China joins film industry’s space race to project its scientific advancements

BY WENDY TANG

China has deployed the playbook of producing a sci-fi blockbuster — extravagant special effects with dystopia and humans scramble to save a planet facing obliteration — in a recent space disaster film, which became the second-highest grossing movie in China’s history.

The Wandering Earth, China’s first science fiction blockbuster, draws from the 1951 film When World Collides, Ishiro Honda’s 1962 Japanese hit Gorath and Michael Bay’s 1998 doomsday flick Armageddon. The Wandering Earth was released over the Chinese New Year holiday period, a peak time for the Chinese box office. The movie has been extended the cinema release until May and it has grossed $684 million at the Chinese box office as of April.

The box office success attracted Netflix to purchase the streaming rights and translated the film into 28 languages for its international release. The movie is a milestone for China’s film industry. With a budget estimated at around $50 million, critics said the production values and special effects are praised for a mid-budget Hollywood blockbuster.

The film is seen as the emergence of Chinese sci-fi, as the genre has long been dominated by Hollywood spreading American values and ideologies in pop culture. As science fiction films often showcase a nation’s scientific advancement, China has effectively used the blockbuster to project the country’s global space power, joining the film industry’s space race.

The movie is set in a near future where the sun is dying, turning Earth inhabitable with a frozen atmosphere. The collective governments on Earth joint force to build rocket thrusters to propel the planet away from the solar system and find a new home on a 2,500-year journey. China along with France, US, Japan, and Russia’s space agency navigated the journey at an intergovernmental space station.

In reality, China is a growing presence in space exploration with long-term deep-space ambitions.

The country earned a “world’s first” space credential in January by landing a space probe on the far side of the moon. The aerospace science community hailed China’s technical breakthrough to automate a spacecraft’s final descent landing on a rugged and riskier terrain without ground control interference. Earth’s radio frequency is shielded on the moon’s far side.

Although America first put humans on the moon in 1969 and still remains as the only nation conducted crewed missions to Moon, China is the first country to explore the moon’s far side in search for lunar resources. The country has a long-term goal to build a research base operated by robots and establish a permanent human presence on the moon.

China is the third country after the United States and Russia to deploy a spacecraft on the moon in 2013. Chinese researchers discovered a new type of basaltic rock on the lunar surface two years after the space probe landed and the rover surveyed.

With America moved on to explore Mars, China plans to send a rover to study Mar’s surface by 2020 and bring samples back to Earth by 2028, according to Chinese state media. Other ambitions include deploy a reusable rocket by 2035 and produce nuclear-powered space shuttles by 2040.

The Chinese government has viewed China’s military-run space program as a vehicle to enhance national prestige. China commemorated the 60th anniversary of the country’s space program in 2016, where President Xi Jinping emphasized advancing aerospace science is an indicator of a mighty nation, according to Chinese state media Xinhua news agency.

“China’s world-class scientists and technicians in the aerospace industry demonstrated the nation’s self-assurance,” Xi said.

The nationalism and pride in space science have carried into the film industry, although Chinese consumers are used to Hollywood productions and the expectations of Chinese sci-fi films were low. Frant Gwo, the director of The Wandering Earth, had repeatedly said that it is beyond the Chinese film industry’s technical and financial capability to make a satisfactory sci-fi film.

But the idea of producing a special-effects-heavy space odyssey film flourished when a homegrown Chinese science fiction writer, Liu Cixin, became the first Asian author to win a prestigious industry recognition, the Hugo Award in 2015.

The Wandering Earth is an adaption of a same-titled short story by Liu. Gwo, the movie director, said in an interview with state broadcaster that Chinese sci-fi movies allow viewers to understand Chinese culture.

The movie portrayed collectivism as various governments united on a global mission to save humanity from planetary disaster. When the protagonist faced the ultimate challenge of planet destruction, China mobilized other nations to help with the last ditch effort to save the earth. It is in contrast with individualism often depict in American sci-fi with heroes saving the world or taking a vessel to abandon Earth.

“Taking the planet with us on the interstellar journey is a plot different from the Hollywood model of ‘escaping from earth,’ Wang Yichuan, dean of the School of Arts of Peking University, told Xinhua news. “It manifests the deeply-rooted attachment to the family and homeland in Chinese culture.”

As President Xi Jinping called on professionals in the arts, cultural and media industry to tell a positive story that reflects the advancement of modern China, this movie has succeeded to convince an audience that China has caught up with the superpowers in space exploration.

The Wandering Earth imbued China with cultural confidence in its film industry and space science program. The movie kicked off 2019 as the year of Chinese science fiction cinema taking notice, especially stories embody with Chinese cultural characteristics. More domestic sci-fi films are scheduled to be released later in the year. It remains uncertain if the momentum of Chinese science fiction cinema will persist.🗨️

Wendy Tang is a freelance writer for hire. She specializes in technology and science in China. She has written for The Times of London, the Telegraph and STAT, a US life science news site. Reach her: wendy.tang@icloud.com

See more of Wendy’s work at https://wendytang.info/