Superfans of the sci-fi series are rare in the increasingly important Chinese market (NOEL CELIS)
<p>Beijing (AFP) – Jedi mind tricks don’t work on China.</p><p>While "Star Wars" fans from around the world waited in line for days to catch "The Rise of Skywalker," the sci-fi series has struggled to woo film-goers in the increasingly important Chinese market.</p><p>Special previews of the long-awaited "Star Wars" film in Beijing this week drew just a handful of fans.</p><p>Chen Tao is a rare superfan in a country where Friday’s opening day pre-sales were just 12 million yuan ($1.7 million), Xinhua news agency said, a fraction of the 218 million yuan taken recently on release by a Chinese-made crime drama, according to state broadcaster CCTV.</p><p>The 35-year-old Shanghai resident only became curious about the space saga by accident after stumbling across a pre-installed "Star Wars" video game on his first computer.</p><p>Chen now runs one of China’s biggest online "Star Wars" fan groups, debating lightsaber physics on the online message board Zhihu and managing a Twitter-like Weibo account with 30,000 followers.</p><p>He loves the "Star Wars" world for its vast scale and rich detail that fans can piece together through movies, books and games.</p><p>"Its world is like a jigsaw-puzzle… which feels very magical to me, and inspires a desire to explore this universe," he said.</p><p>But Chen and his fellow fans are rare in China, where cinemagoers flock instead to see Marvel superheroes and domestic films.</p><p>"The Last Jedi" ranked number 47 at the box office in China in 2018, far behind Marvel’s superhero film "Avengers: Infinity War" at number six, according to Box Office Mojo.</p><p>Since buying Star Wars studio Lucasfilm in 2012, Disney has stepped up efforts to gain fans in the world’s fastest-growing movie market.</p><p>In October, Disney and Tencent-owned e-book company China Literature announced they would be publishing the first-ever "Star Wars" novel written specifically for Chinese audiences featuring "Chinese-style expression."</p><p>"We will introduce interpersonal relations and other concepts from Chinese custom into Star Wars," a China Literature representative told AFP, without providing further details.</p><p></p><p>- Empty screening -</p><p></p><p>The made-for-China "Star Wars" novel will have to overcome significant obstacles.</p><p>A Beijing bar hosted a screening Tuesday of previous "Star Wars" films ahead of Friday’s China release — but the special room was mostly empty.</p><p>The indifference could be explained by the fact that Chinese audiences were introduced to the series in 1999 with the prequel "Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace" — a disappointment to original fans and panned by critics.</p><p>"When Star Wars was released worldwide in 1977 it was a real film revolution," said Steffi Noel, an analyst from Shanghai-based market research firm Daxue Consulting.</p><p>"Each new episode of Star Wars is linked to a craze, a nostalgia," Noel told AFP.</p><p>But most Chinese viewers never formed this nostalgic bond with the movies.</p><p>In 1977, as foreign audiences were introduced to George Lucas’ Skywalker saga, China had just emerged from the chaotic Cultural Revolution and had little access to Western popular culture.</p><p>The three original films were only finally shown at a Shanghai film festival in 2015.</p><p></p><p>- ‘Old technology’ -</p><p></p><p>By the time Chinese audiences were introduced to the franchise, "the technology seemed old," Fan Yunxin, from a Beijing-based science fiction reading group, told AFP.</p><p>"Space opera isn’t really something Chinese people related to," Fan said, adding while she likes the films, she didn’t know of any "hardcore" fans.</p><p>Alex Hu, a 24-year-old science fiction fan, said he was unimpressed with the visual effects.</p><p>"I would say a lot of fight scenes in Star Wars are similar," he said.</p><p>Chen said Chinese sci-fi fans tend to prefer "hard" science fiction that focuses on scientific theory and have high demands for a story’s logical consistency, but "Star Wars" was more like a "Roman empire tale that had been moved into space."</p><p>When he first watched one of the films, he was amazed by how casually alien and human characters co-existed in the "Star Wars" universe, something he had never encountered before in a science fiction film.</p><p>Shanghai-based analyst Noel said Disney would need to rebrand "Star Wars" to sell the franchise in China.</p><p>"What they need to sell them now, is a new story," she said.</p><p>"It’s not enough to include Chinese-style drawings or Chinese architectures."</p><p></p>

Disclaimer: Validity of the above story is for 7 Days from original date of publishing. Source: AFP.