The story about a Chinese hero & a PLA soldier save a group of African ppl in war zone ... im sure future there will be more Chinese war movie like that, Chinese doing their ways to export China soft power & Chinese value.
In West World this called "Cultural War"， China wanna be a Global Power Chinese need it too.
I don't think this is the way to do it, you can look at how this movie do in China and how it does overseas, if you cannot sell overseas, it cannot be a soft power piece, you may as well just screen this movie in China and expecting in some twisted aspect that foreign audience flock into Chinese theatre and see it and appreciated it.
But a movie like this won't do well overseas, because it just baffle everyone. In a degree even American propaganda would not go. You need to please the people who review the movie to get in the global market, and you cannot please global critic with overtly political supertone like this.
With Chinese box office this size, Hollywood would have to think twice if they can afford to piss off Chinese again. This is a soft power itself. I am not surprised if some Hollywood studio come to China to make a "Chinese Save The Earth" type of movie.
Again, Chinese market is actually not that big if you compare it to the world market. There was another threat running a long time ago title "Can China be Hollywood Saviour" and the answer have already been discussed is no.
The problem with Chinese Market is that even tho they are big, there are only limited exposure to foreign film, which in itself already limited the box office a foreign movie can do in China, that mean what you see about Chinese film in China is not going to be the same as a foreign film in China. You cannot go threaten Hollywood to boycott it when you are already censoring the Hollywood movie, it just don't work like that. In term of market, India would have a better market than China for the Hollywood studio, because India does not have 30 movie quota a year and did not limit how long can a movie run in Indian Theatre.
Second of all, the Chinese market was almost always have a different taste than the world, you can see the depart of major genre from Chinese Market and the west and resulting a few movie (including this one) that do good in China but not in the west or even rest of the world. And in Hollywood, it's always going to be American first, so the need and appetite to please Chinese market to make a Pro-China film is almost slim down to Zero.
Thirdly, the Chinese did not get the key to movie making as of yet, why the Hollywood success is because they can kill their own, you may say or think American movie glorify America and go "piss off" other nation as much as you say, but in American screen,
AMERICA, not Russia, not China, not Vietnam, is the main Antagonist in majority of Hollywood Movie. You look at Die Hard, 5 movie done in Die Hard from 1980s to 2010s, two film is about American Terrorist (Die Hard 2 with the renegade Army platoon and Die Hard 4 with disgruntle NSA employee) 2 is about German-American Terrorist (Die Hard 1 and 3) and A Good day to Die Hard is about Russian Terrorist. And if we are looking at Bourne, most of the bad guy is American (CIA, US Government and so on). James Patterson once said, the key to an action novel is that you need to use American Antagonist rather than a foreign one, because it added the suspense of you don't know who to trust.
Everyone can be patriotic, I can make a movie with nothing but a man waving his flag around and killing people, but some point or another, you will be bored with this pretty soon and another reason is if you want your movie sold overseas, you are not to antagonize other nation, which leave the baddies can only be from one place, which is from your own country. Hence unless I can see a Movie is about Chinese against Chinese (Renegade fraction or something like that) It won't be able to sell overseas. And if something you can't sell overseas, you can't really push soft power from it. Like this movie, there is a reason why it make 550 millions in China, but fail to go for 8 digits in the world. SO, this movie, is a domestic success (Of course, it's an above gung-ho Chinese Patriot movie) but an international failure, I just can't see who will be excited to see Chinese waving a Chinese flag and kill a bunch of white and black guy unless the audience is Chinese.
