Milestones for Disney, Warner Bros.
Two movies arrive on the small screen today that say a lot about the state of filmmaking and movie studios in 2023.
The 2021 Marvel epic martial arts adventure “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” (8 p.m., ABC, TV-14) makes its broadcast debut. The film received near unanimous critical praise, surpassed (on Rotten Tomatoes, at least) by audience approval).
The film’s path to an audience was a difficult one. Originally intended for release on the date of Chinese New Year in 2021, its debut was delayed repeatedly due to COVID-19.
Clearly undertaken with an eye to an international audience and based on many Chinese themes, the film was shut out of the Chinese market by that nation’s autocratic government.
This ban, and the temporary exclusion from China of all Marvel movies, comes after a near generation-long courtship between Hollywood studios and the Chinese movie marketplace.
In the 2022 nonfiction book “Red Carpet,” author Erich Schwartzel describes how, from the 1990s forward, American movie makers bent over backward to avoid offending or alienating Chinese authorities in order to reach a massive audience.
Over the decades, the Chinese increased their demands while at the same time copying Hollywood in the hopes of creating a homegrown product that would make American movies less relevant. “Shang-Chi” is perhaps the most glaring example of American corporations coveting a Chinese market only to find themselves excluded.
Over on the newly rebranded Max streaming platform, Morgan Freeman narrates the documentary “100 Years of Warner Bros.,” a survey history of the studio. The survey includes more than 60 interviews with filmmakers and stars including Clint Eastwood, Mel Brooks, Martin Scorsese, Keanu Reeves and George Clooney, who discuss a studio that has long traded on its edge.
In addition to championing the gangster movie in the 1930s, the studio also exuded a certain gangster vibe. To the talent assembled, that resulted in a corporate attitude that accepted risk-taking and going for broke, from Brooks’ crazy comedy parodies to the conceptually daring (and laboriously produced) movies of Stanley Kubrick, including “Barry Lyndon,” “The Shining” and “Full Metal Jacket.
Almost alone among the studios in the 1930s, Warner Bros. produced movies about the growing Nazi menace. MGM musicals were wildly popular in Germany, then the world’s secondlargest film market. That studio’s chief, Louis B. Mayer, did not want to rock the boat, but Warner Bros. went ahead with movies like “Confessions of a Nazi Spy” (1939), starring Edward G. Robinson.
Warner Bros. demonstrated vision and courage in taking on the Nazis and showed that some things are more important than profit.
Just how the Warner Bros. tradition continues after the company’s merger with Discovery is yet to be seen.
› Peacock becomes the exclusive streaming home of season five of “Yellowstone,” beginning today.
› Viaplay, the streaming service dedicated to Scandinavian content, streams “Riding in Darkness,” a crime drama set in horse country.
OTHER HIGHLIGHTS
› “Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars” (8 p.m., Fox, repeat, TV-14).
› The case against a sports star fizzles on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” (9 p.m., NBC, repeat, TV-14)