SCI-Fi's onscreen surge

A new Hollywood blockbuster tops China's box office on opening day, but critics say such films need stronger stories. Xu Fan reports.

In a mass migration to a remote planet, a passenger accidentally wakes up 90 years earlier, discovering he will have to spend the rest of his life alone in a 120-year, nonstop journey.

The grand theme examining loneliness and humanity once made Passengers one of the most popular original screenplays on "Black List", which collects the unproduced tales by powerful Hollywood players.

Now, with a glittering cast - led by Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence and renowned actor Chris Pratt - the sci-fi epic has beaten Rogue One: A Star Wars Story to top China's box office charts on its opening day Jan 13, according to the live tracker Cbooo.cn. So far it has grossed more than 160 million yuan ($23 million) in ticket revenues.

With Wanda Pictures as one of the producers, Columbia Pictures' Passengers has a familiar formula to win local hearts: Inserting a little bit of Chinese into the dialogues.

In one scene, the engineer (Pratt) practices Mandarin to kill time. He speaks in Chinese with an android, which has a human upper half.

While domestic moviegoers have got used to seeing Chinese elements in Hollywood blockbusters thanks to China's fast expanding market, such gimmicks seemingly always resonate with locals.

Besides, the 116-minute feature has other attractions.

Lawrence, one of the world's highest-paid actresses, is familiar to Chinese movie fans thanks to The Hunger Games franchise and the superhero action flick X-Men: First Class.

Pratt has accumulated fans since his sci-fi epic Guardians of the Galaxy and Jurassic World, respectively, became smash hits in China in 2014 and 2015.

Both stars have Chinese nicknames popularized by local netizens.

During their recent visit to Beijing to promote the film, Lawrence said the screenplay attracted her for its depiction of a romance beyond social class.

"It's an interesting story about humans and how we relate with one another and how much we need each other," she says.

Meanwhile, the sets in the spaceship also fascinated the star.

With a budget of nearly $120 million, the film creates a visual spectacle: The giant ship Avalon is rather like a cruise liner in space, with around 5,000 passengers. All of them are scheduled to wake up three or four months before landing on the new planet. During the awake-from-hibernation months, they can enjoy the luxury facilities on the ship: a giant pool to swim in outer space, robot waiters serving in the restaurant, and fancy suites.

"It looked quite different from anything I'd seen before. It was a different atmosphere for a movie," says Lawrence.

But Passengers is also an interesting case of the changing favor of Chinese moviegoers.

China has a short history of sci-fi movies. Most Chinese born in the 1970s and 1980s got their first knowledge about space and aliens from Hollywood imports.

"Now they are becoming pickier about storytelling," says Jiang Yong, a Beijing-based industry watcher.

On China's most popular reviewing site Douban.com, Passengers has obtained a mediocre score of 6.9 points out of 10. Critically acclaimed foreign imports usually surpass 7.

A number of reviews question the value in the film.

Pratt's protagonist - who is the first to wake up accidentally - wakes up a journalist (Lawrence), as he can't bear the loneliness and wants to have a companion. But his activity in a sense leads to ruining her life.

Lawrence defends the plot in Beijing.

"This movie asks a lot of controversial questions. I don't believe my character will fall in love with Pratt's character if she hasn't become a victim of a tragedy. The weirdest part is that the tragedy is the only way that she can find happiness," she says.

But most Chinese movie fans don't buy the line. Some diehard enthusiasts rewrote the storyline on Chinese review sites, making the story more suspenseful and in-depth.

Separately, the film's weakness in the scientific space is another reason for its shaky reputation.

A similar film, The Martian, which also dealt with loneliness and was released in November 2015 in China, was more convincing.

Interstellar, a sci-fi hit adored by Chinese viewers, had celebrated theoretical physicist Kip Thorne as the science consultant.

"But Passengers has no such scientific background to minimize its flaws. It's such a pity. Otherwise the original idea could have been developed into an amazing story," says Jiang.

Contact the writer at xufan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily USA 01/19/2017 page11)