Chinese film, television, music

proelite said:

Idea for Chinese Lord of the Rings.

Uses elements of Chinese mythology, martial arts, weapons, tombs, Feng shui, etc to create an original universe. Essential the greatest hits of Chinese culture such as Tolkien used Pagan and Christian culture.

In this world, demons, other races and barbarians makes it a busy and often dangerous place for humans. There are minor nations, barbarians, and tributaries surrounding the usually protagonist dynasty. To the very north is the endless tundra, the very west the endless deserts, the very south the endless jungle and the very east the endless sea. Heaven is above and hell is below. There is also the parallel spirit world.

The ruling Dynasty has armies and departments to deal with these dangers, but when shit hits the fans and a high level threat appears, they summon help from Gods but those come at their own whim and when the dynasty has enough favor and is resource intensive (perhaps requires human medium that dies at the end). Gods are large, imposing and frightening for your average human. I.e. Erlang is like 10 feet tall. Also they don't give AF about collateral damage.

High level human or non-human warriors of legendary skills can ascend to Gods or fall into Demonhood.

The infinite struggle is between periods of chaos and periods of peace. Period of chaos is caused by demons resulting in supernatural disasters, loss of favor with the gods, and dynasty collapse, where as period of peace is when new heroes arrive to end the period of chaos and establish a new dynasty. Occasionally heroes can prevent the fall of a dynasty themselves.

Difference between these property and Star Wars LOTR is that this will be setup to have indefinite number of sequels. As the director can always come up with a new ancient threat, barbarian threat, etc per movie.

Now I think of it this is basically Cathay from Warhammer fantasy lol.

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FairAndUnbiased said:

Uh... so, fantasy Buddhism, the way LOTR was fantasy Christianity?

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proelite said:

Yes, but darker and mostly grounded than Gods of Creation. Magic is specialized, expensive, and rarely used. No wire-fu. Power levels are hard-capped because at a certain power level a human either ascends, peaks, or becomes a demon.

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siegecrossbow said:

Journey to the West and Investiture of the Gods already are the Chinese LOTR.

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Index said:

"just sucks"
>literally no2 in the world and only because China had to rebuild after ww2 instead of US that started fresh

The thing is you don't abandon your core audience just to pander to others. Producers are 100% right to focus on China-centric content first. The rest of the world will come to accept that they must follow, not the other way around. As different producers compete with eachother, they create increasingly powerful media that will come to blow away China's enemies in quality and scale, like how Star Wars and Indiana Jones blew away whatever shit the USSR was playing back in the cold war. You don't get that from pandering to outside markets, but by delivering an unapologetically China first product.

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FairAndUnbiased said:

Those are all details. And that's been done already, by Japanese no less: Inuyasha.

The magic and demons stuff is the big part that Japanese believe in. Chinese stuff should be a bit more grounded.

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Quan8410 said:

You don't need to abandon your audience to capture foreign audience. Those are not mutually exclusive. For a no2 world power, China soft power does not scale well. When South Korean had even lower GDP per cap than China, they already exported the first Hallyu. You cannot just assume expect people to follow when you cannot even make people watch your content. China had high quality films such as Creation of gods last year but finding a venue to show it outside China is a pain in the ass. Is creation of gods harder to follow than Lord of the Rings? Certainly not.

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Index said:

You do though?

Look at LOTR. Cast of only white people. US started out catering it's film industry only to the white, American controlled parts of the world. Outside peoples were eventually forced to adapt.

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