‘Skyfall’ praised and panned

Moviegoers laud China-flavoured Bond film and criticise inaccuracies

BEIJING: At the sight of neon-lit skyscrapers in Shanghai and red lanterns inked with Chinese characters in Macao, Ma Ning feels these Chinese elements in the new James Bond film Skyfall have “brought her closer than ever” to the series she has loved since childhood.

“The movie could have been set in any other country, but I am glad the director chose China. It made me feel close to Bond,” said the 20-year-old college girl.

Skyfall hit cinemas in the Chinese mainland on Jan 21. This Hollywood blockbuster, the first in its series to be cooked with some real China flavour, has won cheer from moviegoers.

“It is a rare thing for an international action movie to depict China in a fashionable way,” a 27-year-old media worker surnamed Huang said. “Skyfall shows a magnificent side of Shanghai that even the natives may never have seen.”

Wu Qi from east China’s Shandong Province considered Skyfall “largely an under-performance in comparison with the previous Bond movies”. But the 25-year-old architect added that the exquisite presentation of Chinese cities seems to be a major selling point to cinema-goers here.

The movie earned 32.03 million yuan (RM15mil) on its day of release on the Chinese mainland, setting a box office record for 2D Hollywood films that hit the screen on a Monday, according to a report by 21CN.com, a Chinese web portal.

“In recent years, incorporating Chinese elements to tap into the world’s second-largest film market has been a strategy for many movie makers,” said Chen Shan, a professor with the Beijing Film Academy, citing the combination in Kung Fu Panda – two of China’s best-known icons – martial arts and pandas.

In order to add more exotic flavour for Western viewers and catch Chinese audiences’ eyes as well, Chinese faces and locales have been selected to appear in more and more Hollywood movies, added Chen Chuanlu, a movie maker in Beijing.

Statistics show that the Chinese market has been growing increasingly important for the world’s filmmakers, with an average increase of 35% year-on-year in the country’s box office earnings.

Chinese characters in Hollywood movies began to break the stereotype of being treacherous, backward and superstitious from early this century thanks to the growing importance of the domestic market and increasing understanding about the nation in the Western world, according to Chen.

“As already evidenced in Looper and Skyfall, a multifaceted and modern China, which means more than kung fu and pandas, is making its way to the big screen,” the academic said.

But it doesn’t mean the China card that foreign directors are beginning to play so frequently has been wellreceived by all Chinese viewers.

“The shots of Shanghai’s night views didn’t appeal to me at all. They didn’t make it look any different from any other metropolis,” said 25year-old Wu Liyasi, who works in Beijing.

“It feels somewhat weird to see Bond in a Chinese setting,” a microblogger using the name “Ningning yuan yuan” noted on China’s Twitterlike Sina Weibo.

Chinese images conjured by the West are still far from multi-faceted, said professor Chen, suggesting that foreign directors and screenwriters need to constantly update their knowledge of China and its people. — Xinhua