Film sector's rosy picture dotted with dark clouds

The first week of 2015 will bring us the heartening news that Chinese cinema has crossed another milestone in the form of a nifty box-office figure - or has barely missed it. The importance of 30 billion yuan ($4.82 billion) for box-office grosses is mostly psychological, and it pales in comparison with most other industries, say, the 500-billion-yuan crafts industry that nobody has heard of. But just remember that the figure for 2010 was only 10 billion yuan and you'll get a sense of how far and how fast it is galloping forward.

Another piece of positive tidings for China's film industry is the result that domestic fare has edged out imported competitors and landed comfortably in the leading position in the race for market share. Sure, this was achieved with the quota mechanism, which stands at 34 revenue-sharing foreign movies per year, but with far fewer protectionist tricks than before. It is fair to say that Chinese movies are gaining competitiveness on the home front.

The continuing expansion of modern cinemas in smaller cities plays a crucial role in turning the tide against imported products. Filmgoers in these places display a strong preference for comedies and romantic flicks, two genres Chinese stories can easily beat Hollywood by tapping into the cultural roots and the zeitgeist. Hollywood, on the other hand, excels at presenting spectacles-filled sci-fi epics and highly marketable franchise "tentpoles".

Transformers: Age of Extinction, the fourth installment of the franchise, sailed past previous records both for a domestic movie and a foreign one, set by Lost in Thailand (2012) and Avatar (2010), and became China's best-selling film, scratching but not breaking the 2-billion-yuan mark. It probably also set a record in the number and variety of product-placement deals from China. The ways these Chinese elements pop up in the movie are so haphazard they scream, "We want your money and we'll get it whatever way we can!" Several of the deals backfired when Chinese advertisers felt shortchanged and threatened to sue.

The best-received film of the year, however, is another Hollywood movie. Christopher Nolan's Interstellar is the rare species that won both word of mouth and box-office success in China (751 million yuan), and this in a year when quality seemed to be a curse rather than a hallmark of a hit movie. Most of the best-selling domestic films, including The Monkey King (1 billion yuan), The Breakup Guru (666 million yuan), Tiny Times 3 (524 million yuan) and The Man From Macau (523 million yuan) were widely panned by critics while the rest were controversial at best, such as Breakup Buddies (1.17 billion yuan), Dad, Where Are We Going? (699 million yuan), The Continent (632 million yuan), and Fleet of Time (500 million yuan and counting).

There is a pervasive feeling that the old generation of Chinese filmmakers is being nudged out by a younger one with their directorial debuts. Zhang Yimou's Coming Home and Peter Chan's Dearest are respectable works but, at around 300 million yuan each in box-office earnings, the veterans were massacred by first-time directors who either have little training in film or have only been popular actors. Han Han, race-car driver and blogger, trailed Guo Jingming, the best-selling author, in making a hit debut even though his obvious deficiency in narrative skill was barely circumvented by the use of the road movie genre. Deng Chao seemed to emulate Xu Zheng and Zhao Wei in demonstrating the behind-the-camera appeal of movie stars.

The year-end season has brought a slight correction to the sensational phase-out of the established names. Jiang Wen and Tsui Hark each released a blockbuster that turned instantly into the talk of town even, though some of that talk was not really approbatory. In terms of subject matter, both directors turned to the past for inspiration - unlike their younger peers who have found an endlessly exploitable minefield in school-day puppy love and abortion.

Not only is costume drama as a genre dead as a doornail (unless it's a fantasy epic), but also serious drama regardless of quality is receiving loud boos from the young demographic. Whether a movie can elicit laughs is often used as the most effective gauge for popularity. The addition of a growing base of new movie audiences is achieved at a huge cost to both diversity and artistic aspirations.

The rosy picture of China's film industry carries a few more dark clouds: The buildup of new cinemas is driving profit for exhibitors razor thin because much of their revenues end up paying for the rental of increasingly expensive real estate. (Wanda, one of the country's biggest exhibitors, is exempted from this dilemma as it is a property developer and owns all its movie theaters.) Grassroots translation groups were curbed for their volunteer services by the Chinese government at Hollywood's behest but official translations, because of dubious quality, are often the target of public griping. But against the big picture of strong growth, these may sound like quibbles.

The writer is editor-at-large of China Daily. raymondzhou@chinadaily.com.cn