‘LIFE OF PI’for Ang Lee’s another brilliant work

The film ‘Life of Pi’ is adapted from the novel of the same name, the box office in China is easily achieve billions of RMB in the first week, since the movie released on 22 November. The movie is not just achieved a success in box office so far, and also achieved a good reputation. To achieve the both success on the box office and also the reputation is not easy for any film, but Ang Lee made this happens.

Except to analyse successful aspects from professional ‘film studies’ angel, the pre-publicity of this movie also made the effort to make movie success. When Ang Lee decided to make this movie, the news has spread quickly and each news focus on the ‘hard work’ of making this movie. Therefore, it has already made audience curious about this movie and started to follow the information about this movie.

And during the process of making this movie, the pre-publicity team always mentions that there are three hardest things for making film. they are children, animals and water, while those were included in Life Of Pi, so it gives audience a hint that how does Ang  Lee to make this happen.

In Life of Pi‘s official website, it provides Facebook, Twitter, Flicker etc social platforms to do promotion of the film. It offers large of  story of making films and update the news about this film in time. It takes advantages of social platform to interact with audience. It makes audience know more about the behind scene story, and share their opinions on these platforms.

The background of this official website is made as 3D effect, so it makes more visualised. Therefore, all of this pre-publicity strategy helps to attract more audience go to the cinema to watch the film as well. Then i believe, Life of Pi is a journey be worth to take it, it will be the other important work in Ang Lee’s director career.

Bonus, we can watch a different version of Hollywood films in China

In china, there is a large group of people who are fancy with Hollywood films. The interesting thing is, in most of time, the version we watched is different with American audience. So how lucky we are, China as a ‘special’ distribution place for Hollywood films, we are exceptional.

There is a trend for Hollywood films to cooperate with Chinese and to border their market, but Chinese government just want to show the positive images of China in those films. Therefore, if Chinese film censorship thinks Hollywood make Chinese character with bad stereotype, or some sensitive plots about Chinese government, they will remove the scenes and do not allow Chinese audience to watch it.

Such as, In Black Man 3, Chinese government removed the scenes in totaling 13 minutes. Even with the scene, a Chinese waitress attracts Agent J with her alien tongue. The waitress portrayed as an alien, therefore, she as a strange person but not as a Chinese woman with the positive image. Chinese audience just feel ridiculous about that and cannot believe that the version they watched have 13minutes less than the original one.

This situation is not the first time happens in China, and actually, it is a normal situation. As a film fans, I am personally really angry with this problem. Hollywood film tickets are usually more expensive than local films; but Chinese film censorship cannot even guarantee audience to watch the entire film, which makes me really disappointed.

The point is more scenes removed by Chinese government, more stronger feeling of curiously of Chinese audience; they still will use as many methods as they can to find the scenes have removed. That is one of the most important reasons, that there are lots of piracy problems exist in China. How ironic it is.

It seems that the Hollywood films in Chinese version, there is no bad Chinese, nothing bad about Chinese government, no negative with Chinese army in history, no bloody scenes, no violence, no naked characters and so on. Poor Chinese editors, they need to spend time on this bloody important and difficult work.

There is the other thing I have to mention, it is lucky for Inception, because it is the only entire Hollywood film been shown in Chinese cinemas in recent years. We think that is because editors do not have enough ability to understand the story, therefore, it is too hard for them to edit. Anyway at least, they did a contribution for Chinese film censorship, so God bless them. Let’s just take this exceptional advantage and enjoy the different version of Hollywood films. After all, this privilege is not for everyone.

Do not be stupid! You are just a small potato in Hollywood films.

In nowadays, more and more Chinese celebrities choose to play films in Hollywood. However, their roles in Hollywood are not as the most important roles in Chinese films. To contrast, they are just in a cameo role.

Bingbing Li in Resident Evil: Retribution

Qing Xu in Looper

Xun Zhou in Cloud Atlas

For example, the film Resident Evil: Retribution released recently, and Bingbing Li as a Chinese Character, she plays the role with very limited rate of appearance. Qing Xu, who appears in Looper as Bruce Willis’s girlfriend, even though her partner is well known by the audience, Qing only appears in three times with one short dialogue. What is more, in the trailer of the film Cloud Atlas, Xu Zhou appears with a strange make-up and even could not be realised by Chinese audiences.

All of these Chinese characters are very famous in China now, they already have a certain popularity in the Chinese market, why are they prefer to play a cameo role in Hollywood films in nowadays? Everyone knows that Hollywood choose some Chinese popular character plays in their film, because they want the broader market for Hollywood films, and Chinese market is definitely a good choice for them.

However, I do not think that is really a perfect choice for those Chinese characters as well. The roles they play in Hollywood films are not that important and even could not be recognised by Chinese audience, so I do not think foreign audiences can even remember their face, which just means nothing for them. Except they are play the most important role in the film, and that still have the condition with the quality of the films, otherwise Chinese characters are still hard to be known by foreign audiences.

What is more, to some extent, they will lose a certain reputation in Chinese market as well. Most roles they play in Hollywood films are not enough to show their skillful acting, because it provides very limited space for their acting.

Therefore, for most Chinese characters, especially who have a certain popularity audiences in Chinese market, why are they not just keep their Chinese market and earn more reputation? I think it is better for them be a leading part in Chinese films rather than play a cameo role in Hollywood films, especially in the time that China is one of the most important countries in film markets. So, just do not be stupid!