Is Hollywood’s Infatuation with China Really About Money?
A proposed Chinese ban on American movies reveals more about Hollywood than China… or, rather, something different than many assume. Over the last few days, people on social media have been speculating about China no longer allowing America to release movies there in retaliation for President Trump’s tariffs. This comes from a story in Bloomberg (which is behind a paywall, but you can read the details in The Independent) that says a pair of Chinese bloggers have learned of several responses to the tariffs from a government source, one of which is a ban on American films. Today, China announced that it will reduce the number of American movies allowed into the country from 34 per year; the new allowed number was unspecified.
This feels like a big deal; over the last decade-plus, Hollywood has sought favor with the Chinese market, often tailoring its movies to China’s demands for release. Iron Man 3, for example, radically altered the Mandarin from his comic book origins so that the villain in a movie with a white American hero would not be Chinese. The remake of Red Dawn (which was a dumb idea anyway) initially had China as the invading power, but it used CGI and reshoots to change the villainous country to North Korea, which made an already fantastical concept completely implausible. And there has been a sneaking suspicion that the decided lack of patriotism in American films of late – or, in certain cases, the subtlety of it when unavoidable – has been to make them more tolerable to the Chinese government. And there have been other instances of pandering, like minimizing John Boyega or covering Chadwick Boseman’s face on the posters for The Force Awakens and Black Panther, or celebrating the government body that runs “re-education camps” in China in the Mulan credits.
But how much did Hollywood ever get from China? It’s been widely reported that the Chinese box office as a secret gold mine is a fairy tale, with half the percentage of ticket sales in America and other countries going to the studios – 25% to the usual 50% or so. And a lot of movies don’t do as well in China as Hollywood’s love affair with the country would suggest. Alan Ng, the editor-in-chief of Film Threat, posted a chart he made of the top-earning American films in China last year, and the cash Hollywood rakes in from the Chinese market is small potatoes in the grand scheme even before you account for the smaller percentage of the box office the studios get:
I got some of the China box office numbers wrong. Here’s an updated chart. Godzilla outperformed every other US film. Avatar and Jurassic Park will be the only winners in China this year. pic.twitter.com/i3xg5e9Nwm
— Alan Ng @ Film Threat (@mypalal) April 10, 2025
It makes you wonder why they bother, doesn’t it? Even if Hollywood completely lost the Chinese market – which it won’t, and that should tell you who needs who more in this arrangement – it wouldn’t be a big deal financially. But would it have an impact on the way movies are made, specifically the wokeness and lack of patriotism we’ve grown accustomed to? Some seem to think it would, and the inclusion of these things is largely connected to Hollywood’s desperation to reach the Chinese market. But the numbers and the glaring financial reality of that market tell me it wouldn’t, and it never did – at least not to the extent people imagine. Sure, the Star Wars and Black Panther poster stuff was directly related to the Chinese release of the films, and the chicanery with the Mandarin was likely related. (One of the most heartwarming stories to come out of modern Hollywood was seeing Disney remove the Mandarin from an Iron Man movie and shove a boring, watered-down version of him into a film with a Chinese hero to appease the market, only for Shang-Chi to be banned in China.) But making movies unappealing to your biggest markets, particularly the one in your own country, just to get table scraps from China is idiotic. So, why would they do it?
I believe they did it for themselves, and China is just a red herring (literally). The woke, anti-American, anti-capitalist messaging isn’t an appeal to the Chinese government’s communist ideology but a demonstration of Hollywood’s. They don’t need China to tell them to tamper down American patriotism because they have none themselves. They don’t need a foreign market to demand they extol the virtues of socialism in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania because they already believe in that message despite their getting rich from capitalism. And what about the nonsense that has nothing to do with China? I sincerely doubt the CCP cares about insufferable girl bosses, but they’re ubiquitous in Hollywood productions now. China didn’t demand Rey humiliate Luke Skywalker; Disney and Lucasfilm did. And based on the Star Wars and Black Panther posters, we can be damn sure they didn’t want Steve Rogers replaced with Sam Wilson while the latter lectured America about systemic racism and defended terrorists. This is why I’m not anywhere near convinced Hollywood would have changed its ways if it were banned from China; it’s doing these things for itself, not for the Chinese government, and certainly not for its own audience. The string of bombs over the last several years hasn’t done anything to change their tune, nor has the success of anomalies like the proudly patriotic Top Gun: Maverick (which openly defied Chinese demands, and Americans embraced it), and I’ll believe all the ship-righting stories when I see them. Hollywood only appeared to be pandering to China because their ideologies synced up, and that’s much more important to the current Tinseltown regime than money. I’ve said it before, but I’m convinced people like Bob Iger, who will never have to worry about money again, will gladly burn their industry to the ground to push their messaging on the public – or just to see it take over the art form. To a true believer, that is their preferred legacy. Not that I want to defend China, but in this case, they’re just the scapegoat.
Let us know what you think of Hollywood’s infatuation with China in the comments!
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Comments (2)
There aren’t many visionary directors anymore, and when one looks like he’s emerging, he usually gets snapped up in one of the big franchises, where he has to play in someone else’s sandbox. I think James Mangold is an excellent director, and now he’s doing some Star Wars thing after his awful Indiana Jones movie. Adam Wingard made some great and really inventive movies, so they threw him into those shitty Godzilla vs. King Kong movies, of which he’s already done two and is now, I believe, working on a third. Jason Reitman looked like he’d gotten sucked into those Lil’ Ghostbusters movies, but he got out of it pretty quickly and made Saturday Night, which was great and much more fitting for him. I get it because I’m sure it’s a great payday for them (and Reitman was honoring his father, who was a much different filmmaker than he is), but it’s a shame they’re not making the really interesting, innovative stuff they used to. It’s pretty much just Christopher Nolan doing what he wants right now, and some smaller-scale guys like Wes Anderson; hopefully, Reitman is back on this track, too.
What’s funny is, these directors are often bad fits for franchise films in the first place. Like Greta Gerwig; she was an indie film director who did her own thing, then she got Barbie, which was a big hit, and now she’s doing some weirdo feminist version of The Chronicles of Narnia where Aslan is a woman and God knows what else. And Taika Waititi, who made offbeat little comedies, was given two Thor movies, which he turned into retarded farces that didn’t understand the character or the world. Just let these people do their own thing in their own worlds.
One of my besties is of asian background and harbors centric and somewhat nationalistic views and it’s helpful to listen to that. Trade tariffs and manufacturing and industry has shown us that the west loses when it panders to others. The absolute obsession with diversity and multiculturalism has led us to the point where westerners are not even acknowledged in corporate and academic institutions, let alone any kind of priority. This lack of priority has led me to the point where I think Americans are owed refunds. People should have a right to go to where they are being trained to be the best. As it stands now, there are gatekeepers preventing any kind of achievement and it’s led us to a point where we are not even on the radar when it comes to real substance.
I heard Chris and Alan talking about this. It’s not worth the hassle. My asian buddy loves Avatar and Star Wars. He is still into it, as I am NOT and I’m into America First and don’t really care for the people making these movies anymore. Star Wars was a dud and I had no interest in it outside of the twist where Palpatine might have been a clone. Avatar was somewhat boring except for the brain juice from the alien whale and I will say I liked the futurist landscape shots of the construction bots building a base and also, once the action actually started towards the end of Way of Water, there were some clever shots. We are looking for special effects and action and not any genderqueer crap or swaps or weird politics.
Idgaf about China, but we are dependent on China for what they make now, and so is the world and I think many are just in denial about it. Financially, it makes sense to kind of just ignore them now, but I will say one more thing that they have good taste and that James Cameron is just doing the best effects out there now and it makes you wonder what happened to the effects when it comes to visionary directors?