Commentary: How blockbuster The Wandering Earth captured China’s heart and smashed box office records
BEIJING: The Chinese take a blockbuster superstar activeness hero they can believe in and his name is Wu Jing.
The man has the Midas bear upon whenever he stars in a film released to Chinese pic theaters. He had captured the hearts and minds of the Chinese as Wolf Warrior, which had scored record-breaking box office success, and gone on a wildly successful sequel Wolf Warrior 2, generating U.s.$307 million for its first week in ticket sales in the summer of 2017.
As groundbreaking as these films were, Wu's latest film The Wandering Globe has now surpassed that with a one-week total of United states of america$349 one thousand thousand, according to Forbes mag, during this yr's Chinese New year's celebrations.
Wu Jing non only has Hollywood-worthy handsome looks, merely in all his movies, he plays an all-likewise familiar lead character as the stiff and silent, but reluctant hero, a man with a troubled soul who rises higher up it all despite his inner turmoil, when a crises ensues. His stereotyped caricature represents the Chinese spirit at its finest to many viewers.
And in Prc's offset big-budget science-fiction pic The Wandering Earth, Wu did not disappoint playing protagonist Liu Peiqiang.
A STORY OF Epic PROPORTIONS
The blockbluster The Wandering Globe, based on a best-selling short story by Communist china'due south virtually critically-acclaimed sci-fi writer Cixin Liu, known for his Iii-Body Problem trilogy, has a captivating narrative of epic proportions.
In it, the sun is becoming unstable and is expected to aggrandize and consume the Earth. World governments stand behind the solution – to dot the planet with ten,000 gigantic jets and blast out to orbit on a 100-generation journey to a new home 4.two light years away.
But lo and behold, the gravitational forces of planet Jupiter refuse to cooperate. The jets that had flown Planet Earth into orbit had relied on Jupiter'south gravity to advance speeds, just due to a miscalculation, the world now seems destined to crash right into the largest planet of our solar system.
Liu Peiqiang and his team must work frantically to rescue the twenty-four hour period and while searching for a successful determination, he reunites with his son Liu Qi, played by Qu Chuxiao and his adopted sister Han Duoduo, played by Zhao Jinmai – after existence separated from them in serving out a 17-year tour in his space station.
And at this moment of grave peril when it'south "practise or dice" for all involved, filmgoers learn what our hero's anguish centres around: His long separation from his family unit seemed to have had irreparable furnishings on his personal relationship, especially with his son who had felt abased by his biological male parent during all those years.
It is this chemical element of the story, and non the spectacular special visual effects and the action-packed scenes, that has captured the true essence of contemporary China.
ABANDONED CHILDREN
The sad example is that many Chinese children take been separated from and feel abandoned by their parents, who have ventured to fledgling cities in order to make ends meet and provide for them and their caregiving grandparents in the countryside.
Reported tales of their modus operandi of communicating via Wechat and seeing each other once or twice a year, typically during Chinese New Year, have cleaved many hearts across China.
READ: A year on, China's 'Ice Boy' a media superstar, but a generation of left-behind children remain forgotten
Last week on Weibo, a brusque video showing young children attending a party, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, and gambling mahjong went viral – reviving comments well-nigh China's all-too familiar parentless plight.
This securely entrenched and widely-felt issue has shone an uncomfortable spotlight on the costs of Prc's astronomical economic growth to the unit of the state's social fabric, the family unit – a reason why many Chinese filmgoers sympathize with The Wandering Globe's narrative of the personal loss suffered for a greater national proficient.
As many Chinese families were reunited last week, no doubtfulness many went to the movies to watch The Wandering Earth. Every bit they watched the interesting dynamics at play betwixt father and son, Liu Peiqiang and Liu Qi, in which the son showed much bitter animosity towards his dad, one tin can imagine many Chinese fathers viewing the moving picture had plenty to ponder.
HAPPY Catastrophe
Hither is a spoiler. At that place is a happy ending in the movie, which should serve as inspiration for all Chinese parents to stay with their children and call back near the irreversible effects of absentee parenting on the state's youth.
The Wandering Earth has warmed a conversation in China about the effects of unprecedented growth and the personal cost people suffer in the pursuit of larger goals.
The dignity of personal sacrifice is not a new chronicle in China but the emerging narrative of what is lost that may be close to impossible to fix in that pursuit is.
Tom McGregor is a commentator on Asia-Pacific diplomacy based in Beijing.
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Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/the-wandering-earth-box-office-records-captured-china-hearts-222456
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