When State-Endorsed Cinema Meets Marvel: A Study of Wolf Warrior II’s Global Superhero Vernacular

Author:

Kong Lilian12

Affiliation:

1. Department of Cinema and Media Studies, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA

2. Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA

Abstract

Chinese state-endorsed films have transformed in the past decade. These films make up the “new mainstream”, a genre defined by its ability to match strides with Hollywood commercial cinema. But, what exactly comprises Hollywood’s impact on official Chinese media? How does it manifest onscreen? Exploring the relationship between state-endorsed blockbusters and Hollywood, this article analyzes a pioneer of the “new mainstream”, Wolf Warrior II (2017). This film stands out as the inaugural collaboration between Chinese media conglomerates and Marvel Cinematic Universe directors. From this collaboration emerges the film’s protagonist, Leng Feng, an ex-soldier who saves civilians from rebel forces in Africa. As Leng enacts justice at home and abroad, however, affective portrayals of his feats foreground ambiguity over coherence and unresolvable impulses over a singular agendum. These melodramatic sites of contradiction, I argue, culminate in the film’s own “global superhero vernacular”. Such a vernacular aligns with transnationally circulating serial franchise logics, pushing the film’s connection with Marvel beyond local–global and state–market binaries. Ultimately, my analysis complicates the smooth thread that links together the superhuman individual, nationalist sovereign power, and international order, thereby re-evaluating state-endorsed cinema’s role within Chinese media cultures and social fields.

Publisher

MDPI AG

Subject

General Materials Science

Reference46 articles.

1. Agamben, Giorgio (1998). Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford University Press.

2. Wolf Warrior 2: Imagining the Chinese Century;Berry;Film Quarterly,2018

3. Denson, Shane, and Leyda, Julia (2016). Post-Cinema: Theorizing 21st Century Film, Reframe Books.

4. Brooks, Peter (1976). The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess, Yale University Press.

5. Brzeski, Patrick (2019, January 02). Russo Brothers to Form Production Venture With China’s Huayi. Available online: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/russo-brothers-form-production-venture-924191/.

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