big deal in China for about a hot minute in the summer of 2016, earning $90 million in its first two days before collapsing for a $217m total. The film is a glorified virtual reality video game and was almost certain to do well in a country filled with avid gamers. What makes this interesting is that Ready Player One is a Hollywood movie made by one of the more iconic American filmmakers and is explicitly encased in American pop culture from decades ago. Meanwhile, Pacific Rim: Uprising (which I liked slightly more than you) opened with $66m but crashed to Earth and will now struggle to match the first film’s China gross. It has passed (or will pass today) the lifetime China grosses of Terminator: Genesis ($113 million in 2015), every superhero movie save for Avengers: Age of Ultron and Captain America: Civil War and Pacific Rim ($112m in 2013).
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