In the Lunar New Year week, a number of moviegoers watched sci-fi movie The Wandering Earth. It is the film released in the era of modern Chinese cinema. And For the first time Shanghai and Beijing destroyed in the film history. Due to this particular reason the Chinese nation taken by storm with science fiction movie ‘The Wandering Earth.’

Theme and Business of the Wandering Earth

The film centered on Liu Cixin novel. The story is about a Chinese astronauts group, and they are trying to save Earth from dying and rapid expansion of sun. The film released on 5th February and in the first week. It did the business of 2.7 billion Yuan ($405 million) only in China. Due to this big business, the film stands on the list of China’s most successful film all the time.

In the top comments on Chinese film review website Douban.com, a person said that he didn’t imagine that China is able enough to make a far-reaching sci-fi film. Whereas, according to the state-run news agency Xinhua termed it as “new dawn for China’s science fiction filmmaking.”

The Wandering Earth Director’s Views

Guo is the director of ‘The Wandering Earth,’ and he expressed that the film got much fame because it consists of human emotions and feeling at its core. He added that in the memory of his father he made the lead role in the film and Wu Jing performed that. The film reveals the typical Chinese father’s true love story for his children. The father’s love is merciful and wordless, but it is much powerful than any other world’s power. That is the understanding of the father’s love by Guo, the director of this fantastic movie.

The creation, making, and release of the film all done after the permission from authorities after their special request that they want to portray the demolition of Shanghai and Beijing. And it is for the first time that a Chinese film to do so.

Guo further conveyed that he loved to watch science fiction films even when he was young. And that is one of the reasons that he becomes a director as he desired to make a science fiction film. The direction of this particular movie fulfilled his dream.

Chinese Cinema Future

According to the Chinese industry’s experts, in the coming few years China will become the world’s largest cinema industry. At present, it’s already a multi-billion dollar film industry, and it produces hundreds of movies in every single year, especially for increasingly and large, well-off domestic audience.

On the other hand, some recent top China’s hits criticized as they were excessively nationalistic and seemed to be propaganda by the government. Operation Red Sea and Wolf Warrior taken as strong pro-Beijing overtones; oppositely they were most successful box-office movies. But Guo breaks the mold with his efforts.

Film critic of China Raymond Zhou said that there is a little nationalistic plot in the film The Wandering Earth. Whereas, some other Chinese films criticized because of their poor quality when they compared to US productions having a big budget.

Asura in 2018 after the $112 million effort drawn from cinemas when it widely flopped amid scathing reviews. Nevertheless, critics like Zhou have a strong belief that after the success and positive reviews of The Wandering Earth, the Chinese filmmaking could create a new famous genre. The Chinese audience is expecting much more quality science fiction movies from their film industry.

Another film expert Tan See Kam from the University of Macau stated that The Wandering Earth had created a new trend for Chinese New Year releases that were entirely traditional action or comedy movies. He further said that after creating the success of the film, the filmmakers are working on some other science fiction projects. Shanghai Fortress based majorly on alien invasion, Pathfinder based on intergalactic adventure. These both films are expecting to be released in 2019. Furthermore, he expressed that The Wandering Earth hoped to become a myth in the Chinese film industry.

Success at Domestic Level

Until now this current good film business breaks the barriers domestically, but the Chinese don’t assure overseas success. Similarly, according to history, the film industry always struggled to produce worldwide blockbuster films that attain the attention of viewers. The Mermaid did a successful business in 2016 to became the most successful movie in the Chinese film industry at that time. It earned millions of dollars in China, but it only achieves $3 million when it released in the United States.

Furthermore, if we compare the release of United States films in China, they comparatively did good business. Such as the movie, The Fate of Furious ranked as the 6th highest grossing film of all the time and it got around $380 million.

The good thing that gives a hope to Chinese industry that The Wandering Earth released in selected worldwide cinemas and got the attention of global viewers.

Resemblance of Chinese and US Production

On the lighter note professor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Mr. Pang Laikwan said that if we relate China’s production with US production, it doesn’t reach their level and the storylines of our films are entirely Chinese based culture. As well our films faced a remarkable extent of censorship due to which filmmakers enforced to say limited things to their viewers.

Another film expert Tan expressed that the officials of the Chinese government, critics and movie producers were the witness that The Wandering Earth likely to break the trend of overseas. Further, he told CNN why he couldn’t see that officials of the Chinese government didn’t want to encourage this kind of film. Also, it will be motivating if this film performs well worldwide. Moreover, the film’s director Guo have a strong believe that China still has an approach to move earlier they compete for the western studios internationally. And after the outcome and performance of this film, it gives hope to the investors and producers. Hope that their investment in the Chinese film industry will be more profitable for them.