Relatability is key
Over the last two decades, as China's film industry has grown to its current size, Chinese filmmakers have been flooding top US film schools in a bid to learn the secret to Hollywood's domination of the motion picture industry for the past 100 years.
Such Western-style filmmaking skills have translated into astonishing success in China's domestic market, but, to date, only around 7 percent of Chinese box-office revenues come from overseas sales. In contrast, Hollywood films boast a rise in foreign revenues from 30 percent of sales 20 years ago, to nearly 70 percent of box-office revenues today.
The North American box office revenues for The Wandering Earth and Ne Zha account for just 0.8 percent and 0.5 percent, respectively, of their global totals.
It's worth noting that overseas Chinese moviegoers still account for the majority of North American box-office revenues for such films.
Chinese films have long faced an uphill, cross-cultural struggle to attract international interest. Criticism most often ranges from "too difficult to identify with", "too long, rambling and confusing", or simply "too Chinese".
The difference in the stories, and the storytelling style, is significant, because Chinese films usually differ in format and pace compared with Hollywood's more popular three-act linear format. Also, stories that are unique to China are unfamiliar in the West.
Hollywood producer Jeff Most says, "China has thousands of years of legends, folk tales and myths that the West knows nothing about.
"These are rich cultural traditions that China wants to share, but they need to be introduced to Western audiences in a way that everyone can relate to, rather than the more nuanced cultural references that are impenetrable or confusing to Westerners."
Echoing the sentiment, Richard Yu, Cinema Escapist's Asia editor, says, "For Western audiences, it's important for the main characters in stories to have serious and relatable struggles for them to experience a human connection."
