Contemporary Situation of Chinese Film Market
Due to the improving consumption level of Chinese people and their high enthusiasm towards movies, nowadays there are many foreign movies imported to China. The survey from Deloitte shows that China will surpass the US in box office revenue by 2020 and will become the largest film market in the world.
However, what behind high box office revenue is poor movie-viewing experience to Chinese audience and incomplete film system. The picture below shows that China (except HongKong, Macau and Taiwan) is the only country that does not have a film rating system.
(From Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_picture_content_rating_system)
At the same time, China has strict censorship about the movie. Movies that are passed as “suitable as all ages” can be launched in China, so those rated R in the US can’t be imported to China most of the time (Such as Deadpool, Hereditary and Joker). While movies like Shape of Water and Blade Runner, rated R too, were imported and played on the screen of the cinema. So what happened?
Considering the high commercial value of Hollywood movies, a few R-rated movies would be imported. While National Film Administration (NFA) of China will re-edit those movies against censorship before released on the screen so that people of all ages can watch them. What they do mostly is cut out the clip that contains nudity, sex, blood, violence, superstition and LGBT, even though it would shorten the runtime of the movie and affect the audience’s understanding of the storyline.
The movie Shape of Water was launched in China in March 2018 after winning 4 Oscars trophies. As an R-rated movie, however, it is surprising to the Chinese audience that its runtime in China is the same as that of its original version. After watching this movie in the cinema, the audience found that the movie is re-edited greatly by cutting, zooming in and covering, and the runtime is rounded to the original runtime.
In the original version of Shape of Water, there is a scene that the heroine masturbates in her bathtub every day and uses an egg-like timer to count time. Due to the nude pictures in this scene, NFA zoomed in to the heroine’s face and the egg-like timer in the Chinese version.
Another scene of Shape of Water is about the heroine walks to the bathroom in the nude to meet Amphibian Man. It contains lots of nude and sex pictures. But as the climax of the movie, the audience would be impacted on understanding the storyline if it was cut out, What NFA did in the Chinese version is “dressed” the heroine a black dress, changed medium shots into close shots when she is interacting with the Amphibian Man, and darkened the brightness of the wide shot.Besides, the scene that the heroine’s gay friend flirts with the waiter in the cafe and the scene that the Amphibian Man eats the cat were cut out.
Even though NFA has developed their re-edit skill in recent years with the purpose of trying to keep the original storyline of the movie complete and making people of all ages can enjoy the movie together, the cut-out clip and edited scene still would influence the audience’s movie-viewing experience and their deep understanding of the plot and characters. Considering the success of countries with developed film industry and the demand to develop the Chinese film market, it is inevitable to develop the film rating system in China. The film rating system can contribute to the better development and competitiveness of the Chinese film market to some extent, also allows more good films to go into China, so that the audience of different ages to watch different but original movies.
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