The Wandering Earth (Chinese: 流浪地球): Unconventional Road to Blockbuster Success

Official Poster

   The Wandering Earth (Chinese: 流浪地球) is a 2019 Chinese science fiction film directed by Frant Gwo, based on the part of Liu Cixin’s novella called “The Wandering Earth Project.” Drawing on a fictional world, where the sun is about to turn into a red giant, United World government has built the Wandering Earth project to thrust the earth into space and find a new home for humanity. Through the specific approach to understanding the Chinese audience, the project is able to leave its mark in the history of sci-fi cinema. The innovative soundtrack, the fascinating special effects, and the well-timed storytelling all together produce a fantastically presented geomorphic, anthropomorphic world. This movie opens up to the world on the Chinese approach to a heroic Sci-fi fantasy film and at the same time showcases that there is an engaging alternative route to creating successful blockbuster movies other than the traditional Hollywood way. In many ways, Frank Gwo and the producers of this film embark on a very realistically materialist strategy during the production process of The Wandering Earth. Choices such as using domestic VFX production teams, lesser-known actors, and actually building out the massive set which simulates the post-apocalyptic Earth’s surface, in these ways the film gained the Chinese audience’s attention by being the refreshing new coming possibility in the industry.

   The story deals with imagining the future of earth as an inhospitable world. In this world, the sun of our solar system is estimated to blow up into a red giant in the near future. Humans have built massive thrusters stationed around the world to thrust our blue planet on to a new journey, traveling away. With no natural rotation of the Earth and no gravitational pull from the sun, the earth surface has been catastrophically flooded and frozen due to low temperature; the population has massively declined and the only people surviving reside under safe haven cities built under the power thrusters. During the process of traveling to another sun, the earth is about to collide with Jupiter due to gravitational spikes, and it is up to this team of people to deliver the fundamental fuel to one of the main power thrusters and become heroes. The plot point deals with the hero’s struggles about sacrifices of the ones they love, the abjection of reality and saving humanity in a post-apocalyptic world. The film adaptation of the story has been criticized for various plot holes and absence of continuity within the story. In my opinion, many other sci-fi films suffer the same scientific continuity problems similar to those in The Wandering Earth, but in the end, this film successfully fleshed out an appallingly huge world in only 125 minutes without crowding the audience with too much expositional dialogue.

Weibo @ Baoxin_shining's fan made poster

   Praised to be the “first” Chinese Sci-Fi/ Fantasy film, The Wandering Earth only received relative success on the opening week of Chinese new year. (1) However, it proceeded to become massively successful in the second week, beating over the other two highly anticipated new years films, gathering over $557 million in the second week. ($700.4 million in total as of April 2019).(2) The success is massively influenced by the circulation of good reviews on social media and the strongest variable of them all, word of mouth. I went back to Beijing to visit my family for the Chinese New Year in early February, and my personal social media feed was flooded with friends, family, as well as people online raving about this film and from what I can gather, the film was everywhere. On the popular social media Weibo, the production team started various interactive campaigns with the audience. They encouraged people to make edits, posters, fan arts and then proceeded to post and credit the best ones as contest winners. Moving along with this process, the actor/actress and the director, the production team’s behind the scenes story in various interviews also touched many people’s heart online. Basically, if you live in China, you would have most likely heard about this film and been referred see it by someone. Though no one is sure where it came from, the saying of “If you have watched The Wandering Earth, you are my friend” went viral online. The ticket price soon rocketed and doubled after the first week. This film currently ranks as China’s second highest-grossing of all time, and the highest film of 2019 worldwide. Most interestingly, out of the grossing $665 m worldwide, $650 m is from the domestic Chinese market. (at the time of research)(2) And the director Frank Gwo said in an interview, the film was not made with the intention(focus) on international distribution but was made tailored to the Chinese audience. (4)

   Though the film portrays a way of viewing the classic heroic act of saving the world with a unique Chinese perspective, I was more drawn to the assemblage of the film, which in my opinion is one of the most important factors towards its success. (5) This film is unusual in the way that it did not have a well known all-star cast and that it approached its materialistic goals realistically, maximizing the result of the visual astonishment in the final cut of the film. The budget for “The Wandering Earth” was only $50 million, comparing to the $200 million budget Hollywood film Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald which came out the same year; the special effects are up to par and definitely not disappointing. Many of the visual scenes were reminiscent of Christopher Nolan’s 2014 film Interstellar for me, though The Wandering Earth depicts a much more catastrophic event.

The Wandering Earth - Father and Son Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFrWcuJ5Lw8

   With a limited budget, the film used domestic Chinese animation and special effects teams. The setting of the earth’s surface was actually built in reality on a gargantuan rented plot, the film crew made most of the props used in the film instead of CGI. Excitingly, the film’s CGI crew mainly consisted of domestic teams although Chinese CGI technology has long been criticized as far from Hollywood level. From the CFI interview, Frant mentions “My production company acted as the main hub for management and task assignment. We had four companies work on the two thousand and three special effects shots within the film, 75% was done by our two Chinese SFX companies, and 25% was assigned to the two (foreign)companies mentioned above.”(6) Not to be overlooked, the film’s score composition and music timing is another outstanding aspect that surprised the audience. The official album released by Milan records consisting of the film's 43 unique soundtracks, emotionally captures the character development as well as the catastrophic events throughout The Wandering Earth. (7)

Behind the Scenes
https://youtu.be/T7c_zxVuQaY

   The ending of The Wandering Earth is iconic as it depicts everyone possible working together for the future of humanity. The line mentioned, “if we can’t do it, then our children will, and then their children will continue our work, one day we will achieve our goal” is very representing of the Chinese perspective of family and human relationships. Deep into Chinese culture, the idea of the "bigger goal" has always been the priority. Society is generally looked at as a whole, and then it is compared to individuality, and The Wandering Earth does well balancing both. With what Frant Gwo said about tailoring this film to the domestic audience, I strongly agree that not only is the story offering a Chinese perspective of the heroic act, but also the film itself acts as a beacon of identity. It does not try to be something that it is not, prioritizing the understanding of a story rather than overreaching to the international market with ambition. Gwo says “I wanted to show international audiences that a Chinese sci-fi can offer a new point of view,"(4) and in my opinion not only did the film easily do that, but it also found its way around creatively achieving successful cinema in a way that is distinct from Hollywood.





Review by Ashley Song

Works Cited

(1)Kuipers, Richard, and Richard Kuipers. "Film Review: 'The Wandering Earth.'" Variety. February 28, 2019. Accessed April 09, 2019. https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/the-wandering-earth-review-liu-lang-di-qiu-1203150532/.

(2) Frater, Patrick, and Patrick Frater. "China Box Office: 'Wandering Earth' Reaches $557 Million in Second Week." Variety. February 18, 2019. Accessed April 09, 2019. https://variety.com/2019/film/news/china-box-office-wandering-earth-557-million-second-week-1203142117/.

(3)Westcott, Ben. "Will Smash Hit 'The Wandering Earth' Change China's Film Industry?" CNN. February 14, 2019. Accessed April 09, 2019. https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/13/asia/china-wandering-earth-film-intl/index.html.

(4)Brzeski, Patrick. "'Wandering Earth' Director Frank Gwo on Making China's First Sci-Fi Blockbuster." The Hollywood Reporter. April 08, 2019. Accessed April 09, 2019. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/wandering-earth-director-making-chinas-first-sci-fi-blockbuster-1187681.

(5)Herzog, A. (2016). Assemblage, Constellation, Image: Reading Filmic Matter. Discourse, 38(2), 215-234.

https://sfu-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=TN_jstor_csp10.13110/discourse.38.2.0215&context=PC&vid=SFUL&search_scope=default_scope&tab=default_tab&lang=en_US

(6)"CFI Interview: Director Frant Gwo - Exploring Sci-Fi with a Wandering Earth." China Film Insider. February 28, 2019. Accessed April 09, 2019. http://chinafilminsider.com/cfi-interview-director-frant-gwo-exploring-sci-fi-with-a-wondering-earth/.

(7)Maltby, R. (2003). Hollywood cinema / Richard Maltby. (2nd ed.).

https://sfu-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=01SFUL_ALMA21184122920003611&context=L&vid=SFUL&search_scope=default_scope&tab=default_tab&lang=en_US

Additional

Hsiu-Chuang Deppman. (2010). Adapted for the Screen: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Fiction and Film. University of Hawaii Press.

https://sfu-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=TN_jstor_sj_ctt6wqzpr&context=PC&vid=SFUL&search_scope=default_scope&tab=default_tab&lang=en_US

Liu, Cixin. Wandering Earth. Head Of Zeus, 2017.

Mendelson, Scott. "Box Office: 'Wandering Earth' Passes $600 Million In China." Forbes. February 20, 2019. Accessed April 09, 2019. https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2019/02/20/wandering-earth-china-box-office-wu-jing-avengers-star-wars-captain-marvel-alita/#5f5f00d75692.