Continuing on with our Alabama Liberal China week, I thought it might interest some—-not many, but some—-to know what it’s like to go to a movie (The Avengers) in Shanghai. If you answered “Probably not much different and you’re wasting our time writing about this when you could be endlessly talking about the presidential election,” then you’re wrong on both counts, and totally not hurting my feelings by saying that, sniff, sniff…
For starters, let’s run down some basics…
Cost per ticket: 20 U.S. dollars PER TICKET, and even more if you see a 3D film. In other words, a prominent Shanghai phenomenon I like to call “wallet rape,” or “surcharge on sucker Westerners who think things will be cheap in a communist country.”
Posters in front lobby: About two-thirds are for various American movies (Battleship actually opened in Shanghai weeks before it flopped in the U.S.) and the Chinese films rarely feature American actors…it’s a pretty strict separation of church and state, EXCEPT for this poster of a humiliating-seeming Kevin Spacey movie called Inseparable solely filmed (and distributed) in China.
Theater Concessions: The selection is a bit more decadent, with this particular theater carrying caramelized and multi-colored sweet popcorn in addition to the standard salty.
Theaters Themselves: The decadence in concession selection is swiftly cancelled out by the theaters themselves, which have the charm of being in the hull of a refugee ship. People are loaded in single file lines about THREE minutes before the movie starts (they will not let you in any earlier) and assigned an exact seat when they buy their ticket. The chairs in the theater are multi-colored and comfortable enough though.
Previews: What previews? They showed a handful of commercials and then went directly into the movie with almost no fanfare. In fact, I didn’t realize the movie had started (I don’t even remember seeing a production company logo before it) until two minutes in. I thought others were confused because they continued to talk but little did I realize…
Audience: Okay, so the American movies shown in Shanghai are English-speaking with Mandarin subtitles, but since not much of the local population actually speaks English, they only read the subtitles and talk over the actual dialogue, only shutting up during explosions and other action scenes when there’s no dialogue to hear anyway.
The Movie: The movie is already subtitled, so if there’s a scene (like when Scarlet Johansson is being interrogated in Russian) that requires English subtitles, they don’t include them and you just guess what’s happening. [It’s amazing how many bigger budgeted movies don’t require you to understand the dialogue, which is perhaps why they play well internationally and is about all Hollywood makes anymore…dumbing them down so they can make a killing in international box office.] But the bigger problem for me was wondering if something I was seeing was being censored or not. I’ve already noted that China doesn’t hesitate to edit their television within an inch of its life, so I constantly wondered if I was missing scenes where Iron Man and the gang were, perhaps, questioning China’s human rights or engaging in anything sexier than PG. I shouldn’t worry too much though, since The Avengers is basically a Saturday morning cartoon with real actors, I doubt there’s much ole mother China finds objectionable. Even the toughest bureaucrat would find the Avengers suitably dumbed down and completely inoffensive, right down to the generic alien villains. [Wouldn’t want to put a nationality to evil, least it hurt those international box office sales!]
End Credits: People are encouraged to leave immediately after the final scene, and I was the absolute last person out of the theater as I waited to see the scene that Marvel always puts at the end of the credits of their films…Tough luck for me though as I was told I had to leave about halfway through the credits after failed negotiations with impatient theater sweepers. [One thing I discovered there and will expand upon tomorrow: they don’t negotiate…as in ever. They have a million rules, and don’t deviate even an inch from them.] I can see their frustration though, because when I left the next Avengers crowd was already gathered outside for a showing that would begin…about five minutes after the last one. So the Chinese treat their movie theater scheduling about like New Yorkers treat the subway, and I felt nostalgic for the liberal American showtimes of having, you know, time to use the bathroom between taking your seat and when the movie starts.
LOL so funny.