On September 7, Cineworld, the world's second largest cinema chain, filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States. This debt-laden enterprise is just one of many gigantic multinationals struggling for survival as the global film industry enters a prolonged winter season in which unwelcome forces—the COVID-19 pandemic and streaming services like Netflix—have battered traditional cinemas for years.

Against this gloomy global backdrop, this summer was a season of thawing for China's domestic film market. According to a recent report released by leading ticketing service agency Maoyan, domestic box office revenue from June 1 to August 31 was 9.13 billion yuan ($1.3 billion). That's up 23.8 percent from 2021 and 150 percent from 2020. For the first time since COVID-19 hit, the highest daily ticket sales rose above 100 million yuan ($14.35 million) in summer. Though still lagging behind the 2019 figures, this summer season began to close the dramatic gap that the pandemic had opened.

Chinese sci-fi on the rise

An emerging trend this summer was the release of sci-fi films, with four vastly different offerings hitting cinemas. Ng Yuen-fai's Warriors of Future, starring Louis Koo, Sean Lau, and Carina Lau, combines the technical spectacles of sci-fi with the narrative of heroic epics. Chen Sicheng's Mozart From Space fuses alien encounters with family drama. Rainbow Sea Fly High, directed by Hu Yibo, is a mixture of sci-fi, anime and ancient Chinese mythology.

The most phenomenal film in terms of box office performance among the sci-fi league this summer is Moon Man, directed by Zhang Chiyu. This lighthearted sci-fi comedy stars Shen Teng (leading actor of 2015 comedy movie Goodbye Mr. Loser) as an astronaut stranded on the moon who strives to return to planet Earth and eventually sacrifices himself to save it from a catastrophic meteorite crash.

Grossing more than 2.89 billion yuan ($416 million), the film not only topped the domestic box office chart for the summer season, holding onto a market share of 32 percent, but also reached first position globally in terms of earnings in its third week of release. "Moon Man marks a critical milestone in the recovery of the film industry this year as well as a major step forward in the production of Chinese sci-fi blockbusters," said Edwin Tan, CEO of IMAX China, in a Bloomberg article.

The commercial success of Moon Man is not an isolated phenomenon but part of the continuous rise in popularity of Chinese sci-fi in recent years. In 2015, the breakout success of Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem, an epic trilogy that traces humanity's war against alien invasion, caused a global sensation by winning the prestigious Hugo Award. In 2019, The Wandering Earth, director Frant Gwo's cinematic adaptation of Liu's eponymous novella about humanity's attempt to survive in a desolate cosmos, became a box office smash, grossing 4.4 billion yuan ($631 million) in total and once again exciting the global imagination. "The future is here, and it is nerve-wracking, gorgeous, and Chinese," wrote Simon Abrams, a New York-based film critic, on U.S. film review website Rogerebert.com.

Following in the footsteps of the two megahits, Moon Man is part of the ongoing movement to explore the characteristics of Chinese sci-fi. "Sci-fi was originally a borrowed art. One cannot blindly copy the tropes of Hollywood sci-fi blockbusters," Shu Ping, Golden Rooster Award nominee and scriptwriter for Jiang Wen's The Sun Also Rises (2007), Let the Bullets Fly (2010) and Zhang Yimou's Keep Cool (1997), told Beijing Review. "How to build a vocabulary of our own, drawing from China's cultural heritage, and from there construct a visually compelling, culturally anchored film is a task facing every Chinese filmmaker."

Telling the tales

The experiment with a distinctly Chinese narrative is a thread running through the summer box office. Unlike the previous summer seasons, dominated by animated films, this summer sees films with high emotional charge and a strong narrative leading the run.

Ranking No.2 on the box office chart with ticket sales of 1.7 billion yuan ($244 million), Lighting Up the Stars, directed by Liu Jiangjiang and starring Zhu Yilong, delves into a topic not usually seen in Chinese cinema: the funeral industry. The film tells the story of a chance encounter between a funeral director and an orphaned girl, and the unexpected development of a father-daughter bond between the two.

To tell the tale of death and funerals has always been a dream for the director. Raised in the suburbs of Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, Liu Jiangjiang used to follow his grandfather to help with funeral arrangements in the village. "I saw many down-to-earth, vivid performances during the funerals my grandfather took me to. In my opinion, the ways in which the Chinese people treat funerals are actually very romantic," he said in an interview. "Though funerals are our focal point, we are in fact examining life from the perspective of death. What we want is a story teeming with the hustle and bustle of life."

Another summer hit is Return to Dust, directed by Li Ruijun. The story follows Ma Youtie and Cao Guiying as their arranged marriage quietly blossoms into a romantic companionship while they lead a simple life farming in a remote northwestern village. A small-budget indie film, Return to Dust subverts the stereotypical view of art house cinema as targeting a niche market by grossing over 100 million yuan as of September 7, 62 days after its premiere on July 8.

The film's huge commercial success can be partly attributed to the active participation of the public via short video platforms. Becoming available for online streaming on August 9, the film has gone viral on Douyin, China's TikTok, where social media influencers post video essays, reactions, challenges, and commentaries about the film. Allowing the video bloggers infinite space for creative remakes, the online streaming experience not only generates skyrocketing view counts but also drives the audience back to offline theaters. According to Maoyan, the film gained a net increase of 26.3 million yuan ($3.78 million), 1.4 times the ticket sales in the opening month, in just 23 days after it went live on social media.

The unexpected popularity of Return to Dust has attracted doubts, as some find the combination of art cinema with online influencers disconcerting and hard to replicate. In response to these questioning voices, Shu has a different view: "The success of Return to Dust is a positive cultural phenomenon that reflects the diversity of genres in the domestic market. What lies at the root of its commercial success is a story capable of creating emotional resonance across ages. In the end, stories are what the audience truly cares about."

"It is impossible to predict exactly where the road leads. But the Chinese film industry is on its way to forming a distinct way of storytelling. At its core lies a deep attachment to home and homeland. Wherever the path runs, a bright future awaits us," Shu said. 

(Print Edition Title: Summer of Cinema)

Copyedited by G.P. Wilson

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