The China Issue

Plus: ‘Captain America: Brave New World’ Review

‘Ne Zha 2,’ which could well gross $2 billion in China, alone.

I’m sure much will be made about the domestic politics of Captain America: Brave New World—after all, this is a movie about a belligerent president transforming into a bright-red rage monster when he loses control of his temper—but it’s all so milquetoast (and the conclusion to said rage monster’s journey such naïve wish fulfillment) that I’m not sure there’s much to say about it. (I’m sure we’ll find something on Across the Movie Aisle when we review it in two weeks.)

There is another political element that’s not getting much discussion, however, and that’s the role China plays in the film. There are some mild spoilers to come, but I don’t think I’m giving away anything important that hasn’t been revealed in the trailers.

Basically: The plot revolves, in part, around international negotiations over what will be done with the adamantium-filled island in the middle of the Indian Ocean that sprang up when the celestial being from The Eternals sprang from the Earth’s core. (Basically.) Tensions between the United States and powers in the region are running high. President Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross has to square off with the prime ministers of Japan and India, as well as, for some reason, France.

And that’s it! Those are the only countries in conflict with the United States in this Asian body of water. No other East Asian naval powers greedy for resources have any say in the matter.

I’m being snide, of course; the complete eradication of the role China might play in such a conflict is jarring if you know anything about Chinese territorial aspirations and its machinations in local waters such as the nine-dash line, which constitutes an illegal land grab by the Chinese Communist Party. But this is par for the course with Hollywood in general and Marvel/Disney in particular, which has long feared alienating the massive filmgoing market in China and the censors who gatekeep Western media. Outside of a handful of very specific instances—as when Iron Man 3 featured scenes shot for only the Chinese market—China functionally does not exist in the MCU.

At some point, though, Hollywood might want to ask how much such kowtowing really gets them. As Matthew Ball noted a couple of years ago, American films averaged 5.3 of the 10 highest-grossing movies in China in 2010–2013. By 2021–2023, that average had declined to 1.3. There were zero last year. In brief: Revenues of American films in China have cratered since the pandemic while China’s own domestic market has come to dominate. Indeed, the animated Chinese hit Ne Zha 2 could well gross $2 billion—with a b—in China alone during its theatrical release, a single-market record for any film released by any country.

The weird thing about Chinese films is that even the massive hits really don’t have much audience in the rest of the world. Films like Wolf Warrior 2, which prominently feature Americans as bad guys, do huge business at home and virtually nothing abroad. (Literally: 99.7 percent of its box office came from China, according to Box Office Mojo.) Chinese cultural impact beyond its own borders is almost nonexistent, a stark contrast to the success of Japanese anime or Korean boy bands or the cinema of the Indian diaspora. Chinese studios make movies that appeal to people in China and virtually no one else. It’s … odd.

Look, the business case for continuing to placate Chinese censors is pretty straightforward: Even if you’re not relying on the Middle Kingdom’s oversized foreign revenues to inflate your overall box-office stats and even if American studios only get to keep a quarter of every dollar earned in China, you’re still leaving money on the table if you get blacklisted from China. Deadpool and Wolverine, which earned $1.34 billion worldwide, made just $59.6 million in China. Even after China’s cut, that’s still roughly $15 million in “free money.” No one wants to explain to Bob Iger why he lost Disney that cash (and more) by getting the whole studio blackballed just to create a realistic portrait of Chinese aggression in a middling effort like Captain America: Brave New World.

But it might be time to ask if the juice is still worth the squeeze as the Hollywood revenues reorient back to America and Western audiences.

---

Captain America: Brave New World review

‘Captain America: Brave New World’ (MovieStillsDB)

It’s hard for me to pinpoint my favorite part of Captain America: Brave New World.

It may be the callbacks to the television show that streamed on Disney+ nearly four years ago during which Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) spent six endless episodes agonizing about whether he is good enough to be Captain America, culminating in this two-hour movie in which he is, still, agonizing about whether he is good enough to be Captain America.¹ Or maybe it’s that the second act set piece revolves around one of two Marvel Cinematic Universe movies never to get a sequel. Or it’s that the entire emotional core of this film revolves around a father-daughter conflict from the other MCU movie—this one released seventeen years ago—not to get a sequel in which one half of the father-daughter equation had to be recast because the actor playing the father died in real life.

Regardless of how well you remember, respectively, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021), The Eternals (2021), and The Incredible Hulk (2008), it may not matter since Captain America: Brave New World is, simply, kind of boring. We’ve already had a Captain America movie masquerading as a watered-down paranoid thriller in the form of Captain America: The Winter Soldier; this picture recycles the tropes without anything approaching a memorable action beat. Hell, it even features a former member of the Red Room helping Captain America solve the mystery, subbing in Ruth Bat-Seraph (Shira Haas) for the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson).

Really, the picture’s biggest problem is structural. It’s not actually a Captain America movie: It’s a Thunderbolt Ross movie. You may remember General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross from The Incredible Hulk and Captain America: Civil War; in those films, he was played by William Hurt, who died in 2022. As Brave New World begins, Ross, now played by Harrison Ford, has just been elected president despite a history of blowing up at the media over little things like “being asked reasonable questions about his role in destroying Harlem by pitting the Hulk against The Abomination.” He’s attempting to orchestrate a treaty between world powers like Japan and India (China, as noted above, is hilariously absent from all this) to secure cooperative action around Celestial Island, the name for the cosmic being that arose out of the Indian Ocean at the end of The Eternals. The island is composed of adamantium, a miracle metal whose properties we learn precisely nothing about other than it’s more amazing than vibranium.

Ross’s goal isn’t the adamantium, really; he wants to demonstrate to his daughter, Betty (played in 2008’s Incredible Hulk, by Liv Tyler) that he has changed, since she has given him the cold shoulder since his globetrotting efforts to recapture the rampaging Bruce Banner. The whole emotional thrust of the picture has to do with Ross reclaiming his soul. He’s the one who has to change; he’s the one who must struggle and undergo a redemptive arc.

And look: If you land someone like Harrison Ford for a part like this, you have to use him. But centering him and relying on that natural movie star charm sidelines everyone else in the movie. One imagines that early drafts of the film focused on the relationship between Wilson and Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), whom we were introduced to in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier as an American soldier who received the Super Soldier serum in the Korean War and then spent 30 years being experimented on by the American government; Bradley here is treated as little more than a pawn who goes Manchurian Candidate in the opening act.

Wilson spends most of the movie trying to figure out why his friend and mentor went rogue, but it’s all so rote and unimaginative and uninvolving. I could imagine caring about the relationship between Ross and his daughter if that movie hadn’t come out a decade-and-a-half ago. (I seriously cannot stress enough that this movie plays like a direct sequel to The Incredible Hulk.) Or the relationship between Wilson and Bucky Barnes, The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), as the two of them had decent chemistry on their TV show. But Wilson being forced to save Bradley for … well, reasons, I won’t spoil them for you … it doesn’t matter, there’s just no real emotional payoff.

Again, the structural problems could be overlooked if the action were kinetic and forceful, but it’s hard to get invested in, say, CGI air battles between an animated guy with indestructible wings versus animated airplanes all flying around a giant CGI illustration of a celestial corpse. There’s no heft to any of it. Blah.

1. There is something … funny … in the fact that Sam Wilson’s whole character arc has been something like “I am not sure if Americans can accept a black Captain America” a decade-plus after Barack Hussein Obama won the White House while the only person to actually spark any protests over this film is Shira Haas. Her sin? She’s an Israeli. And she was cast in a movie after her nation responded justly against Hamas’s invasion, slaughter, and kidnapping of innocent Israelis. Quelle horreur!