Behind the Unusual Popularity of Ready Player One in China
Chinese audiences are by no means strangers to the movies produced around the world that represent different cultural backgrounds. How Chinese audiences view foreign films does not deviate much from the western views either. It is rather rare that a movie receives significantly different comments among Chinese audiences compared to their western counterparts. It is even rarer when a western movie that targets the western market gets a substantially higher reputation in China. However, this phenomenon happened to Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One, a science fiction film production made in 2018. Instead of saying that it was the science fiction element or the plot that attracted the Chinese audiences, I would argue the unusual popularity of Ready Player One was a result of the need for recognition from the mainstream culture within members of gaming culture. The “individualistic rebellion against big corporation” theme in the movie was also a topic that Chinese gamers audiences might have empathized with.
The overall excellent reputation of the film in China was undeniable. As popular online rating was a solid indicator of how audiences view the film, we can observe significant differences between the rating in China and the English-speaking world. Ready Player One received an average of 7.4/10 on IMDB and a 77% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, the two major site that represents the view of English-speaking audiences. In the most reliable platform for movie ratings in China, Douban, however, Ready Player One received 8.7/10. Movies that received similar ratings on Douban include the award-winning Parasite, Django Unchained, and Memento. The box office of Ready Player One in China was also 59% higher than its domestic box office in the United States. The question is, what made such a difference?
One of the key reasons that Ready Player One was successful in the Chinese market was its massive and positive reference and portrayal that gamers and ACG (which stands for anime, comic, and game) lovers are eager and surprised to see. The plot of the movie was that in 204,5 James Halliday, the person who created an extraordinary virtual reality videogame OASIS that became the means for many to escape from reality, deceased and decided to leave the ownership of the game to the first person who could manage to find the Easter egg hidden in his game. Finding the Easter egg requires a profound understanding of his life and what he loved: the popular culture such as games and movies that accompanied him during his lonely childhood. After uniting the gamers to fight against the evil corporation IOI that wishes to use OASIS to make an endless profit, the protagonist, a videogame lover, acquired the Easter egg and became the new owner of the OASIS. Differ from the typical Hollywood movies in which the heroic protagonist saves the world, the protagonist in this movie defended the second reality of many people through the means of playing video games. In other words, the movie is telling the gamers that they could be “the most important people in the universe” (Grady, 2018). Apart from the positive portrayal, the reference to popular cultural elements, especially games, excited the Chinese audiences. For example, when fighting the ultimate war against the IOI in OASIS, the assemble-and-charge scene referred to countless figures that gamers are familiar with. In a single still, the figure of Tracer from Overwatch, Chun-li from Street Fighter, Lara from Tomb Raider, Snake from Metal Gear, Rayne from BloodRayne, and Shepard from Mass Effect were presented to the audiences at the same time. The way ACG, especially games, was manifested in the film ignited the passion of the Chinese audiences.
Critics of the film may find the above reason entirely unpersuasive to support an entire audience group to enjoy this movie. On the contrary, they consider the reference to cultural elements in the films as meaningless, stiff, and even disrespectful, since awkwardly putting Overwatch and Hello Kitty together to show an appreciation of popular culture makes no sense. One typical example was the portrayal of the figure Iron Giant, originally a peaceful and lovely character, as a gigantic violent creature in the final war. As a critic of the film argues, such reference “runs contrary to the series’ central theme of tapping into the true intent of geek culture’s biggest creators” (Machkovech, 2018). However, when we are analyzing its success in China, we should not overlook the contrast effect between the value this movie tries to convey and the social reality. In China, the mainstream discouragement towards ACG subcultures, and especially the gaming culture, gave the members disproportionately weak voices compared to their population size. Before the well-known videogame ban for everyone under 18 was imposed last year, there had been long-lasting repression of videogames and the culture formed by its members. Such repression was a result of the conflict between people born after the 80s who were “captivated by digitalization and technological change” (Zhang, 2020) and the generation raised before the Open and Reform, but that latter defines the mainstream. Under the influence of the mainstream, games could be referred to by state-owned media as “poison” and “drugs” (BBC, 2018). More shockingly, a documentary produced by China Central Television in 2008 named “Fighting the Internet Demon” described the internet and game in a demonized way and praised a doctor who used extremely inhumane electric shocks to “cure” those who were considered addicted to videogames by their parents. Therefore, a “mainstream movie” that portrayed gamers’ cultural element in an affirmative way gained an enormous level of support from Chinese gamers who were eager to receive some positive recognition for their identity.
Another cultural value in the film that may have rendered its success in China was the idea that “true gamers” defeated the large corporation that only treated games as means to gain profits. In the movie, with a profound understanding of games and popular culture, the protagonist and his friend defeated a giant and well-organized corporation called IOI that tried to take over OASIS and use it as a cash cow. This theme coincides with Chinese gamers’ perception of the gaming industry in China. While many developers and players dream of making a 3A game with high quality, it is a financially unrealistic and dangerous move for leaders of big game companies that are dominating the market. Therefore, even though the game market in China is colossal, there are very few games that are good enough to gain any international influence. The disappointment towards the profit-seeking strategy applied by the big companies and their wish to make quality games with artistic values turned into support of this central theme of Ready Player One, in which the true lovers of games outran the company that seeks to monopolize everything true gamers care about.
I would like to refer to the literary critic Roland Barthes’s concept of the death of the author to demonstrate what the popularity of Ready Player One in China implies about cultural globalization. Barthes argues that we should separate the author and the literary work they produced. It is the impression of the reader, instead of the intention of the author, that determines the meaning of the work (Barthes, 1967). When looking at cultural objects that send ideas across borders, we should probably apply the concept as well. The original intent for Steven Spielberg to make the movie was to discuss the idea of whether we wish to live in reality or “an escapist universe” (Radish, 2018). However, Chinese audiences focused and responded to completely different values from what Spielberg sought to express. We may conclude that during the globalization of culture, the translation of a cultural object to other countries will be highly dependent upon the social and cultural background of the perceiving end. How productions are evaluated and treated by people with different backgrounds is an important part of cultural globalization.
In conclusion, the unexpected success of Ready Player One in China reflected the need for the positive recognition of China’s gaming culture, as well as the will to rebel against big corporation domination in the game market. It also makes a fascinating example of how audiences with certain cultural backgrounds embraced foreign cultural production in a way that fits their cultural experience and reality.
References
Barthes, R., & Heath, S. (1977). Image, music, text. Fotana/Collins.
BBC. (2018, September 6). State data to be used to limit child gamers in China. BBC News. Retrieved March 28, 2022, from https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45432863
Grady, C. (2018, March 26). The ready player one backlash, explained. Vox. Retrieved March 28, 2022, from https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/3/26/17148350/ready-player-one-book-backlash-controversy-gamergate-explained
Radish, C. (2018, March 29). Steven Spielberg on Ready Player One and Nostalgia. Collider. Retrieved March 28, 2022, from https://collider.com/steven-spielberg-interview-ready-player-one/
Sam Machkovech — Mar 29, 2018 12:42 pm U. T. C. (2018, March 29). Ready player one’s film adaptation isn’t even good enough as a kids movie. Ars Technica. Retrieved March 28, 2022, from https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/03/ready-player-one-film-review-wheres-the-secret-code-to-unlock-the-heart/
Zhang, E. (2020, July 25). Do not pass go: China’s complex relationship with gaming. Medium. Retrieved March 28, 2022, from https://medium.com/wonk-bridge/do-not-pass-go-chinas-complex-relationship-with-gaming-c5a6ff486520
