China's film industry finally joins the space race.
China is a latecomer to space exploration,and in the movies, it has been a latecomer to science
fiction, too. That is about to change.
The country's first blockbuster set in space, "The Wandering Earth," opens Tuesday amid
grandiose expectations that it will represent the dawning of a new era in Chinese filmmaking.
"The Wondering Earth," shown in 3-D, takes place in a distant future in which the sun is about
to expend in to a red giant and devour the Earth. And the preliminary reviews have been positive.
"Filmmakers in China see science fiction as a holy grail," said Raymond Zhou, an independent
critic, who noted that Hollywood had set the technological standards, and thus audience
expectations, very high.
"The Wondering Earth" is adapted from works by Liu Cixin, the writer who has led a renaissance
in science fiction here, becoming the first Chinese winner of the Hugo Award for the genre in 2015.
His novels are sprawling epics and deeply researched. That makes them plausible fantasies about
humanity's encounters with a dangerous universe.
The openings also come as China reached a milestone in space: the landing of a probe on the far
side of the moon in January. Although decades behind Russia and the United States, China has now
put astronauts in orbits and has ambitious plans to join-or even lead- a new age of space
exploration.
"I think there is a very close connection between Chinese cinema and the nation's fortunes,"
said Sha Dan, a curator at the China Film Archive.