Sports films can tell good stories

China produces few sports films. Aside from Leap, which was released in 2020 and tells the story of the Chinese national women's volleyball team's journey to the gold medal at the Summer Olympics, barely has a sports film attracted wide attention in China since the launch of reform and opening-up more than four decades ago.

Thanks to the market reforms, the Chinese film industry has made great achievements over the past 40 years. Last year, the box office revenue (about 47.26 billion yuan－$7.42 billion) and the number of screens (82,248) in China were the highest in the world. The Chinese market also accounted for eight of the top 10 highest-grossing movies globally.

Yet there is still a long way to go for China's film industry to catch up with Hollywood in terms of film production, themes, concepts and influence. Even films made in Japan and the Republic of Korea are more popular and influential in the world markets. One particular area in which China lags behind major film-producing countries is sports movies.

The Chinese movie industry has long sought to emulate Hollywood. And although China had begun producing blockbusters by the turn of this century, most of the Chinese filmmakers still focus on short-term gains, by tending to invest in big stars or special effects rather than trying to innovatively and creatively tell a good story.

The rapid increase in the number of theaters that led to a huge overcapacity and fierce competition further exacerbated this tendency of the filmmakers. Since movies with superstars seem to be a sure recipe for box office success, good stories rarely find space in the film industry.

Sky-high paychecks for stars are common in China's film industry, and special effects such as 3D are everywhere irrespective of whether it's necessary or not. Such tricks worked initially but Chinese audiences, tired of "empty vases", are unlikely to buy them anymore.

Maybe the Chinese film industry needs to learn from Dangal, an Indian sports film released in 2016, to break the trend of films with highly-paid stars but without any clear message or production value. Standing out among a series of Hollywood blockbusters, Dangal earned both critical acclaim and box office success around the world that year.

With a rich storyline, Dangal shows parental love and how a typical Indian middle-class family strikes a balance between tradition and modernity. The success of Dangal shows that popular movies don't necessarily require huge investments and a bevy of superstars. So instead of profit and entertainment, the Chinese film industry should focus more on quality and substance.

China has made many remarkable achievements in sports. It held the Beijing 2008 Summer Games, and is hosting the 2022 Winter Games. Plus, China has been among the top three medal winners at the past few Summer Olympics, and led the medal tally at the 2008 Games.

But Chinese sports films lag far behind China's achievements in the sports field. For instance, table tennis is China's national sport but the Chinese film industry has not made even one good film on the subject. The last sports movie before Leap to impress viewers was Woman Basketball Player No 5, which was made in 1958.

It's time the movie industry deepened reforms with the aim of encouraging filmmakers to make quality sports films and return to the basics of creatively telling a good story, instead of cutting corners in other areas of filmmaking to make up for the astronomical amounts paid to stars.

Perhaps there is a need to set a goal－of say producing at least five representative movies in every genre including comedy, thriller, romance, horror, action, sci-fi, crime, war, even sports. Since China has a huge film market, high-quality movies that tell a good story will earn rich market returns. And sports movies can be one of the good ways to tell China's stories.

The views don't necessarily represent those of China Daily.

Sun Jiashan is a researcher at the Chinese National Academy of Arts. This is an excerpt from his interview with China Daily's Yao Yuxin.

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