Though Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon won four Oscars in 2001, martial arts movies always fail to make money in China.
In recent years, Kung fu movies have become increasingly popular with foreign audiences.
Zhang Yimou's Hero and House of Flying Daggers the most typical, said Wang Qun, associate research fellow of the China Film Art Research Center, at the International Forum for the Centennial Anniversary of Chinese Cinema which was closed in Beijing Tuesday.
Wang said that in most Chinese martial arts movies the audience is kept at a distance by the excessive use of stunts and foreigners only take a fancy to the exotic sceneries and stories in the movies but perhaps never believe it's real Kung fu.
Crouching Tiger has become the most profitable foreign-language movie, replacing European movies that previously dominated the scene.
"The most successful Chinese films have all been martial arts films where language and the disadvantages associated with subtitles are less important than the action on the screen," said Stanley Rosen, professor of East Asian Studies Center and department of political science of University of Southern California.
In his assessment of the failure of Crouching Tiger in its home market of China, John Pomfret, the former Beijing bureau chief of the Washington Post bluntly asserted, "Almost every major cultural export from China over the past 25 years that has made it in the West has flopped in China."
"More controversially, 'Crouching Tiger' took off in the United States because it was very Chinese, while it failed in China because it was too Chinese," Pomfret argued.
Although Crouching Tiger made a healthy US$208 million globally, Rosen said, "It is striking that China, Japan and Hong Kong accounted for only three percent of the movie's global sales."
Wang acknowledged that movies like Crouching Tiger indeed attract worldwide attention for Chinese movies but is concerned that Chinese film is being misrepresented.
"Kung fu is kung fu but nothing else, and it should not be lowered to a genre of empty romance," Wang said.
Today's Chinese martial arts movies, which originated in the 1920s, feature kung fu stars like Jackie Chan and more sophisticated technological elements.
Hong Kong and the mainland co-shot a series of high-quality martial arts movies in the 1990s which were extremely popular at one time but quickly eliminated from the market due to the lack of innovation.
Not until Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger became a hit did foreign movie makers start to favor Chinese martial arts movies, said Chen Mo, a research fellow of China Film Art Research Center.
Chen said Ang Lee turned Crouching Tiger into a Chinese version of Sense and Sensibility, in which the martial complex that combines love and hatred was perfectly embodied.
Chinese martial arts movies should be improved in terms of artistic taste, added Chen.
Rosen said martial arts movies with exquisite and artful taste are bound to be successful.
Chen Kaige's upcoming film, The Promise, which is "an epic tale about promise, betrayal, nations and love set in the underworld of ancient China" should prove successful at the box office, Rosen said.
(Xinhua News Agency December 14, 2005)
