Time to get reel

The just ended movie holiday season was major for film exhibitors while the quality of domestic releases was a letdown

February 28 neatly bookends the three-month-plus "holiday season" for China's film industry, which began on Nov 20. The receipts have been tallied and box-office sales topped 3 billion yuan ($439 million). But not everyone in the industry is laughing all the way to the bank. In fact, quite a few are weeping behind closed doors. The reason is simple: Domestic releases had a lackluster response and the two Hollywood blockbusters, 2012 and Avatar, accounted for more than half of the receipts.

So the unprecedented turnout across the nation's cinemas turned out to be good news for film exhibitors, like those movie chains, but terrible news for most filmmakers.

Now it's time to play the blame game.

I must say the public is more mature about the state of affairs this time. Few have pointed their fingers and called it a "foreign invasion". Also, government intervention was limited to pulling Avatar from 2-D screens. Had it pulled the runaway hit from all screening venues, it could have triggered a major backlash.

Some people endured a five-hour ride to get to the nearest theater with 3-D or IMax facility, and once there, put up with an eight-hour wait in shivering cold. These people must not be crossed. The only person who did not seem to understand this was the director of Confucius, who tried to talk up her own movie at the expense of Avatar and ended up accruing a mountain of ill will.

A little over a decade ago, Feng Xiaogang pioneered the "holiday movie season", or at least borrowed the idea from Hong Kong. Now, the pie is expanding and every filmmaker wants a slice. Simple arithmetic should have warned them that the more players in the game, the less they'll get. As many as 50 movies were originally slated for the season, but about 20 dropped out - a wise move in hindsight.

There is a rationale for the rush. A string of holidays not only tend to sweep people into the right mood, but movie coupons that employers give out as small perks usually expire at the year-end. But what kind of movies are fit for the holiday season?

The North American market usually reserves art movies and family movies for Thanksgiving-to-Christmas. Here, moviegoers demand action! - action movies, that is. It was proved several years ago that art flicks by auteurs wouldn't sell to the holiday crowd. What sells? Big names. Stellar casts. Non-stop fighting. Even Confucius, who is known for his cerebral stamina, is portrayed as possessing Robin Hood-caliber archery skills and kungfu muscles.

Obviously, too many Chinese filmmakers have equated action-packed, art-deficient blockbusters with a hack job. Most of the flops - and even some of the hits - were designed as get-rich-quick schemes. A Simple Noodle Story, unspooled by Zhang Yimou, did not even try to merge comedy with suspense. Zhang let someone else direct the comedy parts, probably figuring that it was not his forte. A filmmaker of his undoubted stature is welcome to try comedy, but should not be so profit-oriented as to disregard everything else.

I guess there are good movies that fell through the cracks, but the flops I saw did not get any sympathy from me. They would have bombed in any time slot, with or without Avatar. Storm Warriors did not have much of a plot and it was made up entirely of actors grouching and posing against a digital backdrop. The Treasure Hunter imitated the Mummy and though the bar was not set high, it failed to clear it. The concept of pairing Taiwan's most charismatic male idol with its most titillating lady seemed a good idea. But you need a good script and directing to make it work.

Jay Chou's second outing this season fared even worse. In True Legend, the audience laughed whenever he appeared on screen, and it was not a comedy, at least it was not intended to be. The story was so poorly constructed that a separate one was tagged on at the end without any effort to congeal them into a whole.

The main selling point of Avatar is 3-D, but it is the story-telling technique that keeps one glued to the screen. To prove this point, 20 minutes of True Legend was 3-D, and it was the most awful part of the whole movie. The background seems detached from the characters in the foreground. In one scene, people seem to fight two meters above ground.

Chinese film exhibitors grossly underestimated the power of Avatar. They had forgotten Titanic, directed by the same James Cameron, or they had grown complacent because of the recent boom in the domestic film industry. They thought that by postponing Avatar two weeks after its US release they could add a flourish to the season or at least avert a collision.

God, were they wrong! Avatar gobbled up all the weaklings and still is the Energizer Bunny that keeps on going. The only domestic release totally unfazed by the spell of Avatar was Pleasant Goat and Big, Big Wolf, a children's film with a huge built-in audience.

If Chinese theater chains had the foresight to schedule this juggernaut for a slow season, not only would it have hurt domestic competitors less, but it would have revitalized an otherwise seasonal backwater. The beauty of Avatar is, it does not fear piracy. All bootlegs are simply free publicity and you have to go inside a theater, hopefully one with 3-D, to enjoy the full experience.

Movie seasons have evolved partly out of necessity and partly out of collective habits. There was no summer season for movies before Stephen Spielberg made Jaws. To open Avatar on Jan 4 instead of, say, early spring, shows how far from "scientific" Chinese film moguls still are.

It is understandable that one wants to protect the domestic film industry. The key is not to keep out foreign competition, but to raise the quality of homemade products, and with a little more wisdom in planning, create a mutually beneficial situation.