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Crazy Rich Asians was a smash in the USA. In China, world’s largest Asian population, it bombed. Hard.
- Thread starter BAD
- Start date
That's because, as many people have said, China produces lots of mediocre dramas/comedies/rom-coms, so another one like Crazy Rich Asians got such a meh reception.
What they DON'T have are big budget action/super hero flicks, so those do super well in China.
big budget Marvel blockbuster action movie? kind of a bad comparison.... how do Tyler Perry movies perform?
not sure why people thought a movie about general asian american culture from the lense of America would do any kind of well of asians globally. cause they are asian?
We are a melting pot society. Homogeneous societies that dont really understand American culture on top of that would obviously not take
We are a melting pot society. Homogeneous societies that dont really understand American culture on top of that would obviously not take
china doesn't need movies tailored around asian representation because they already have hundreds of movies starring only chinese actors
plus if they're anything like india, their sense of humor is completely different to american humor, so what hits for us won't hit for them.
lastly, pretty much the driving notion in the movie is that "old money families are stuffy and suck." china doesn't have old money families. so it's seemingly like that for most chinese viewers, it's not lambasting generationally rich chinese people but just chinese people in general. that, for obvious reasons, doesn't sit well for them.
even removed from all of that, the movie is about an ethnically chinese woman who's basically just an american coming into a chinese family, and the central conflict is that the chinese-ness of that family is a roadblock for her happiness. obvious why chinese viewers who aren't super aware of the type of culture or attitudes asian-americans have or grow up in end up befuddled.
plus if they're anything like india, their sense of humor is completely different to american humor, so what hits for us won't hit for them.
lastly, pretty much the driving notion in the movie is that "old money families are stuffy and suck." china doesn't have old money families. so it's seemingly like that for most chinese viewers, it's not lambasting generationally rich chinese people but just chinese people in general. that, for obvious reasons, doesn't sit well for them.
even removed from all of that, the movie is about an ethnically chinese woman who's basically just an american coming into a chinese family, and the central conflict is that the chinese-ness of that family is a roadblock for her happiness. obvious why chinese viewers who aren't super aware of the type of culture or attitudes asian-americans have or grow up in end up befuddled.
There's absolutely hunger for big budget action films in Marvel with black leads. I doubt other black films get distributed across Africa even.
Venom didn't bomb at all though, it made over $850 million worldwide.
Hahaha that's true.
I myself couldn't stand Crazy Rich Asians. It's just way too urgh for me.
I saw it in Taiwan a couple weeks ago at a second run theater. It was moderately popular here, buy not a smash hit. I don't remember any of my students talking about it.
Asian American culture is not Asian culture. It's its own thing and that's fine too.
This was why I wasn't entirely on board when people were declaring success when Crazy Rich Asians did well at Hollywood. It's a success story only through this one framework.
Asians already have their own successes in their own markets
This was why I wasn't entirely on board when people were declaring success when Crazy Rich Asians did well at Hollywood. It's a success story only through this one framework.
Asians already have their own successes in their own markets
this right here. China is the land of "we'll give a fuckton of money to fast and furious and transformers but we hate star wars."
china doesn't give a shit about if a movie's good or not. if it appeals to them, it appeals. if not, it doesn't.
and more specifically, they definitely don't care about your specific hot take. CRA is sitting at 90%+ on RT. just because a movie doesn't speak to you or you don't enjoy it, doesn't mean it's a bad movie. it just means you didn't like it.
Romantic comedies are the bread and butter of Asian countries. A movie like Crazy Rich Asians isn't really anything unique in Asia.
Is this surprising? Chinese see movies with them all the time.
For Asian Americans it was one of the most important movie releases in their lives, but for Asians it was a Tuesday
For Asian Americans it was one of the most important movie releases in their lives, but for Asians it was a Tuesday
It also depends on how well a movie is marketed. I wonder how much $$$ was used to market this film in China
No surprise given that a) it's an english romcom (unless they dubbed it? I don't know) b) the cultural significance of the movie isn't relevant to the Chinese market, making it dime a dozen in a saturated genre.
And that's not going to change even for the sequel that majorly features Shanghai.
And that's not going to change even for the sequel that majorly features Shanghai.
Asian populace generally do not consider rich ass ppl as heroes. There always looked upon with suspicion.
It's not for them. They don't exactly have issues with the representation of Asian in films. Plus the fact it's about an Asian American and not just Asians; which is a very important distinction, and it's the first Hollywood film with full Asian leads in like 20 goddamn years.
What? No, that's patently not the case. There are so many Chinese/HK/Taiwanese/Korean/Japanese dramas and romcoms focusing on corporate, elites and the class gap. Whatever irl suspicion they have of the rich and wealthy is the same as how Western society looks at them.
The original writing and basically every comment in here fails to account for the fact that comedies, romances, and dramas are heavily dialogue-based. That includes idioms and regional terms that rarely translate well, if at all. It's a known quantity that those issues largely hold those genres back when moving between cultural boundaries.
Action movies and other genres that rely more on visual markers don't suffer the same way.
Action movies and other genres that rely more on visual markers don't suffer the same way.
I've been meaning to ask about something regarding this film.
Is four years of college really enough to transform a Singlish accent to an American one? I can't imagine it'd be something that happens naturally unless the person is taking a communications degree. I had a cousin who spent his entire uni life in the UK, and he still speaks English with the same accent he's had all his life.
Is four years of college really enough to transform a Singlish accent to an American one? I can't imagine it'd be something that happens naturally unless the person is taking a communications degree. I had a cousin who spent his entire uni life in the UK, and he still speaks English with the same accent he's had all his life.
It begs the question why at minimum it opened in 2000 theaters over there. I get there are certain deals made that forces a situation like this but all these contracts should have clauses based on social media metrics and pre-screens. This seems like an easy disaster to avoid.
Hey....hey you guys, China don't mind.
Bingo. The movie itself is really average, story extremely sappy and unfunny. And it's basically a (openly) big ad from the Singapore tourism board.
I am very rapidly losing my patience with the whole HURR HURR THEY HAVE THEIR OWN ROMCOMs garbage, thanks
Because the movie made a fuckload of money anyways and they don't care
Because the movie made a fuckload of money anyways and they don't care
China doesn't have stipulations on how long films need to play in a threatre before being pulled. So CRA got 33k showings in China on opening night. By that Sunday (Day 3), it was 14k showings. By the second Friday, it was basically not playing in China anymore. They just gave the screens to Aquaman instead.
So the risk in trying something is small. Domestically, theatres have to show a big studio film for at least two full weeks, often with a stipulation on the types and quantity of screens.
Right and in those shows about class gap, the protagonists are the POOR.
it's not surprising, we talked a lot about this movie because of its cast but it's only appealing to asian-american really.
No, that's a poor presumption. They run the gamut; from poor protagonist attaining an elite status, an elite losing it all, a Romeo and Juliet spin on a rich and poor coupling, heroic elite protagonists navigating a treacherous corporate world, big dynastic stories about an elite family running hundreds of episodes, among countless, countless others. On evil and villainous elites, what kind of drama is without adversity?
An Electric attack against Zapdos would actually do neutral damage, since Zapdos is Flying.
So Volt Tackle, which is a strong STAB move, would actually do good damage on Zapdos.
I'm not sorry.
While that's something that has been said before multiple times in the last 2 decades you could imagine how this misunderstanding persists when white Americans are going to be more ok with watching what Brits, Aussies, French, Polish etc produce. It's a cultural blindspot.
You forgot CARS.
How can you forget their love of the (amazing) F&F films?
One of the most common protagonist archetype in Korean drama is the smart, handsome, charismatic son of a super rich businessman.
Oh look, OP doesn't understand the concept of the Asian diaspora. I'll add his name to the list.
Right?! Aren't the last two the highest grossing western films there? I don't know if it's due to a love of cars, or a love for bald action heroes who just so happen to drive fast cars lol.
What a lot of Westerners often fail to grasp is the sheer breadth and diversity of the Chinese diaspora. Many of us live our entire lives with no connection to the mainland, and with vastly different cultural views and backgrounds. For example, the eating of Yee Sang during Chinese New Year is deeply embedded in the cultural consciousness of Malaysian and Singaporean Chinese, but is alien to any other Chinese community.
Like fucking Malaysian Chinese and Singaporean Chinese are fond of counting the differences between us, let alone Asian Americans (which would include far more than just the Chinese) and mainland Chinese.
Even in terms of entertainment, our tastes are divergent. Chinese entertainment has largely failed to establish a foothold outside the mainland, with many of us favouring k-dramas over anything that came out of China itself
Like fucking Malaysian Chinese and Singaporean Chinese are fond of counting the differences between us, let alone Asian Americans (which would include far more than just the Chinese) and mainland Chinese.
Even in terms of entertainment, our tastes are divergent. Chinese entertainment has largely failed to establish a foothold outside the mainland, with many of us favouring k-dramas over anything that came out of China itself
It really depends on the individual. Some people's accent basically never change from the way they speak since they became adults. There are others who's accent changes like the wind.
I had a classmate who went to Australia and came back with an Australian accent after being there for 6 months. I also had a university school mate who went to Ireland for 3 months and came back with some weird accent that no one can place and he spoke like that for the next few years.
I would say that as a Singaporean, we code switch pretty well in general, even for those of us who have not gone overseas for education. Singlish outside the office, proper English as much as possible in work environment.
One of the points that didn't translate from book to film is that the elders and the rich society in the book perceives Britain to be the defacto choice for sending their kids to further their education. It's a holdover from our colonial days as the old rich in the past before our independence would have received British English education as taught to them by the British and then go on to the UK for further studies. So old money families are likely to speak more like the British.
The mom and her peers look down on Rachel because she's US educated and not UK educated like her son has been. I grew up hearing rich folks who think that the only universities worth sending their kids or grandkids to are the ones in the UK.
In fact it wasn't even dumplings that they ate at the house. It was tea with scones. The movie went above and beyond to to the Asianess of the book. Making dumplings is not an essential part of our Chinese culture because it really depends on which part of China your ancestors came from. My family and relatives never sit down to make meat dumplings together. We're more likely to make zong zi and other things but never the dumplings shown in the movie.