301ZIGOR ALDAMA is the Far East Asia correspondent for
Vocento, Spain’s largest media group. His work often
revolves around social and cultural issues.opposite The heroine of
The Honour of the Tang
Dynasty in a fight scenetop left Mai Tian,
director of The Lonely
Hero in the Desert,
burns incense during
a ceremony on the first
day of shootingbottom left An extras
manager prepares to
shoot an action scene
for War Against BanditsAnd... action! The mayhem unfolds. A crowd of armed
men storm the alleyway and an enormous ball of fire causes
a flood of heat to rush into the set. The cameramen struggle to
avoid being hit or burnt while focusing on the lead characters.
Finally, everything goes according to plan.
And... cut! Smiles break out among sweaty brows. There is
some applause. “It has to look spectacular, because audiences
are getting tired of stories set in this era,” the unit director
says. “We have to try to give them something they haven’t
seen before.”
And therein lies one of the biggest problems of 21st-century
films and TV dramas. Zhang Bingjiang, director of North by
Northwest, explains: “There is a worrying lack of originality in
the scripts. The industry has grown very rapidly, but also in a
chaotic way. Investors only look for money, while censorship
curtails creativity. There are so many red lines not to be
crossed that many choose to stay safe and dull.”
Audiences seem to agree. Even the highest grossing movie
of all time, The Mermaid, has been bashed for its poor script,
awful effects and even worse acting skills, coined “emoji-
acting”. Zhang Yimou’s latest movie, The Great Wall, which
stars Matt Damon, scored a meagre five points on the popular
film review website, Douban.
“The only reason why Chinese people watch Chinese
movies is because the government restricts the number of
foreign films – 34 at present – that are allowed to be shown in
the country,” Zhang admits.
Superstar Fan Bingbing agrees: “We are copying the
American model, with a lot of money invested in some
movies. Technical skills and resources are world class,” the
actress shares. “The problem is that there are many bad stories,
investors know nothing about storytelling, and the market
has not yet matured. Maybe that’s also the reason why our
films don’t succeed abroad.” Hengdian industry leaders are
conscious of this and are trying to woo foreign filmmakers.
“As it happened with the industry and technology, we can
learn a lot from them,” Zeng says.
Still, opportunities are limited because the city’s sets
are designed to stand as a backdrop for “classic” Chinese
stories. For example, not far from where the Kuomintang
forces finished their battle against the Communists, martial
arts specialists fight in one of the scenes in the making of
The Honour of the Tang Dynasty (大唐荣耀), set 1,400 years
ago. Indoors, The Lonely Hero of the Desert (大漠孤侠) film
starts to shoot with characters well-known to the genre:
bloodthirsty emperors, foxy concubines, and conspiring
eunuchs. But first, director Mai Tian and the cast perform a
solemn Buddhist ceremony. He wants to drive away one of
the facts Deloitte has pointed out: that 70 percent of all stories
filmed in China never make it to the commercial “big” screen.
In that sense, the fate of much of the hard work done on set
goes the same way as the many failed actors who slink back
out of Hengdian, and into obscurity. ag