In recent years, China has emerged as the world’s second-largest movie market. Despite rampant piracy, the Chinese box office manages to bring in about $3.6 billion annually, and by 2018, that figure is expected to quadruple.
Normally, this would be great news for Hollywood, but there’s a catch: the government of China only allows 34 foreign films to play in the country each year, severely limiting the amount of money that Hollywood studios can make.
In order to win the favour of the Chinese censorship board, Hollywood studios have been adding more and more Chinese content to their blockbusters. In the disaster epic 2012, the world was saved by Chinese scientists, who built a fleet of giant, futuristic vessels that could sustain extreme weather conditions. In Iron Man 3, which included a special Chinese-language subplot in the version that played there, the shrapnel in Iron Man’s heart was removed by a Chinese doctor (played by acclaimed character actor Wang Xueqi). In Gravity, Sandra Bullock found refuge on a Chinese space station, talked to a Chinese hobbyist over the radio, and returned to earth on a Chinese escape pod.
And now comes Transformers: Age of Extinction, which as the new Chinese trailer indicates, contains scenes that were shot in Hong Kong (where director Michael Bay was reportedly attacked by an assailant with an air conditioner) and some fleeting Chinese dialogue.
It also, as expected, contains lots and lots of footage of giant robots, giant explosions, and giant robots causing giant explosions.
Transformers: Age of Extinction hits theatres June 27.
