Chinese Posters for Western Movies
Our cinemas are currently suffering a decline, but not so in China. As conversions, multiplexes and 3D screens rose across China’s cities in the 21st century, Western blockbuster productions have aimed to make their share of profits in the Chinese market. One of the better developments from their attempts to win over the local audiences, is beautifully designed official Chinese posters for sci-fi and fantasy movies, a wonderful combination of Eastern treatment and Western concepts.
These have tended to be traditional or classically inspired. The current Chinese fantasy imagination, with an innate need to reconnect with the past, is steeped in mythology and cultural history. Add to this the 国潮 Guochao trend of contemporary designs featuring indigenous elements. These posters are more than just sticking superheroes into a historical setting. They reflect some major themes in China’s arts and philosophy, especially ones that transcend national boundaries. I’ll be discussing some of the best poster art here.
Designed by fine arts graduate and renowned tattoo artist Shen Yan, the Yin Yang theme of the Chinese poster for Godzilla versus Kong brings out the core Daoist philosophical idea of balance, which is also at the heart of this story. Whereas Chinese watercolour art expresses the beauty of water-related stories like The Shape of Water (designed by the new-gen watercolour illustrator known as Mario 鹿荷), ink wash painting perfectly captures Venom’s amorphous nature and physical fluidity. The movement, power and grace of heroines such as Battle Angel Alita and Dark Phoenix are embodied in these posters by the flowing, soaring aesthetics and styles of the Dunhuang grottoes on the Silk Road.
Like the hangdang, major roles in Peking Opera, each of the Avengers are a specular act on their own, but only when they assemble, do they make a full show. This poster by toy designer and illustrator 黎明Daybreak presents the team of superheroes as an opera ensemble . What better representation of the spontaneity of Spiderman than the capricious Monkey King when he is wreaking havoc in the celestial realms, surrounded by his other forms across the multiverse as the heavenly guardians and other deities. Daybreak’s scroll poster of the Transfomers as various early Chinese deities brings out a Decepticon-Autobot dynamic that pervades a lot of the different story arcs that have now spawned. Optimus Prime is here the wise legendary emperor Huangdi, bringer of order, whilst Megatron is the chaotic rebel warrior, Chiyou.
Chinese poster art is a well- developed artform. Since the early days of cinema, commercial innovations such as calendar art fed into propaganda styles of the mid-century and then film posters of the 1980s, many of which were still hand-drawn. This socialist chic retro poster brings back all the nostalgia for Chinese fans who’ve followed these sentient alien bots since their inception in the ‘80s, presenting Bumblebee as a People’s Favourite. There are definite socialist undertones in the Transformers narratives, if there’s ever a contemporary movie of the proletariat, Transformers One is it, albeit a cartoon about space robots.
There are many more of Chinese designed posters for Western productions, such as classic animated Disney, Black Panther, Superman v.s Batman, Deadpool 2, even Paddington. There will come a time when these cultural hybrid film art will be highly sought after by collectors of the future, and I can’t wait to see what contemporary Chinese artists will make of future Western movie concepts.
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