American "Kung Fu Panda 2" movie stirs controversy amongst Chinese moviegoers

 A Hollywood film was met with an awkward circumstance on Saturday in China. When fans are standing in extended queues to watch the initial show, other people are advocating a boycott on the American movie with Chinese story components.

Just after "Kung Fu Panda", a cartoon film telling a story about a panda' s Kung Fu master journey, hit China's silver screens in 2008, its sequel, Kung Fu Panda two, was released in China just ahead of International Children's Day, adding much more Chinese components for example shadow play and lion dancing.

Having said that, some Chinese artists and scholars argue that the movie, created by DreamWorks, has twisted Chinese culture and serves as a tool to "kidnap" the mind of the Chinese folks.

"Children' s Day will need to be pure. Don' t turn it into a money-making day for Hollywood, and don' t fool our next generation with American 'fast food'," according to an open letter to Chinese cinema managers written by Zhao Bandi, an avant-garde artist hoping to boycott the "Americanized" film.

More than the past two weeks, Zhao has utilized his personal income to pay to publish circulars in newspapers in Beijing and Guangzhou, urging fans not to watch the movie. "This is often a battle," he said.

In 2008, Zhao initiated similar campaigns to boycott Kung Fu Panda, which later set the country' s cartoon box office record, selling tickets valued at 180 million yuan (27.7 billion U.S. dollars).

His move is backed by Kong Qingdong, a renowned professor of the Chinese language with the Peking University, who stated Chinese components have come to be advertising solutions to advocate American culture.

"It is actually a cultural invasion," stated Kong.

Within the film, the main character referred to as "Po," a panda which remains a unique animal species in China, is talkative, humorous, beautiful and charmingly naive, and is broadly believed to become a typical American figure.

Nonetheless, the panda has won million of fans in China. On China' s most well-known microblog web-site, weibo.com, comments on the movie reached almost 270 million entries, plus the range is nonetheless rising. A lot of the netizens post inquiries such as "Why can' t we create such brilliant movies ourselves?"

"I will not call it a cultural invasion," said Li Jiayi, a Beijing university student. "I see nothing at all poor for other folks to utilize our cultural elements to create a film."

Yuan Weili, a girl in Shijiazhuang, capital city of north China' s Hebei Province, stated at a cinema that she had been waiting three years to watch the sequel.

"I' m an enormous fan of Po. In spite of becoming a cartoon, it really is nonetheless loved by several adults like me," mentioned the 25-year-old after watching the very first show at midnight.

Nine-year-old Zhang Miao watched during the day with his parents. He produced a Kung Fu pose and stated, "I didn' t see 'Rio' , and I' m not considering 'pirates' , but I gotta see Kong Fu Panda."

Cao Hui, deputy general manager with Shenzhen International Digital Creations corporation, mentioned in place of a "boycott," movie producers must learn from the film to far better make use of Chinese story elements.

"Technically, Kung Fu Panda will not be much more advanced than Chinese movies, but as for story telling skills, Chinese movies possess a extended solution to go," stated Cao.

Posted in: Kung Fu Panda 2