China's box office makes strong comeback over holiday

Charm

In addition to the holiday movies' variety in terms of genre, the high quality of the films has been widely hailed by cinema managers, critics, and wider audiences.

Four of the six titles received a rating at or above 7.0 out of 10 on the review platform Douban, with 8.2 for The Wandering Earth II and 7.7 for Full River Red.

"Telling a great story that resonates with the audiences is above all else," said Zhang Yimou in a televised interview.

Zhang said he drew inspiration from the "revolving scenic lamp" in traditional Chinese culture. He set up his movie characters inside a traditional courtyard in North China's Shanxi province, where they must pass through numerous long, narrow alleys to interrogate different people and solve a murder case.

Yu Opera, a traditional opera of Central China's Henan province, was also used as background music to echo the feeling of tension when the movie characters hurried through alleys, he said.

Adapted from the Chinese novel of the same name by Liu Cixin, The Wandering Earth is set in the future and tells of an audacious attempt to save Earth, with the sun about to expand into a red giant and devour the planet.

Many moviegoers said they were amazed by the "space elevators" rendered in The Wandering Earth II. In an interview, Guo described the filming of "space elevators" as a "nightmare," highlighting the difficulty.

Fu Ruoqing, a senior executive of China Film Co., Ltd which is a co-producer, commended The Wandering Earth II as a new milestone in China's movie history, "whether in terms of the sci-fi values the film has conveyed or in terms of the exquisiteness and delicacy of the filmmaking and the screenplay."

In the movie, Chinese scientists displayed and presented the ability and possibility that humankind could put Earth on a wandering journey and thus helped with the decision-making, Fu noted in a televised interview. "It is also an observation out of respect for a human community with a shared future," he said.

Fu's remarks resonated with many internet users.

"The Wandering Earth II tells about thinking in big picture and about 'a human community with a shared future,'" read a post on the social media platform Weibo. "Conflicts did exist... but in the interaction of conflicts, the destiny of humankind becomes a community, where there are no winners, only consensus."