T H E N A I V E F I L M M A K E R

I recently had to deliver a presentation on the contention that Asian Cinema is a rootless Hybrid that has no real home. It seemed an aggressively unfair contention, but out of all the contentions to choose from, it was the only one where I could discuss some of my favourite global films.

Firstly, lets look at some definitions!

Blockbuster – A feature film that is popular and financially successful, often aimed at a mass market and created with high budgets, star power, sets etc.

Rootless Hybrid – To be rootless means without a home. It’s hard to pin point where this film originates from and what it’s roots are or which country is responsible for it.

For example Fast and Furious is very blatantly American while Carry on films are British. However a film’s roots become more complicated the more entities that are involved. James Bond is usually considered a British film but it is made for an international audience, actors are British but the producers are American, making the franchise more difficult to pinpoint.

Hybridisation is the mixing of the various elements and identities in a film. So the British teenagers in Sex Education going to a “High School” instead of College and adopting American fashion etc.

Defining Asian cinema is easy, its films made in that part of the world! Japanese Science Fiction, Korean Horror, Hong Kong Marial Arts films and so on. However, I’ll be focusing on East Asian blockbusters which had significant international distributions.

The Hong Kong industry is especially important as it’s an example of First Cinema operating in a similar fashion to the centralised Hollywood system. Earning billions of dollars and totalling 5% of Hong Kong’s economy.

The Rise of the Asian Blockbuster

It’s difficult to pin point the most important periods for Asian cinema as it varies from country to country. But Asian cinema seemed to reach its golden age in a post World War 2 climate.

For example you have the rise of auteurs like Kurosawa and Ozu who made one of my favourite films “Tokyo Story”. Who’s work influenced several important filmmakers in the French New Wave and New Hollywood movements.

Although despite being excellent films, they didn’t find much in the way of foreign audiences and remained mostly domestic.

This was until the 80’s and 90’s when Action films,  predominantly from Hong Kong started finding large popularity outside of their country.

Marial Arts films or Heroic Bloodshed genres became especially popular. With stars like Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan finding a lot of success in Hollywood. Their success in more Western cinema does point towards a certain level of hybridity in the genre as it appealed to audiences at an international level.

They are a rootless hybrid…

Films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) grossed over $200,000,000 at the box office and the Chinese Wuxia film directed by Ang Lee was pivotal in bringing Chinese films to a mainstream and western audience. However this brings us to the first point of Asian blockbusters ACTUALLY being a rootless Hybrid. Crouching Tiger is a transnational film. The $15,000,000 budget was produced by several institutions. China Film Co-Productions, Asian Union Film, Edko films BUT ALSO Columbia Pictures.

It boasts Taiwanese director Ang Lee, Taiwanese Writer Wang Hui-Ling, American Writer James Schamus and an Hong Kong producer Bill Kong. So while it is a predominantly East Asian cast and crew. There are a lot of voices that went into this project, not all of which are native to Asia.

The film blended Chinese history, legend, religion and martial arts with much more western narratives. For example the romance, that literally interrupts a wedding. What else is notable is the female lead. Which has been attributed to the success of Disney’s Mulan 1988 which popularised the image of the Chinese woman warrior in the west. The end result is a Chinese film that is in many ways designed for a Western Audience, this is common in other American-Chinese collaborations although often not to the same amount of success.

The Great Wall for example was highly controversial for its choice to cast two American actors in the leading roles and a lot of audiences quickly forgot or never realised to begin with that it was a project put together by both Chinese and American film companies. Despite high box office results, the film was still a box office bomb that failed to make back the cost of its production and marketing.

Many Asian Directors are known to have varied film portfolios, Crouching Tiger Director; Ang Lee for example began his career making films in Taiwan like Pushing Hands 1991 and went on to direct British Film Sense and Sensibility 1995 and American indie film Brokeback Mountain 2005.

Actress Michelle Yeoh has had an equally varied career, starting work out in Hong Kong action films likes Yes Madam 1985 went on to have huge successes in many international blockbuster films like Tomorrow Never Dies 1997, Babylon AD and Last Christmas 2019.

The fact that these talented individuals have been able to blend so well into western markets makes a positive case for the globalisation of cinema and possibly makes a case for the hybridity of the genre in which they worked.

They are not rootless hybrids…

Some might say these actors are an example of hybridity, but this could also work the opposite way, as they are examples of cinema becoming more polymorphic, with filmmakers like Ang Lee and Chloe Zhao working predominantly outside of their home countries.

While initially I thought that I had made a compelling case for this rather sweeping contention. I realised that it fell apart very quickly upon inspecting the highest grossing films of the year list.

The Battle at Lake Changjin is a historical action film about a Chinese infantry facing down American Soldiers in the Korean war. So from that we know that this is not a film meant for an American audience. Notably it was commissioned by the CCP’s publicity department. It has a cast and crew of Chinese and East Asian backgrounds and was a collaboration between two state owned production companies. The film has been criticised as propaganda and is probably a controversial title to include. But it is quite a good example of NATIONAL CINEMA.

But in its mostly domestic release the film grossed almost double that of Hollywood’s answer to Chinese representation in film. Which was naturally Marvel film Shang Chi and the ten rings 2021.

Time Travel comedy film Hi, Mom 2021 grossing nearly as much as The Battle of Lake Changjin, is a family comedy film not unremarkably made by a solo female director, it’s a personal story based on her relationship with her mother so the themes are universal to an audience rather than rooted in national cinema.

So why are there so many similarities?

My theory is that film is now simply more universal, Hi Mom is while deeply rooted in its Native China, is a film about family, that we can all relate to and films becoming hybridised is a natural reaction to modern day easy access to overseas media. Hollywood film have increasingly adopted Asian filmmaking techniques and genres, The Matrix is an example of that being done successfully, The Bulletproof Monk an example of it being done unsuccessfully. It stands to reason that Asian cinema is doing the same as a natural occurrence. Its Vernacular Modernism, we’re reaching a point where filmmakers across the world are learning from other filmmakers in other countries.

In conclusion I don’t think it’s fair to write off Asian Blockbusters as culturally rootless when their films are still culturally unique. While all films are becoming more hybridised, we can’t call out Asian Blockbusters for that without addressing many Hollywood films and Arthouse films that are equally hybridised with the films that inspire them. Cinema is evolving because of the influences we have on our neighbours and I think we should merely enjoy what is an overwhelmingly good thing.