"Mission Impossible 7" was only 50 million on the first day, when the Hollywood movie was unanchored

Author|Pepper

Halfway through 2023, the domestic film market has finally heated up because of the summer season. However, this time the excitement is a domestic film, and Hollywood movies may only feel noisy.

According to Xiaoyu statistics, in the first half of the year, there were a total of 21 imported films with a domestic box office of more than 10 million, but none of them exceeded 1 billion, and once, 1 billion was the benchmark for Hollywood blockbusters. There are only 5 films with more than 500 million, and the highest is "Fast and Furious 10", which is only 982 million.

The super IP "Mission Impossible 7" released yesterday, although Tom worked hard as always, and the Douban score was more than 8 points, but the mainland box office was not optimistic: the first-day scheduling rate reached 25%, and the box office was only 53.32 million, ranking behind the two domestic films "In the Octagonal Cage" and "Chang'an 30,000 Li".

On the first day of release, "Mission Impossible 7" only won the Japanese crown in Beijing and Shanghai

Surprisingly, two Japanese cartoons, "Suzu Bud Journey" and "Slam Dunk" won 807 million and 652 million respectively, becoming box office dark horses.

In the past, Hollywood films were the box office hegemons of non-popular schedules, and domestic films had to be more or less considered to avoid their edge, in order to support domestic films, the mainland only had a limit of 34 imported sub-accounting films every year, and also set up a "domestic film protection month".

Looking back, "Avengers 4" won 4.2 billion at the box office in 2019, which may be the last glory of Hollywood blockbusters in the Chinese market, and that year, there were only two Hollywood films left in the top ten box office lists.        

At that time, the industry generally believed that the aesthetic fatigue of Chinese people with popcorn story routines was the main reason for the decline of Hollywood movies in the Chinese market. In addition to the lack of innovation in its works, its fatigue in the first half of this year is also related to the marketing dilemma of imported films in the context of the Sino-US trade war, the change of audience viewing habits brought about by the epidemic, and the changes in mainstream social sentiment.

IP lapses, Hollywood movies disenchant

Hollywood movies are falling at the box office in China, and the topic is not new. In an interview with GQ in 2020, Dai Jinhua recognized the description of "Hollywood movies failing in China".

This year, this decline is more obvious, and even some netizens laughed that "domestic film protection month" should be changed to "imported film protection month".

First and foremost, the classic IP doesn't work. From the superhero film "Spider-Man: Across the Universe" to the classic game adaptation "Super Mario Bros. Movie", almost all of the 14 Hollywood films introduced this year are old IPs, and the films with previous works in the series account for 9 seats, "The Flash" has a TV series, and "The Little Mermaid" is also a classic fairy tale adaptation.

This used to be the winning weapon of Hollywood movies: cultivate a fixed moviegoer through IP, gather "die-hard fans", and also earn a lot of money through IP derivation. "Avengers 4", released in 2019, is a masterpiece, grossing 4.25 billion at the mainland box office, ranking eighth in the mainland's total box office list.

But soon, despite the old Hollywood IPs trying their best to show off visual effects and render collective feelings, the aesthetic fatigue of Chinese audiences still arrived.

The continuous sequel of Hollywood movies has created a kind of "drama-chasing" viewing. Audiences found that spending two or three hours in the cinema might just be watching a very long trailer.

And the special situation of the epidemic for three years has made this movie-watching experience disconnected: "Black Widow", "Shang Qi", "Spider-Man: Homeless", "Doctor Strange 2" and "Thor 4" have not been released in China, and domestic audiences can only watch the story after "Avengers 4" on the small screen. When the bonus of visual effects is no more, the shortcomings in the story are more prominent. The experience of more viewers is that the superhero story is "broken". This has further affected the contraction of Marvel's fan base and the decline in discussion of Marvel culture.

There's no denying that visual effects are still the reason why some audiences enter the cinema, but the advancement of special effects technology in recent years has not produced the huge leap that Avatar ushered in the 3D era. In last year's "Avatar 2", many viewers expressed a lack of freshness, and the 1.7 billion box office results did not meet the original expectations.

In the past, the main body of moviegoers in first- and second-tier cities in the Chinese film market is currently sinking into second- and fourth-tier cities, and audiences in first- and second-tier cities, who have been bombarded with Hollywood movies for many years, are gradually "disenchanting" Hollywood movies.

Maoyan data shows that in 2016, the highest-grossing imported film "Crazy Zoo" wanted to see the crowd, fourth-tier cities accounted for 30%, first-tier cities accounted for nearly 20%, and this year, the current highest-grossing imported film "Fast and Furious 10", first-tier cities want to see just over 10% of the crowd, while fourth-tier cities account for more than 40%. The "2022 China Film Market Annual Inventory Report" released by Lighthouse Research Institute also shows that the proportion of moviegoers in third- and fourth-tier cities exceeded 40% for the first time last year.

The templated content itself, the controversy of cultural inclination and the lack of anti-box office actors have even affected the global box office performance of Hollywood blockbusters. "Indiana Jones 5" claims to cost $329 million, and the current global box office is only $161 million, and the Chinese mainland box office is even only 30 million yuan. "The Little Mermaid" cost $200 million, and the global box office was only $528 million, and it has not yet returned to the main line. Pixar's new work "Crazy Element City" was criticized for its old-fashioned story at the closing screening of Cannes, which failed to produce word-of-mouth effects as hoped, and the subsequent box office failed to keep up.

Hollywood movie routines are no longer the box office magic of a hundred trials.

Marketing is disjointed, and the box office is difficult to exceed one billion

In the first half of this year, the box office results of the two Japanese anime exceeded expectations, which is not unrelated to the help of offline marketing promotion.

In March, Xinhai Cheng came to Beijing and Shanghai to promote the film "Journey to Lingya", becoming the first foreign creator to come to China after the end of epidemic control. He posted his trip to China on social media, saying that the hotel he stayed in had an "emperor-like bed", and after posting Chinese food, he posted a Korean instant noodle for comparison, all of which caused widespread discussion and brought heat to the movie.

Although "Slam Dunk" was not publicized online, the premiere was held at the Qiu Depuat Gymnasium of Peking University, precisely targeting the student group.

At the same time, the highlights of the Lywood film in the offline publicity in China were lackluster.

What was the previous Hollywood blockbuster publicity?

In 2012, "The Avengers" was screened at the second Beijing Film Festival, and Hawkeye actor Jeremy Rayner came to the scene, which was Marvel's first high-profile film promotion in China. The following year, "Iron Man 3" became the first Hollywood film to hold a world premiere in China, once again breaking Marvel Studios' Chinese box office record. Before the release of "Avengers 4" in 2019, fans shook the flag online and offline, Marvel gradually became a part of the trend culture, co-branded products emerged one after another, and Marvel IP completed the transformation from fan economy to mass consumption.

But it is clear that this year, such creators came to China to promote and large-scale premieres, and they no longer appear in the rhythm of Hollywood films.

Among this year's Hollywood films, only the creator of "Megalodon 2" came to China to attend the Shanghai Film Festival forum. Behind "Megalodon 2", there are Chinese companies such as Shanghai Chinese Film and Beijing Dengfeng Culture, as well as Wu Jing starring as a box office guarantee. In addition, few Hollywood creators have come to China, and there is no huge publicity action.

In terms of film marketing gameplay, Hollywood movies in recent years are also obviously a little outdated.

When co-productions were popular, inviting Chinese actors was a shortcut to seize the Chinese market. In recent years, the market for co-productions has shrunk, but adding Chinese elements to films is still the only way to do it, and inviting Chinese singers to sing Chinese theme song is one of the paths. "Transformers 7" invited GAI to sing the theme song, and "Spider-Man: Across the Universe" invited Lu Han, but this was all done ten years ago, not to mention that Chinese theme song had limited influence and did not break the circle.

In addition, Hollywood blockbuster publicity materials are gradually streamlining, lack of innovation, in the 2023 Hollywood trailer you can still see "explosive this summer" "word of mouth explosion" and other old-fashioned publicity keywords, and flowery group photo posters. It is also difficult to make the audience curious.

The recent hit "Disappearing Her", from a relatively niche "suspense reversal" genre film at the beginning to the "love brain must see" marketing later, is exactly to the current tension between men and women. And Hollywood movies that can only provide the current "refreshment" but cannot provide a sense of departure are no longer necessary to watch.

At a time when the overall economy is down, the cost of watching movies is rising, and there are many ways of leisure and entertainment, fewer and fewer audiences entering the cinema has become one of the industry's difficulties, and the recent recovery of the box office market is not unrelated to the fact that movies provide social topics and meet social emotions. But this kind of marketing play on hot social topics is almost impossible to find in the marketing of recent Hollywood movies.

When Hollywood movies are de-anchored

Hollywood's estrangement from the Chinese market is not unrelated to the tense political and economic relations between China and the United States in recent years.

Sino-US co-production was once an important form of Sino-foreign cooperation. A producer revealed to Xiaoyu that the Sino-US co-production she was responsible for was difficult to promote, and the imported film she bought out failed to push into theaters several times. She acknowledged that perceptions of tensions between China and the United States in recent years are also one of the reasons: "In the uncertain political, cultural and social environment of China, it is difficult for us to promote cooperation with foreign creative teams." ”

AI Graph by Entertainment Capital

In this context, political friction and national sentiment put Chinese and American films at risk of de-anchoring.

The high box office of the main theme film is accompanied by the rise of national sentiment, and the "humiliation" controversy has also become a fatal factor affecting Hollywood films. "Shang Qi" originally wanted to shoot the story of a Chinese hero, but was scolded by netizens for being "ugly" because of the "ugly" characters in it. In addition, the appearance of the map of China in the movie without including the South China Sea, and the addition of the word China before Taiwan and Hong Kong are all original sins.

In addition, the "politically correct" casting and cultural tendencies of Hollywood films are also far from the focus of Chinese audiences, and as a cultural commodity, the value tendency of alienation in films is inevitably criticized by "cultural imperialism".

At the marketing event of this year's Shanghai Film Festival, Bai Lingyan, founder of Heguan Image, mentioned that in recent years, there has been a phenomenon from "globalization" to "de-globalization" in the introduction of films, and people pay more attention to the things closely related to themselves, whether it is class change or character growth, they pay more attention to stories related to their own country, and films of universal value are becoming less and less.

The above-mentioned producer told Xiaoyu that language may become one of the reasons why third- and fourth-tier cities choose domestic films, and people also prefer topical movies. "In recent years, there have been more movies with realistic themes, and the audience's viewing mentality and habits have undergone qualitative changes."

However, this kind of realistic film is closely related to the hot topic of national discussion, linked to the national situation, and its universal significance is greatly reduced in the cultural barrier.

At the same time, the main theme films of the Chinese film market in the past three years have achieved super high box office, and more genre films have emerged, starting from the double harvest of box office and word-of-mouth of "I Am Not the God of Medicine", and the audience's acceptance and recognition of domestic films have increased significantly. Hollywood movies are being "abandoned" by Chinese audiences.

The "rout" of Hollywood films in China, in addition to its own homogenization problem, also has the influence of the general environment, when the rise of nationalist sentiment meets the tense political atmosphere, subtle factors are affecting the changes in the Chinese and foreign film markets.