[Culture Op-Ed] Did Hong Kong Cinema Collapse Under a Flood of Rushed, Profit-Driven Sequels?

At some point, this belief just popped up out of nowhere and has now effectively hardened into accepted wisdom. More precisely, from the mid-to-late 1990s through the early 2000s, the vast majority of Korean media outlets, whether newspapers or TV, all began their explanations of why once-mighty Hong Kong cinema had collapsed with this same point. The interpretation was that, obsessed only with making money, it kept churning out slapdash sequels and derivative knockoffs of hit films, and as a result was shunned not only abroad but even by domestic consumers, ultimately bringing about its own downfall. And, of course, the same is still true today.

“Until the early 1990s, Hong Kong cinema defined the era. The names of huge stars such as Chow Yun-fat, Stephen Chow, and Leslie Cheung are still thrilling memories for people now in their 40s. Afterward, mass-produced films dealing with gambling and noir poured out indiscriminately, and Hong Kong cinema went down the path of decline. Of course, there is also a view that Hong Kong cinema declined because various regulations increased after Hong Kong was returned to China. But it is also worth noting the criticism that Hong Kong’s film industry was not solid enough to endure changing external conditions.” (From the Newsis article, May 9, 2018, “Chinese Tourists Are Coming Back?... The Shadow Hanging Over an Excited Retail Industry”)

“As Hong Kong films did well, a lot of self-replicating films were produced hastily. Interest was bound to fade.” (From the Herald Business article, June 29, 2018, “‘Radio Show’: Stanley Explains …”)

Of course, there were several reasons why this kind of interpretation could emerge. Especially reasons that felt unfamiliar and alien from a Korean point of view. But overall, the strong impression is that those causes were distorted and bent this way and that to suit “Korean media tastes,” and beyond that, to suit the tastes of various film interests that wielded influence over the Korean film industry at the time. Let us examine them one by one.

No market in the world collapses because it has too many sequels

First, let us look at the claim that the mass production of so-called “self-replicating” films—slapdash sequels and the like—hastened the decline of Hong Kong cinema. In truth, this is difficult to understand in itself. Whether in Hong Kong or anywhere else, sequels are rarely projects into which less money is invested. Because they build on the fan base of the original, investment becomes easier on the basis of the previous film’s box-office record. Naturally, if a sequel is being made, the previous film was successful, so the reference point is a strong one.

What usually happens is simply that a sequel is rated lower than the original and therefore called “slapdash.” But even that is, to a considerable extent, perfectly natural. Once the freshness of the original’s ideas or settings disappears, evaluations naturally decline as well. Even so, sequels keep getting made, and audiences keep coming. That is because there is always demand from people attached to the first film who want to see what happens to those characters afterward.

Still, does this kind of commercialism, if taken too far, eventually doom the entire film industry in question? It is vague what exactly “too far” even means here, but broadly speaking, this claim is hard to accept. One need only look at Hollywood, the global mecca of popular culture.

Last year, 6 of the top 10 highest-grossing films in North America were sequels: Avengers: Endgame, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Frozen 2, Toy Story 4, Spider-Man: Far From Home, and Jumanji: The Next Level. Most of the rest were either live-action remakes of animated films such as The Lion King and Aladdin, or entries in hit franchise universes such as Captain Marvel and Joker. These are, in every sense, “mass-produced” films. Their material is similar too. Four of the top 10 were superhero franchise films. And yet Hollywood continues to grow, setting new global box-office records every year.

What is more interesting is that even in the 1980s, the period commonly called the “golden age of Hong Kong cinema,” sequels—the representative form of those very “self-replicating mass-produced films”—appeared in huge numbers. Aces Go Places, the blockbuster franchise that defined the 1980s, released no fewer than 5 installments in that decade alone: 1982, 1983, 1984, 1986, and 1989. A Better Tomorrow, one of the best-known Hong Kong films in Korea, also completed a trilogy in a short span: 1986, 1987, and 1989. There were many others. Mr. Vampire had 5 installments from 1984 to 1991, and the Lucky Stars series released 3 films, including My Lucky Stars and Twinkle, Twinkle, Lucky Stars. Regardless of genre, they came out endlessly. And yet Hong Kong cinema did not collapse; on the contrary, it entered its greatest heyday.

In short, there is no such thing in the world as a film industry that “collapsed because it had too many sequels.” And a situation in which a particular genre or subject matter becomes concentrated in a given period is an entirely natural phenomenon—like today’s superhero boom in Hollywood. The crime action films called Hong Kong noir were really a trend only from around 1986 to 1990, and the gambling-film boom lasted only about 1989 to 1993. Both were shorter than the superhero craze, which has persisted for more than a decade.

Moreover, from around 1991, when the actual “decline” began, another trend was emerging in Hong Kong. There was a boom in all kinds of working-class comedies starring the superstar Stephen Chow, as well as tearjerker melodramas such as Love Story and C’est la vie, mon chéri, and romantic comedies such as He’s a Woman, She’s a Man. There was even a racing-film boom, with titles like Full Throttle and Thunderbolt. At that point, it no longer even makes sense to blame self-replication; if anything, the more plausible interpretation would be that Hong Kong cinema declined because it “stopped” replicating Hong Kong noir and gambling films. Korean media analyses of Hong Kong cinema’s collapse simply do not match reality at all.

In the end, a “bogus” line of criticism born out of discontent with, and maladjustment to, the industrialization of Korean cinema

Then how did this logic arise—that Hong Kong cinema declined because it mass-produced self-replicating films such as slapdash sequels? This is where things become truly interesting.

This interpretation first began circulating in the media around 1997. It was used to sound an alarm in the Korean film industry. At the time, the golden age of gangster films in Korea was just beginning. Green Fish, Number 3, Ggangpae Lesson, Beat, and Promise were all released in rapid succession. In the 2000s this continued with Friend, My Wife Is a Gangster, Kick the Moon, Hi, Dharma!, and My Boss, My Hero. To create a sense of “alarm,” the media essentially issued a warning: “Hong Kong cinema also collapsed after making nothing but similar films.”

But this, too, is rather strange. Strictly speaking, Korean cinema has also long been a market shaped by one “trend” after another. In the 1980s there were booms in erotic films such as Madame Aema, Wild Strawberry, and Red Cherry, as well as youth films like Mimi wa Cheolsuui Cheongchun Sketch. In the 1990s there was also a powerful romantic-comedy boom led by Marriage Story, My Love, My Bride, and Mister Mama. “Trends” have always existed. Yet at the time the media collectively brandished even a “false analysis” of Hong Kong cinema’s decline in order to issue threats and criticisms.

Why make such meaningless criticisms? To a considerable degree, this was closely tied to the “great transformation” then underway in the film industry itself. In the mid-1990s, the Korean film industry underwent enormous changes unlike anything before. First came the launch, in 1995, of Samsung’s Image Business Division, which integrated Samsung C&T’s film and broadcasting business with Samsung Electronics’ music business. It was the first time in history that a major conglomerate entered the film industry. As the film industry then moved into a “proper” stage of industrialization, venture capital firms such as Mirae Venture Capital and Ilshin Venture Capital began investing in films one after another. So what had the Korean film industry looked like before that? Consider this explanation from the Weekly Donga article of May 6, 2004, “Samsung’s Film Division Died, and Korean Cinema Blossomed”:

“Before Samsung, film and theater were premodern family trades. A film’s quality depended on a single director, and predicting box-office performance relied on ‘gut feeling,’ like a fortune teller guessing exam results. Even when a film succeeded, it was often unclear who actually pocketed the money. Bribing the theater employee who counted admissions in order to underreport audience numbers was almost standard practice. Even when companies such as Cheil Communications or Ilshin Venture Capital had just entered Chungmuro, it was not uncommon for their box-office revenues to simply disappear. But large corporations demanded transparent accounting and precise projections of audience numbers based on directors, actors, and budget, and the filmmakers who learned this in Samsung’s division later made it a basic condition of planning in Chungmuro after the division was disbanded.”

At a time when the entire paradigm was undergoing such a transformation, dissatisfaction from the existing film world—the so-called old money side—could only accumulate. The rules of the game were changing. Around 1997, that dissatisfaction in the existing film scene had reached a fever pitch. At the same time, new film forces—the “new money” side—were concentrating on making cost-effective gangster films based on this kind of data. It was a moment when anything the new money side did became a target. And film reporters in the media were far removed from the newly arrived conglomerates and relatively close to the existing film establishment. Naturally, media discourse flowed toward criticizing the present, even by invoking an incorrect explanation for Hong Kong cinema’s decline.

There was another factor as well: aspiring personnel who could not adapt to the industrial logic led by large corporations. Previously, if one approached a production company through personal connections and persuaded it with enough “instinct,” one might at least get a directorial debut. But now the atmosphere had changed. Those who lacked an industrial mindset no longer got opportunities. An article reflecting such complaints appeared in Weekly Donga on October 25, 2001, under the title “Chungmuro Is Awash in Money—So Why the Sighs?”:

“One staff member in the field complains that if a film is not seen as ‘profitable,’ it is often scrapped at the screenplay stage. (Omitted) People may wonder how it makes sense to say that films cannot be made when money is overflowing, but that is the reality. It cannot be denied that the inflow of capital, especially venture capital, has been the greatest driving force behind the revival of Korean cinema, but we must not forget that what matters is not ‘money’ but ‘film.’”

Looking back now, this sounds obvious enough, but at the time such complaints were treated as serious problems. And the rationale was simple: “Hong Kong cinema collapsed that way too.” But this criticism effectively disappeared after around 2003. By then, after the disbanding of Samsung’s Image Business Division, major conglomerates such as CJ and Lotte had begun entering the film industry in earnest. From that point on, it became, in effect, an unstoppable trend. And now, in 2020, the Korean film industry has expanded enormously. Contrary to fears that this would lead to declining quality and eventual collapse, Parasite, produced through industrial logic at the conglomerate CJ Entertainment, became the first Korean film in history to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated in 6 Academy Award categories, including Best Picture.

The “real” causes of the decline of Hong Kong cinema: the Handover of Hong Kong and the revival of Korean cinema

Finally, the question remains: what actually caused Hong Kong cinema to decline? If one carefully examines the reality, what one feels is less that it offers a cautionary lesson and more simple regret. Strictly speaking, Hong Kong cinema declined because of the Handover of Hong Kong.

To begin with, in the early 1990s, as noted above, films became dominated by highly “locally oriented” comedies starring Stephen Chow and others. Comedy is, by nature, the genre least likely to travel abroad. It is completely bound up with the realities and emotional framework of the home audience. Even in Hong Kong cinema’s golden age, pure comedy never really spread overseas. What made Hong Kong into “Asia’s Hollywood” were genre films with strong visual appeal—kung fu action, horror-romance such as A Chinese Ghost Story, and Hong Kong noir.

So why did the industry focus so heavily on simple comedy during this period? In a way, it was only natural. The 1990s opened with the 1997 Handover of Hong Kong just around the corner. And this was not just any transfer of sovereignty: liberal-democratic Hong Kong was being returned to communist China. Society was filled with anxiety and fear. Under such conditions, films could sustain box-office success only by moving either toward light comedies that let audiences laugh, enjoy themselves, and escape reality, or toward tearjerking melodramas that offered catharsis for their pent-up emotions. In either case, these were genres that had difficulty expanding overseas.

And there really was a general decline in quality as well. That was a major reason why the “later trends” did not work very well. But even that is hard to attribute to a money-blinded rush for profit. Fundamentally, that too should be seen as a consequence of the Handover of Hong Kong. In the 1990s, investors who felt uneasy about Hong Kong after the handover all pulled out of the film industry. Then came the Hollywood departures of famous directors such as John Woo, Ringo Lam, and Tsui Hark, along with star actors such as Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Chow Yun-fat. Their thinking was the same. Feeling anxious about Hong Kong’s future, they were in effect desperate for a kind of escape. As a result, the Hong Kong film industry was left with a vacuum of promising talent that could lead the industry, and naturally quality declined.

There is yet another perspective as well. Did Hong Kong cinema really collapse in the early 1990s? Strictly speaking, it would be more accurate to say that “in Korea,” Hong Kong cinema’s standing shrank particularly sharply during that period. In Southeast Asian markets such as Taiwan, Singapore, and Thailand, there are records showing that Hong Kong films held up reasonably well until around 2003–2005, when they were fully absorbed into the Chinese market.

The decisive reason Hong Kong cinema became neglected in Korea from the mid-1990s onward was, in fact, that Korean cinema had begun absorbing domestic consumers with much higher-quality films. Thanks to the entry of major conglomerates mentioned above, Korean films made with far more sophisticated commercial logic swept through theaters. And by the time of Shiri and My Sassy Girl, Korean cinema was even replacing Hong Kong cinema in Southeast Asia in precisely that same market share Hong Kong had once occupied. So in one sense, one of the causes of Hong Kong cinema’s decline was precisely the revival of Korean cinema.

Thus, the causes of Hong Kong cinema’s decline can be divided broadly into two: the Handover of Hong Kong and the revival of Korean cinema. Both were factors beyond the control of Hong Kong’s film industry at the time. That is why it is regrettable. And in Korea, those who in the mid-1990s to early 2000s failed to adapt to the changing order of the film industry and recited bogus explanations for the decline of Hong Kong cinema were, in a sense, regrettable too. But journalists and film industry figures who are still regurgitating those makeshift false arguments to this day are not regrettable at all. They are dangerous.

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Original title: [문화칼럼] 홍콩영화는 상혼에 찌든 졸속 속편 양산 탓에 몰락했다?

Author: Moon-won Lee

Date: 2020-01-30

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=column&pn=10&idx=22333