Popular Hollywood blockbusters are beginning to move more and more into the international realm in order to make them more profitable for their distribution companies. Studios and distributors have found the massive potential in revenues in places like China/Hong Kong and have begun to market themselves and their movies to those markets. For example, among the top 5 highest grossing films of 2014, three are Chinese (or from Hong Kong) and the top grossing film (Chinese) has raked in over $53 million more domestically than the next highest. Because of these huge numbers, American studios are beginning to alter their movies to appeal to foreign audiences, often to the dismay of other viewers (myself included). For example, the Chinese enjoy "big-budget, 3-D installment(s) of blockbuster franchise(s)", studios often water down dialogue so it is easily translated for subtitles or dubbing in other countries and visual effects are usually the focus over actual story/plot, often to the point of being overwhelming. These claims can be backed up by the international success of Transformers: Age of Extinction. Transformers grossed over $1 billion this summer which is a tremendous financial success for its distributor, Paramount. However, where financial success can often be a result of a highly acclaimed film, Extinction received a Rotten Tomatoes score of 18% and many American viewers came away disappointed in the overwhelming CG loaded action, simple dialogue, and gratuitous product placement. This is backed up by the fact that the movie earned less than 25% ($2.4 million out of $1.1 billion) of its total revenue in the U.S. Domestic earnings have been a larger portion of the whole in the past and studios usually target their marketing towards U.S. audiences in order to get the highest return. In short, it seems that movie studios have discovered an untapped gold mine of cash in Chinese audiences and the industry is shifting to a more international state.
The film industry is a part of the services portion of GDP and accounts for thousands of jobs and tremendous marketing and even political influence so this international shift could have very divisive results. On the bright side, this expansion will create many job opportunities all over the world as well as making more films available to more viewers around the world. Business will boom with this increased revenue and the film industry will likely thrive in a new era of special effects and mass appeal. Personally, I don't like this one bit and I thought Transformers 4 was a laughably horrendous show from Michael Bay, Mark Whalberg, and Stanley Tucci (plus the dinosaur robots were barely even in the movie, unlike the marketing would lead you to believe). I don't like the idea of compromising a film's integrity, essentially selling out, just to bring in the cash and I hope this doesn't become too much of a trend. I attempted to write this neutrally and without bias but I'm positive there is some partiality in the writing above and I apologize for that. I hated Transformers.
Lights! Camera! China!
It should not be a huge surprise that China has the largest market for the movies. Going to the movies is not a commodity and still relatively popular. Nonetheless, I agree that Hollywood should focus its efforts toward the American market, which in its self is plenty large. Trying to make a movie tailored for both the United States and China is a nearly impossible task, even if the reward is so high. Maybe we will begin to see Chinese movies appearing in our movie theaters.
ReplyDeleteChinese film industry, in fact is as strong as USA film industry. But what makes USA films more appealing to Chinese movies is better special effect, and epicness. USA can compete with Chinese film industry only on movie shown in the theater, not in TV shows sector, because TV show audience will prefer its own country's production rather than USA TV show. Also, not to mention, TV show audience range to elderly, who would spend more time watching TV shows rather than another age group. Elderly would prefer less violence and less special effect, which their Chinese TV show can satisfy that.
ReplyDeleteI don't like Transformer either, but you have to take consideration why they still continue producing this horrendous series. Why do moviegoers go to the movies in the first place? To reduce stress is one of the most obvious reasons. So, they will tend to find film that is less stressful and fun to watch. Transformer is one of the movies like that. Even though it has bad critic rating, who cares? As long as it gains profit, that is. As long as they have money back from the previous film, they will ultilize those funds to make a new one and get more profit. The circle will just repeat and repeat.
I love what you have to say about the reasoning behind the international moviemaking. I agree, it makes complete sense to attempt to reach as wide an audience as possible, China being very lucrative in that sense. I am also not trying to insult the Chinese audience because they like a "bad movie", it's just that it is extremely difficult to make a movie that works for two strongly differing populations. My main point wasn't that Transformers is a bad movie or that we shouldn't make movies that can be viewed in China, it was that I don't think the quality of the film or its "soul" (example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPFnjQKSUro#t=1m) should be sacrificed for the sake of money. Call me old fashioned or artistic but I think movies should be more than a business and I don't believe in the thoughtless pandering that some studios have resorted to for a few bucks.
Delete