Launch into the unknown
As a fan of Ridley Scott, producer Wang Donghui says he has watched the British filmmaker’s sci-fi classic Alien (1979) more than a hundred times.
For Wang, himself educated in Britain, a sci-fi movie should not merely be a depiction of an imagined futuristic world but should also reflect the threats faced by contemporary society.
With his passion for the genre, Wang decided to produce The Secret of Immortal
Code in 2014, a sci-fi horror movie conceived by China Film Group Corp, the largest studio in the country.
Headlined by award-winning actress Liang Jing and veteran actor Zhao Lixin, the movie directed by Li Wei and Zhang Nan is due to be released across the Chinese mainland on June 22.
Most of the sequences in the movie were shot in black and white, in an experimental move to evoke a dystopian atmosphere.
Set in the near future, the story depicts a world where the prevalence of deadly diseases is so rife that sick people choose to have their bodies frozen rather than relying on treatment, in the hope that future medical breakthroughs would cure them.
In a bid to resurrect her older sister who was frozen 18 years previously, the medical student protagonist played by Liang, follows a genius doctor (Zhao) on his trek to the North Pole to try and find a cure for her. But with the appearance of an unknown “monster” on the ship, the journey turns into a nightmare for the passengers on board, and a thrilling conspiracy unfolds.
Recalling the production process, Wang describes the decision to shoot this genre of film four years ago as nothing short of “bold”, especially since the Chinese film industry had precious few precedents to work with.
Besides, at that time, it was common knowledge in domestic movie circles that it was difficult for homegrown sci-fi stories to compete with special effects-driven Hollywood films in terms of attracting a large local audience.
But the situation changed in 2015 when Chinese sci-fi novelist Liu Cixin won the Hugo Award. Not only was this widely regarded as a watershed moment for the sci-fi movie industry in China, but it also sparked a sharp rise in the number of quality scripts reaching the market every year since then.
“The idea to make The Secret
of Immortal Code came before Liu’s win. It was very difficult in the beginning, but we did hope to attempt something that few people have tried before,” says Wang.
With his desire to make the movie something akin to the Chinese equivalent of Frankenstein, Wang says he believed that a crafted, polished storyline was more important than relying on market research.
“When I was the producer working on Brotherhood of
Blades, most of the financiers (who turned down his request to raise the budget) said the market for martial arts period dramas in China had waned, since two similar productions had just bombed at the box office,” recalls Wang.
But the Chang Chen-starring film directed by rising star Lu Yang proved that Wang’s judgement was correct.
Spurred on by word-ofmouth acclaim, Brotherhood
of Blades (2014) notched up a score of 7.5 of 10 on the popular Chinese entertainment rating platform, Douban. The film’s success helped to revive the fortunes of the struggling martial arts genre and paved the way for its 2017 sequel to secure a far more healthy budget.
The sequel, which was also backed by the China Film Group, enhanced the studio’s confidence in Wang, and provided him with a second project to produce The Secret of Immortal Code.
“When you are making films, you should always insist on exploring the unknown and untried. Otherwise you will just be repeating what others have already done,” he says.
Yu Si, a young writer who was then studying at the Beijing Film Academy, was recruited to pen the storyline. The scriptwriter born in 1986 spent a lot of time researching medical and oceanic history, and had around 2,000 sketches made to help her build a complete picture of the futuristic world she was creating and flesh out the sets and characters.
“Movies make dreams. I’m really interested in the themes of science fiction, horror and monsters,” says Yu, who is a fan of such classics as Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak and the Resident Evil franchise.
“It’s a story about North Pole, oceanic adventure and mutant monsters. These things fascinate me,” she says.
Although the movie encountered a string of hurdles, mainly surrounding a shortage of qualified special effects hands and budget limitations, Wang says he believes the biggest challenge facing Chinese sci-fi films has nothing to do with funding.
“Great sci-fi stories are about the complexities of human life, which usually stem from daily concerns,” says Wang.