'Ne Zha 2' Becomes First Non-Hollywood Film To Hit $1 Billion (globaltimes.cn) 58
Chinese animated film Ne Zha 2 has broken multiple box office records, becoming China's highest-grossing film of all time and the first non-Hollywood movie to surpass $1 billion in a single market. From a report: Helmed by Yang Yu, known as Jiaozi, the film hit the big screen during the lucrative Chinese New Year frame on Jan. 29, surpassing 2017's "Wolf Warrior 2" to become China's most-watched film. Meanwhile, its total revenue (including presales) hit 8 billion yuan (about 1.12 billion U.S. dollars) by Sunday. In just eight days and five hours after its release, "Ne Zha 2" became China's highest-grossing film of all time on Thursday, exceeding the 5.77 billion yuan record set by "The Battle at Lake Changjin." A day later, it overtook "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" to become the highest-grossing film ever in a single market, reaching over 6.79 billion yuan (including presales) in China on Friday.
A follow-up to the animated sensation "Ne Zha," which grossed 5 billion yuan and topped the country's box office charts in 2019, the sequel has captivated audiences with its breathtaking visuals, rich storytelling and deep cultural resonance. The record-breaking run makes "Ne Zha 2" not just a box office titan but a cultural phenomenon, further underscoring China's ability to produce homegrown blockbusters that strike a chord with domestic audiences. You can watch the international trailer on YouTube.
A follow-up to the animated sensation "Ne Zha," which grossed 5 billion yuan and topped the country's box office charts in 2019, the sequel has captivated audiences with its breathtaking visuals, rich storytelling and deep cultural resonance. The record-breaking run makes "Ne Zha 2" not just a box office titan but a cultural phenomenon, further underscoring China's ability to produce homegrown blockbusters that strike a chord with domestic audiences. You can watch the international trailer on YouTube.
Re: It should be obvious (Score:5, Funny)
No thanks Americans have no interest in Chinese crap
Walmart disagrees.
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I lost interest in derivitive boring american movies a long time ago, so no, I am interested in what they can make. It can't be worse than another superhero movie with the same plot as all the others, the same bad jokes, the same dull actors... please China, save us.
Re: It should be obvious (Score:4, Informative)
China is a market of 1.4 billion people, and culturally there are other countries in that region that will enjoy Chinese movies too. So they have little reason to worry too much about the Western market. Sure it's nice to get some sales there, but given the current hostility towards China they are probably not planning on a major release here any time soon.
In a few years you will start to see Chinese movies being edited to suit the Western market, much like Hollywood does edits for China with extra scenes and some of the more sexualized stuff removed. There is a cultural issue though. In China white people in movies are accepted and not a big barrier to success, but the opposite isn't true. Movies with East Asian leads don't tend to do so well in the West. We may start seeing the token white guy in Chinese movies again. Hong Kong used to do it sometimes, often with the villains but sometimes with co-leads like Cynthia Rothrock. Yes Madam is quite good if you want to see her and Michelle Yeoh kicking arse.
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This is why I liked the Inuyashiki film which many likened favorably to traditional superhero productions. As in, it's a story about a middle aged person who fails at life who gains superpowers by accident except there are no costumes, no codenames, no flamboyant gestures nor humor in the face of danger and it actually feels quite gripping and realistic in how a normal person is suddenly forced into the role of being the only thing on earth with the power to save the world. He's actually constantly afraid o
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So we can watch their movies? No thanks Americans have no interest in Chinese crap
*stares awkwardly at your president complaining that you import every piece of crap from China to the point of needing tariffs*
Re: It should be obvious (Score:1)
Then don't choose the crap...choose their quality products instead.
If you think that China only produces crap, then it says a lot about you, not China...
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I don't know, man. Chinese movies tend toward entertainment more than preaching most of the time. Though I prefer South Korean movies when it comes to action and tension, there's some great lore development in Chinese films. Way deeper than the typical Hollywood, "put everyone down to build up the hero," which typically makes the supposed hero look like a giant jackass to us people living down here in the real world.
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More like Hollywood needs to produce stuff that people are just tired of. More MCU? No thanks. Time to do what was done in the 80s and start making some new IP. No, not remakes, not sequels, not getting old crap that people forgot about like Mighty Mouse or something that is moldering in the Disney Vault.
Not gritty stuff. Not gangbanging movies. Something where the bad guy is 100% bad, with no redemption arc and good eventually triumphs.
Lets take the first Star Wars movie before the sequels. We didn'
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What “people” are tired of? These films make big money. The last M.C.U. film, Deadpool & Wolverine grossed 1.2 billion U.S.D.
Evidently “people” aren't tired of it at al.
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The latest MCU movie is Captain America: Brave New World. The jury's still out on how well it will fare at the box office, but early screening reviews are not looking great for this one.
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That one isn't out yet and will only have a public release in two days, but I just looked at the projections and apparently it's projected to do similarly to The Winter Soldier. In any case, the M.C.U., barring a very small number of misses, continues to be a gigantic commercial success.
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More like Hollywood needs to produce stuff that people are just tired of. More MCU? No thanks. Time to do what was done in the 80s and start making some new IP. No, not remakes, not sequels, not getting old crap that people forgot about like Mighty Mouse or something that is moldering in the Disney Vault.
Not gritty stuff. Not gangbanging movies. Something where the bad guy is 100% bad, with no redemption arc and good eventually triumphs.
Lets take the first Star Wars movie before the sequels. We didn't know about DV's background, nor that Luke was his son. It was forging new ground (although there were stories similar to it) with its setting and characters, that a trillion dollar IP universe formed around.
We need hopeful, uplifting, the hero can win, and the dragon can be slain, type of stuff right now.
For some reason, Hollywood and Disney are obsessed with dystopian plots. Where even when the heroes win, it's at a terrible cost and nearly all is lost, except some minor moral victory. You would think hope should have some place in this world, but it seems the entertainment industry is all keyed up to continue to morally beat us down. No hope for you!
Re:It should be obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
I would caution anyone against simply picking up learning a language and think it can just easily be done. Mandarin in particular is one of those things that many people start, then put a lot of time in, then continue on even longer due to sunk cost fallacy, and then finally cut their losses. Some people have been dedicating time on and off to that for over a decade and still conclude they can't watch television which was their original goal.
Being able to understand spoken fiction actually requires a very high skill level in the target language. Most people who learn a language do so because they live in a country it's spoken for practical reasons; they learn it to communicate and one needs a far lower level for that for it to be practically useful because people will instinctively talk clearly and slowly, and use easier words with people who obviously don't speak the language fluently. Television makes no such concessions and one will quickly find out that consuming oral entertainment in the target language is actually a very lofty goal.
Also, it's Mandarin. This language is one of the most time consuming from English native speakers to learn south only to Japanese. This isn't Spanish which according to statistics can be learned in 1/5 of the time. Tone, Chinese characters, and a grammar completely unlike that of English are no joke to underestimate.
Re:It should be obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
Mandarin grammar is basically the same as English. Noun verb object. The biggest difference is that chinese doesn't conjugate verbs at all - but of course, that just makes it easier. Chinese grammar tends towards shorter sentences - but that also makes it easier.
Spanish is easier than Chinese to learn...but five times easier? Somebody who takes 2 1/2 years of Chinese will be far ahead of somebody who takes one semester of Spanish. That's absurd.
I agree tone can be tough for a foreigner, but if you're ok with using computers to write, characters aren't nearly as tough as they once were.
I think the main problem is there is very little motivation to learning the language for most Americans.
Re:It should be obvious (Score:4, Interesting)
Mandarin grammar is basically the same as English. Noun verb object. The biggest difference is that chinese doesn't conjugate verbs at all - but of course, that just makes it easier. Chinese grammar tends towards shorter sentences - but that also makes it easier.
If the only part about grammar would be the the order of those three elements perhaps, but adverbs come in different positions, and most of all, what is very challenging to English speakers is that relative clauses come before nouns rather than behind them, and work in very different ways and the grammar is simply radically different overal. Also, the dread serial verb constructions which English speakers tend to find extremely challenging.
Spanish is easier than Chinese to learn...but five times easier? Somebody who takes 2 1/2 years of Chinese will be far ahead of somebody who takes one semester of Spanish. That's absurd.
Yes, you appear to be right looking at the statistics; it's only slightly less than four times. As in it takes 600 class hours to reach the minimum required profficiency for U.S.A. diplomats for Spanish, and 2200 for Mandarin.
I think the main problem is there is very little motivation to learning the language for most Americans.
There seems to be a particular interest nowadays in Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Thai, and Korean, all languages that take a long amount of time and I reference actual experiences and stereotypes. All three are known for having a mountain of people who attempt it, primarily because of interest in fiction, stick to it for far too long, and then realize that after many years they still can't follow television and quit. I'm personally not too intimately tied into the Mandarin learning community though I've heard the stories but I am fairly well acquainted with the Japanese learning community and the absolute mountain of “perpetual beginners” it has that severely underestimate how much time it would take and end up never realizing their dream of watching Japanese television without subtitles after having spent a lot of time on it.
Essentially, I'm cautioning people against learning a language primarily to consume fiction, especially oral fiction. People really underestimate just how high of a level one has to attain for that. People living in China can easily get by in their daily lives with B1 or B2 level Mandarin. They talk to people, have conversations, even develop meaningful social bonds and friends, but they're at a loss when being given cinema in Mandarin without any subtitles which takes a far higher level even though it's purely passive because then suddenly no one is talking in slow, clear, simple terms any more, nay, stylished, archaic, pompous language that isn't the norm in daily speech is suddenly used for dramatic effect.
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Most people who learn a language do so because they live in a country it's spoken for practical reasons; they learn it to communicate and one needs a far lower level for that for it to be practically useful because people will instinctively talk clearly and slowly, and use easier words with people who obviously don't speak the language fluently.
As someone who has learned and speaks fluently many languages, that's not the core reason at all. The core reason TV fiction is difficult to understand is context. When you're not fluent in a language the issue isn't the speed or clarity (most people learning a foreign language from a similar racial background will find that practical conversations do not start slowly or clearly either), rather that your brain focuses its language skills on a subset of what is needed for the context your in.
For example: tal
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I simply cannot agree with this having also learned a fair deal of languages. Television programming constantly simply uses words all the time that absolutely no one who knows he's speaking with a non-fluent speaker would ever use.
Conversely “comprehensible input” Youtube channels that are designed to provide listening practice for intermediate learners, keeping the vocabulary simple, and speaking in a clearer, slower pace, are quite easy to follow.
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Really seems like a win-win for anyone who isn't racist.
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There are already millions of Americans who speak some form of Chinese fluently. There are basically no high level jobs requiring people to speak both Mandarin and English.
Spanish, at least, you might have a job in customer service or teaching or law enforcement where the ability to interact in Spanish is seen as a real bonus, even though the job really has nothing directly to do with foreign language. For Chinese the demand might exist in small niches, but not nearly the same way it does with Spanish.
Breathtaking visuals, rich storytelling? (Score:4, Interesting)
It certainly wasn't conveyed in the trailer. It more looked like yet another paint by the numbers "Magic Kung Fu" movie, where the entire plot consists of seeing the chosen-one MC beating up an ever higher power scaled set of opponents in one-off battles using battle moves they have to yell out for them to take effect. The dramatic tension coming when he almost loses a battle against the big boss. Before winning. The end.
At least he looks underaged, so I doubt there's the typical subplot of scantily clad girls all hanging around him in a virginal harem that he - like most Asian MCs - is somehow too clueless about romance to ever pursue.
It's basically the equivalent of US superhero TV shows. Not the darker superhero movies made in the '90s, but the "SuperFriends" and "He Man" ones made in the 1970s and played on Saturday Morning, where everything has the depth of a soap dish and the audience is presumed to be about seven years old.
Did SlashDot get a kickback to promote this?
The article is from CCP's State Propaganda site. (Score:1)
The Global Times (simplified Chinese: ; traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: Huánqiú Shíbào) is a daily tabloid newspaper under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party's flagship newspaper, the People's Daily, commenting on international issues from a Chinese nationalistic perspective.[1][2][3][4] The publication is sometimes called "China's Fox News" for its propaganda and the monetization of nationalism.[5][6][7][8]
Established as a publication in 1993, its English version was launched in 2009. The editor-in-chief of Global Times was Hu Xijin until December 2021, who has been described as an early adopter of the "wolf warrior" communication strategy of loudly denouncing perceived criticism of the Chinese government and its policies.[9] The newspaper has been the source of various incidents, including fabrications, conspiracy theories, and disinformation.[note 1] It is part of a broader set of Chinese state media outlets that constitute the Chinese government's propaganda apparatus.[17][18]
This is neutral enough of an article, but...when I read something, I always like to know the source and if they have a perspective beyond delivering facts.
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Actually I own slashdot now.
I found some change behind the couch cushions and was like, "an extra chocolate bar for my kid? Nah, she doesn't really like chocolate that much, I'll buy slashdot".
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You see ads here? Run an ad blocker like everyone else.
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HERE'S WHY!
Sooo.., don't leave us hanging...
Re: The article is from CCP's State Propaganda sit (Score:2)
I recently started seeing adverts again too. They stopped for a while but I didn't notice. Thankfully they haven't started breaking my ad-blocker again (yet). I'd try a different blocker if I could but when you're using safari the options are limited.
You can't report Adsense adverts the way you can on YouTube but it's a moot point since google doesn't take down fraudulent adverts anyway.
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Rich people stay rich by pissing away their money on over priced stuff.
Every rich person knows that. That's why you have a pair of 5090.
Lol, so bitter, so angry! I get such a kick out of the jelly you guys spew n froth.
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And the comments on the YT trailer are that weird combo of low detail and over the top praise that sounds like advertising (or nationalist propaganda).
As to the movie itself maybe it's fine, but from the trailer it looks "meh" at best. And since it's mainland approved i doubt it's particularly nuanced or wry (since it has to, you know... provide good moral guidance and not have any subversive thoughts etc)
I've seen a couple of bilibili produced anime series and they were also "eh".
idk, maybe it's that i d
Re: The article is from CCP's State Propaganda sit (Score:1)
Anything that isn't in the category you call "facts"?
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It more looked like yet another paint by the numbers "Magic Kung Fu" movie, where the entire plot consists of seeing the chosen-one MC beating up an ever higher power scaled set of opponents in one-off battles using battle moves they have to yell out for them to take effect.
That's precisely what it was. It made a ton of money "in China" because the CCP basically ordered the slaves to show up. It's just another boring ass rehash of the songoku myth, because Chinese "culture" hasn't created anything new fo
Re: Breathtaking visuals, rich storytelling? (Score:1)
You sound like someone who has had their head stuck up their arse.
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I thought it looked too serious for a kids movie. Like Kung Fu Panda if they were really trying to kill the bad guys.
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Not the darker superhero movies made in the '90s,
Ah like Batman and Robin? The 1990 Captain America? Judge Dredd (which is awesome by the way). Do TMNT qualify as superheros?
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When you judge a movie by a short trailer everything looks like a equivalent of a US superhero show. It's also an incredibly stupid thing to do, trailers are worthless at giving you any information about how good a movie is at best, and will actively spoil critical plot points at worst.
Didn't your mum ever teach you "don't judge a book by its cover" is a generalised saying and should not be taken literally to apply only books?
Re:Breathtaking visuals, rich storytelling? (Score:4, Informative)
Here's the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
It's been over-compressed by YouTube but it does look nice. Certainly on a par with what Hollywood churns out. Maybe Pixar is sometimes a bit ahead in terms of lighting, e.g. Soul, an underrated movie that was scuppered by the pandemic.
Kung Fu is basically the Chinese equivalent of Hollywood gunfights and action hero nonsense, where being shot sends the bad guys flying and cars defy the laws of physics. Kung Fu itself is a bit like Pro Wrestling - everyone knows it's fake, but it's fun to watch. Particularly some of the 80s Hong Kong stuff is incredible, an absolute master class in how to film entertaining fight scenes that Hollywood rarely manages to come close to. No jump cuts every 0.5 seconds to obscure the obviously fake hits etc, those guys actually want you to see what is happening and follow the people involved to tell a story.
It's Chinese so it won't be overly sexualized. Porn is illegal in China and on TV and in movies women are usually dressed conservatively.
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It certainly wasn't conveyed in the trailer. It more looked like yet another paint by the numbers "Magic Kung Fu" movie, where the entire plot consists of seeing the chosen-one MC beating up an ever higher power scaled set of opponents in one-off battles using battle moves they have to yell out for them to take effect. The dramatic tension coming when he almost loses a battle against the big boss. Before winning. The end.
So basically the plot of every American superhero or action movie since time immemorial?
Upset that the US is getting a bit of competition.
Hate to break it to you, but Indian films are pretty similar. A lot of European ones too (they just aren't shown at Cannes). It's almost as if it's a formula... meant for making money.
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Roku! (Score:2)
https://therokuchannel.roku.co... [roku.com] has it for free with ads.
How much can you gross... (Score:1, Troll)
Re: How much can you gross... (Score:1)
Totally hypothetical. Why do you bother?
Oh shit! (Score:2)
Coming in 1 2 3....25% tariffs on Chinese Movies. (Score:1)
Make Hollywood Great Again!
Now, trow the stones...
Roku has its first movie. (Score:2)
https://therokuchannel.roku.co... [roku.com]
Ne Zha 1 free on YouTube with dubbing (Score:2)
It Scored high on Rotten Tomatos with both critics 88 and audience 98: https://www.rottentomatoes.com... [rottentomatoes.com]
However it will be confusing or weird if you are not familiar with the myth: https://mythopedia.com/topics/... [mythopedia.com]
Also interesting that the character Ne Zha is in tons of video games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Also on Roku: https://therokuchannel.roku.co... [roku.com] with ads. https://flickmetrix.com/share?... [flickmetrix.com] showed good ratings from various sources. My colony and I saw the movie together earlier. We enjoyed it. It is mainly for children, but fun.
Wolf Warrior (Score:2)
It's bad. I mean REALLY bad. laughably bad. So bad you think it's a parody of faction movies. It makes Rambo 2 look like a fine Shakespearean play.
The scene that sticks is at the end, where the hero is transporting poor people out of an African country. The rebels, set to block him, see his convoy and prepare to attack. The hero the
Childish garbage (Score:2)
Looks like a steaming pile to me. They must be really hard up for content.