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《流浪地球》的制胜秘诀：电影工业化的探索还是“中国故事”的力量？
作者：刘珏
来源：《汉语世界(The World of Chinese)》2019年第02期
What does the success of The Wandering Earth spell for the future of Chinese cinema and sci-fi？
The Wandering Earth， an adaption of a short story by award-winning sci-fi author Liu Cixin， was always intended to be a roaring success.
Four years in the making， with a budget of 500 million RMB （75 million USD） and a 7，000-strong production team， this was to be no cookie-cutter production—but a sign， as one New York Times headline declared， that “China’s Film Industry Finally Joins the Space Race.” Set in a future where the Earth is facing an expanding Sun， the plot follows a scheme to use giant engines to motor the planet on a multi-generational， 2，500-year journey to a new home in a neighboring solar system. Unfortunately， Earth gets caught in Jupiter’s gravity field en route， and a team of transporters must come up with another plan to save the human race from extinction. Buoyed by a Spring Festival opening， Earth;broke a single-day box-office record， later hitting 4.1 billion RMB （609 million USD） to become China’s second-highest grossing movie after;Wolf Warrior 2;（2017）， with which it shares a star， Wu Jing. The film even managed to make over 96.6 million USD in the US， Australia， and New Zealand， according to Variety， while streaming rights were soon snapped up by Netflix.
Domestic sci-fi has a checkered past. China’s first sci-film film was Death Ray on Coral Island;（1980）， in which scientists protect atomic technology from being used as a weapon by an evil foreign company. Another early production， 1988’s;Wonder Boy， was a children’s story about a boy with the power to produce and control electricity， while The Ozone Layer Vanishes;（1990） focused on environmental issues.
Other films contained sci-fi elements， but it wasn’t until Liu Cixin became the first Asian
author to win a Hugo Award in 2015 that the idea of producing a special effects-heavy space odyssey like Earth;began to seem financially feasible. It didn’t hurt that such an epic would also chime with China’s recent space ambitions.
Even then， there were hurdles for 39-year-old director Guo Fan （Frant Gwo）， who was repeatedly told that it was beyond the Chinese film industry’s ;capability to make a satisfactory sci-fi