Yeung Tak Sang (53087121) The Legend of Wong Kar-Wai: From box office bomb to office number-one film
Wong Kar-wai, the director who won 1997 Cannes Best Director, always produce films that are unprofitable in Hong Kong. A typical example is Days of Being Wild (1990), which received HK $9,751,942 with budget $39,000,0001 for filming. Chungking Express (1994), the Best Picture in 1995 Hong Kong Film Awards, only received HK $7,678,549.00 in Hong Kong box office. So unprofitable are his films that people describe his films as ‘the box office bombs’.
Are The Oscar Winners Worth So Much? From The Perspective of the Box Office Records (2011), a research done by Wen-Cheng Ho, Lin Lin and Chih-Chien Chien shown that “for film directors, winning the Academy Award can indeed boost the box office of films they directed afterward, yet for actors and actresses; Academy Award winning does not have a significant impact on the box office of their films shoot later on.”2. Happy Together (1997) won Wong Kar-wai a Best Director in 1997 Cannes Film Festival. The reputation of Cannes Film Festival awards is very close to Academy Award. However, the films produced by Wong were still unprofitable until The Grandmaster.
In 2013, Wong released his newest film The Grandmaster. As usual, this movie was generally accepted by the critics. Peter Travers from Rolling Stone commented, “You leave this deeply flawed, deeply beautiful film with no doubt that you've seen an indisputable cinematic grandmaster in action.”3 Ming Pao Weekly used “Wong Kar-wai is back”4 to comment on this film. It is not a surprise to see how Wong impressed the professional critics. The most unexpected thing is that, The Grandmaster received HK $21,156,949.00 in Hong Kong box office. This is a doubled amount compared to his films he made in the past time.
Movies Hong Kong Box office 5
Days of Being Wild (1990) HK $9,751,942.00
1 Statistics from http://hkmdb.com/db/index.php 2 Ho,Wen-Cheng, Lin, Lin and Chien, Chih-Chien, “Are The Oscar Winners Worth So Much? From The Perspective of the Box Office Records (2011)” Tunghai Management Review, 12:1 (2001), pp.151-186 3 http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_grandmaster/ 4 http://www2.mingpaoweekly.com/contents/?id=24838 5 Statistics from http://hkmdb.com/db/index.php Chungking Express (1994) HK $7,678,549.00
Ashes of Time (1994) HK $9,023,583.00
Fallen Angels (1995) HK $7,476,025.00
Happy Together (1997) HK $8,600,141.00
2046 (2004) HK $6,036,757.00
The Grandmaster (2013) HK $21,156,949.00
It is also important to know that The Grandmaster ranked no.1 in Hong Kong Box office from January 10 to January 20. It is the first time to see a Wong Kar-wai’s movie that profitable.6
From the above chart, we can find out that the result of The Grandmaster in Hong Kong box office was so impressive. This phenomenon is surprising and the reasons behind the success of The Grandmaster in the domestic box office are worthy to be investigated.
“For box office, it is the genres and the rating of the films that really matter.” 7 Wuxia, which means martial hero, is an element that Wong loves to put in his movie. In 2046 (2004) and In the Mood for Love (2000), both male protagonists have the jobs of writing stories about Wuxia for the local newspaper. In Fallen Angels (1995), the killer in the movie is fulfilling “the code of xia”, which means that he has the Confucian value of ren (“benevolence”) and yi (“righteousness”).8 However, It is the first time that Wong Kar-wai put himself out of his comfort zone, stop telling stories about the lovers in the city and start to reconstruct the history of one great martial hero, Ip Man. The trademark use of slow motion is making the fighting scenes extremely beautiful. With Yuen Woo-ping as the martial arts choreographer of the movie and Duncan Leung as the private Wing Chun tutor for Tony Leung (the actor of Ip Man), the fighting scenes are solid and realistic.
As a place where Bruce Lee was born, people here love to watch martial arts movies
6 http://www.boxofficemojo.com/intl/hongkong/?yr=2013&p=.htm 7 Ho,Wen-Cheng, Lin, Lin and Chien, Chih-Chien, “Are The Oscar Winners Worth So Much? From The Perspective of the Box Office Records (2011)” Tunghai Management Review, 12:1 (2001), pp.151-186 8 Chan, Chi-wai,“ The Intertextuality in Wong Kai-Wai’s Wu-Shia Films , with a Focus on《The Grandmasters》” Retrieved from http://art.nhcue.edu.tw/MasterProgram/dissertation/2013/G10024419.pdf so much. Kung Fu Hustle (2004) directed by Stephen Chow, a comedy movie mixed with the element of martial arts, received HK$ 61,278,6979 in Hong Kong box office. As a box office record breaker, this film showed how Hong Kong people love martial arts movies. In 2008, Ip Man directed by Wilson Yip was also a great commercial success. The movie grossed HK$25,581,95810 domestically. The movie made people curious about Wing Chun and started the trend of learning Wing Chun. As The Grandmaster is a martial arts movie about the story of a Wing Chun master, Ip Man, many Hong Kong people want to watch this movie so much.
Picture a, captured from the movie The Grandmaster
9 statistics from http://www.boxofficemojo.com/ 10 statistics from http://www.boxofficemojo.com/
Picture b, captured from the movie Ashes of Time (1994)
It is not so common to see nature scenes and magnificent landscape in Wong’s movies. It is because Wong tends to reconstruct the relationship between human and a buzzing cosmopolitan city in his movie.11 However, there are two rather special movies that contain this kind of scenes. It is Ashes of Time (1994) and The Grandmaster. The nature scenes can be the selling point of the movie to attract people to watch it.
Both scenes of landscape in Ashes of Time (1994) and The Grandmaster are thrilling. However, the former one has a fragmentary story. Thus Ashes of Time (1994) is more experimental and not easy to be accepted by the public.
Also, latest technology was used to produce this film. Unlike Chungking Express (1994) and Days of Being Wild (1990) which were shot with film camera, The Grandmaster was shot with HD digital camera. Images quality of the movie was highly improved. Dolby® Atmos™, a new surround sound technology was also applied to the screening of The Grandmaster.12 The new technology will give audience a sensational experience.
11 Wang, Jiawei,“Wong Kar-wai” Retrieved from http://sensesofcinema.com/2002/great-directors/wong/ 12 http://investor.dolby.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=784594
Picture c, captured from the movie The Grandmaster
Picture d, captured from the movie The Grandmaster
The story of the film is paralleled with many history events, like Second Sino-Japanese War and the establishment of Manchukuo. Compared to his previous films, the content of The Grandmaster is rather epic, which is a great selling point.
No doubt, Wong Kar-Wai is a great director and his movies are visually astonishing. However, he is out of his comfort zone to produce the grandmaster. Thus, this film is not flawless. It’s rather disjointed. However, new theme, new elements, new technology and a very different story of The Grandmaster made this film generated a high amount of profit. It is actually great to see general public begin to appreciate Wong Kar-wai’s films. As the films mixed with many astonishing visual elements, Wong’s movie will really teach people how to appreciate movies in a aesthetic way.
References Ho,Wen-Cheng, Lin, Lin and Chien, Chih-Chien(2001). Are The Oscar Winners Worth So Much? From The Perspective of the Box Office Records. Tunghai Management Review, 12(1), 151-186. Chan, Chi-wai(2013). The Intertextuality in Wong Kai-Wai’s Wu-Shia Films , with a Focus on《The Grandmasters》. Retrieved from http://art.nhcue.edu.tw/MasterProgram/dissertation/2013/G10024419.pdf Wang, Jiawei(2002). Wong Kar-wai. Retrieved from http://sensesofcinema.com/2002/great-directors/wong/ Chan, Andrew(2013). The Grandmaster 一代宗師 (2013)–Hong Kong / China. Retrieved from http://thehkneo.com/blog/?p=3450 Hoberman, J(2013). Wong Kar-Wai is “The Grandmaster” Retrieved from http://blogs.artinfo.com/moviejournal/2013/08/27/wong-kar-wai-is-the-grandmas ter/