‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ is a major box office flop in China, as expected
Yet again, Chinese audiences are not one with the Force
Following in the steps of its predecessors, the newest addition to the Star Wars franchise, Solo: A Star Wars Story, has flopped once again at the Chinese box office, reeling in a mere $10.1 million over its opening weekend in China.
To place that number into perspective, Marvel’s latest superhero blockbuster, Avengers: Infinity War, managed to snag a whopping $200 million in the same Chinese theaters over its opening weekend earlier this month, continuing the incredible success that most Hollywood action/adventure blockbuster franchises have found in China — apart from Star Wars, that is.
And it isn’t as if Star Wars isn’t working hard to promote its brand in the Middle Kingdom. Last year, Daisy Ridley and Mark Hamill both made appearances at Shanghai Disneyland for the China premiere of Star Wars: The Last Jedi and yet the film was only able to earn a paltry $28.7 million over its opening weekend, a figure that would then plummet down by 92% in its second weekend, in which it earned a meager $2.4 million before being mercifully pulled from theaters.
There certainly seems to be a major disconnect between China and the galaxy far, far away.
What could be causing this? Well, it appears that the franchise has not done a good enough job of establishing itself in the hearts of Chinese film-goers. Star Wars began its beloved saga back in 1977, but the first three films were never released theatrically in China and Chinese audiences have never grown at all attached to the original trilogy.
As Screenrant puts it, Star Wars, more than other film franchises, builds its new movies on top of their old ones by making storylines that revolve around their past installments. They tend to use characters, like Leia, Luke, and Han, that a viewer would only really connect with if they had watched the first three films and knew at least a bit about the lore. In other words, Star Wars caters to that loyal audience that seeks the nostalgia in seeing their favorite old characters being brought back to life again and again.
Other franchises seem to have avoided the struggle that Stars Wars has encountered by making their films’ world more easy to understand and keeping in mind that not everyone has seen every franchise installment. For example, the Marvel Cinematic Universe does extraordinarily well in China by making their movies connected yet able to stand on their own. The predecessor to Avengers: Infinity War, Thor: Ragnarok, has an overall plot point that directly connects to Infinity War, but it still has its own independent adventure that concluded and was not vital to understanding the plot of Infinity War.
In a video published earlier this year by the South China Morning Post, Chinese moviegoers offer more reasons as to why the new Star Wars films have not become a huge hit in their country. They say that special effects are becoming cliché and that Star Wars is too complicated of a universe.
“The stories in Star Wars are heavy and gloomy, compared to Marvel movies or Superman movies, and the stories in Star Wars are more complicated,” complained one man.
With all these factors working against them, could a Star Wars film ever manage to actually become a box office success in China? Already, the franchise has tried placing stormtroopers on the Great Wall and shrinking down black actor John Boyega in a Chinese promotional poster.
Obviously, a New Hope of some kind is needed.
By Samantha Armas
