Will "The Wandering Earth" kick start the growth of Chinese sci-fi?

A still from the film "The Wandering Earth" that stars Wu Jing, a Chinese action star and writer-director of "Wolf Warrior 2" [Photo provided to China Plus]

The author Liu Cixin was thrilled to be one of the 300 people in the audience for the first screening of the movie adaptation of his novel "The Wandering Earth" in a cinema on January 20 ahead of its nationwide release. "Even though 'The Wandering Earth' has only earned ten yuan (1.4 U.S. dollars) at the box office, it is still a huge success."

The film, which is based on a novel he wrote in 2000, would go on to become the box office leader in China during the week-long Spring Festival holiday. The film has raked in two billion yuan, making it one of highest-grossing films in the Chinese mainland.

Adapted from Hugo Award-winner novel of the same name, the film tells the story of humans leaving Earth for a new home before the planet is devoured by an expanding sun.

Critics contribute the film's domestic success to its unique cultural context, in that it tells a story Chinese people are quite familiar with. During several interviews, the film's director Guo Fan said that when he talked with potential international partners in 2016 on producing the film's special effects, he found that many of them couldn't understand why the Chinese people in the film wanted to push the Earth to rotate as it was coming to a halt. Some critics, however, have pointed out that this plot point is linked with Chinese farming culture.

A Chinese moviegoer who is a fan of many English-speaking sci-fi blockbusters told us that "The Wandering Earth" is the first Chinese sci-fi film that felt naturally familiar to her. The film contains many elements of Chinese culture, including Spring Festival celebrations and traditional Chinese thought on the importance of dying at one's birthplace.

In a broader sense, the film expresses a spirit of internationalism. It shows that saving Earth requires people from around the world to work together hand-in-hand. The moral aspects of the story drew the attention of reviewers: "Like all good science fiction, it asks the viewers to ponder some fundamental questions about who should be saved, what cost we are willing to pay to survive and what plans we might create if we are really heading to heck in a handbasket, however big or small," said a review at sciencefiction.com.

A still from the film "The Wandering Earth" that stars Wu Jing, a Chinese action star and writer-director of "Wolf Warrior 2" [Photo provided to China Plus]

"The Wandering Earth" was released in North America on February 8. But it seems that western audiences haven't connected with China's first major science fiction movie.

It's "a half-baked naive and laughable Chinese fantasy" according to one moviegoer writing on IMDB. "What we saw in this film was still from the angle of the Chinese. The movie has dreamed up some ridiculous propellers to push the Earth escape from the expanded Red Giant Sun, making the Earth run deep into Space to become a wandering planet, but totally ignored the fact that the Earth needs Sun to maintain the livelihood."

Another moviegoer on social media said that there wasn't a single character he could relate to or admire; but he thought the film was something of a cultural exchange mission.

One thing that moviegoers both in China and elsewhere are in furious agreement is the movie's visual effects, with one reviewer describing them as "stunning and they rival the best of Hollywood's sci-fi epics".

China is expected to overtake the United States to become the home of the world's largest film market by 2022. But domestic studios have invested little in sci-fi films. Liu Cixin told China Central Television that building trust between producers, investors, and the audience is the biggest challenge here, saying "Not so many people have faith in Chinese sci-fi movies."

When "The Wandering Earth" became the front runner during China's week-long Spring Festival holiday, and its box office take surpassed that of the comedy "Crazy Alien", some movie fans said that it could be an awakening for China's science fiction film.