“Wow, this is homemade!”

In this section, I use cycle study to investigate how the interaction and competition of these historical factors eventually gives rise to the cycle’s phenomenal success. Compared with genre study, cycle study provides a more localized approach to examine the films’ aesthetics and social uses.[12] [open endnotes in new window] Through close analysis of the cycle’s textual features and reception discourse, I argue, what marks the cycle of main melody blockbusters is indeed its use or exploitation of special effects (especially CGI and computer-generated camera movement) to create a Hollywoodesque effects-heavy imagery, two main attractions of which are summarized as particle perception and the impression of a technologized eye. The experience of such cinematic novelties in the home cinema provides a sensory experience of national modernity—a “wow, this is homemade” effect as opposed to the single “wow” effect that scholars have argued for the spectatorship of special effects imagery. This factor taps into the audience’s affective engagement with the current historical moment and essentially drives the appeal of the cycle.

Particle perception

What I call particle perception refers to an aesthetics that allows the perception of images beyond the solid object level, which is usually enabled by CGI. One common deployment of CGI in the cycle is to construct the “big mise-en-scène,” such as the panoramic landscapes of ruined cities in Wolf Warrior 2 and Operation Red Sea, the bombing battlegrounds in Sacrifice, The Eight Hundred and the Battle at Lake Changjin series, or the futuristic spaces in the Wandering Earth series. As much as these CGI intend to create an authentic setting for the films’ narratives, the similarity in their looks belies their artificiality. Either built with practical footages and CG-extensions or constructed totally from CGI, the panoramic scenes in the films are most often undifferentiated from each other: with bombers bombing and objects being destroyed as well as fire, ashes, and other floating molecules in the mid-air. In other words, the CG-extended settings often create a kind of indeterminate space or—to appropriate Gilles Deleuze’s term—a kind of any-space-whatever which “no longer has co-ordinates” and appear “independently of the states of things or milieux which actualise them” (120). Take for instance, how, in order to showcase the global endeavor to save the planet from the pull of the Jupiter, Wandering Earth shifts its location across a vast range of cities and countries around the globe. A transition between the different locations is frequently achieved through the insertion of the apocalyptic images of the frozen planet’s surface, which gives little indication of the locations’ exact spatial relation. Indeed, the film oftentimes overlays graphic demonstrations, such as text or time, of a spatial transition over its CGI so as to guarantee the story a base level of spatial continuity. This kind of CGI overlayed with texts as geographical and temporal markers is barely exceptional in the cycle whose storytelling frequently experiments with the disruption of spatial-temporal continuity.

While such a presentational mode of special effects could be easily condemned as shallow spectacle, Stephen Prince has argued against critical spectacle-indictment accounts; for him, these merely insist on a photographic model of the cinema with its basis on indexicality (2). Prince finds nothing inherently non-indexical in visual effects; indeed, as he cites Braxton Soderman and Mark Wolf, digital effects imagery makes indexical claims through both the persuasiveness of the created image and its reference to the technical foundation (i.e., data sets and algorithm) needed for creating such image (150). These two aspects of indexicality are equally important for generating the wonderment in the cycle of main melody blockbusters. That is, the spectacular CGI in the cycle appeals to the audience for both its persuasive visual appearances and the technical complexity those appearances allude to. In fact, it is the latter aspect that leads to the distinguished characteristic of the cycle’s CGI from its previous concretization in Chinese blockbusters, that is, its fascination with the atmospheric elements (e.g., the fire, ashes and snow) which possibly alludes to the complex data sets and algorithms to render such fuzzy objects in computer-generated images.[13]

The fascination with the atmospheric elements brings about one of the most prominent spectacles in the cycle—the bombing scenes, a kind of rarefied images of molecules or particles in the mid-air where the micro-movement of matter becomes the center focus. Deleuze once argues that the frame of the film is either towards saturation or towards rarefaction: while the big screen and depth of field often allow the multiplication of independent data, rarefied images are produced either “when the whole accent is placed on a single object” or “when the set is emptied of certain sub-sets” (12). In at least two varieties of the bombing scenes, we can see how the transformation of matter becomes the single accent of the image. In one, the entire frame is filled with the ashes and small molecules resulting from either a bombing (e.g., those from Wolf Warrior 2, Battle at Lake Changjin, Battle at Lake Changjin 2) or from the breakdown of a hill or a planet (e.g., those from Wandering Earth, Wandering Earth 2). In the other, the degree of rarefaction within the frame is lower yet still, the explosion of either bombers, earth and other solid objects or even human bodies constitutes the main set of the image which is usually represented as a mixture of grey, red or golden color. These two varieties of bombing are grandiosely exploited by Hong Kong helmers Dante Lam in Operation Red Sea in which a near ten-minutes battling sequence between the Chinese navy squad and the terrorists from Yewaire is presented as a relentless showcase of bombings. Just as a film review from Variety points out, “There’s a perverse wonder at the massive bomb clouds rising into mid-air before bursting, like fireworks, into a golden shimmer”.[14]

The bombing scene is one of the most prominent spectacles in the cycle. The first two images (respectively from The Eight Hundred and Wandering Earth 2) show its first variety in the cycle, in which the entire frame is filled with the ashes and small molecules resulting from either a bombing or the breakdown of a planet. The other two images (respectively from Battle at Lake Changjin and Operation Red Sea) show its second variety in which the degree of rarefaction within the frame is lower yet still, the explosion of either bombers, earth and other solid objects or even human bodies constitutes the main set of the image.

The wonder at the transformation of matter is further intensified by film speed. Often the explosion or breakdown of solid objects are caught in slow-motion cinematography to accentuate the micro-movements that we could not see in a real-life incident. For example, in Sacrifice and the Battle at Lake Changjin series, the images of soldiers being engulfed by fire—and to an extreme opposite, the tearing-apart of a human body in a flash when being hit by a machine gun—are constantly evoked to showcase the cinema’s ability to capture the transformation of matter that is not visually accessible for a natural human eye. If there is any criticism to be advanced against the violence in such a “body-machine-image complex,” it is in this sense that the cycle directs its attention to the spectacular images other than the violent damage of humanity by warfare.[15] Relatedly, the concept of bullet time is vastly applied and innovated in the cycle. This special effect trick invented by the Wachowskis in The Matrix (1999) is used in the openings of Wolf Warrior 2 and Operation Red Sea but is expanded to present the encounter of shells from tanks and the penetration of bullets into objects in Battle at Lake Changjin.

The concept of bullet time is vastly exploited and innovated in the cycle. This special effect trick is used in the openings of Wolf Warrior 2 and Operation Red Sea but is expanded to present the encounter between shells from tanks and the penetration of bullet into solid objects in Battle at Lake Changjin.

Parallel to the wonder at the massive bomb clouds, there seems to be a wonder at the wrinkles around the bullet as it penetrates through the air. Through the manipulation of film speed, these slow-motion images create what Sean Cubitt calls the “sublime time of special effects,” an experience of temporality that is beyond historical time and narrative time (130). Like indeterminate space, sublime time here works as the void where the viewer’s attention is on the transforming matter and the cinema’s ability to capture that transformation in its imagery. If to deploy Deleuze’s words, despite their rarefied surface, it is the multiplication of data behind the creation of such images that they derive their fascination.

An outstanding case that combines the rarefied image and sublime time can be found in Battle at Lake Changjin 2. There is a flashback sequence of the Chinese soldiers’ initial failed attempt to dismantle the bridge that would allow the U.S air force to retreat in the Korean War. The sequence retells the story using a series of stopped images. Contrary to the renowned story of motion picture’s development out of still images in its earlier days, the case here sees an opposite movement to turn the motion picture into still images. Similar to slow-motion cinematography, the sequence flaunts its artificiality to the greatest extent so as to showcase its capacity to capture the micro-movements of matter. With that noted, it’s probably not unexpected that the still images prominently utilized in the sequence are those images of bombing clouds and of bullets penetrating human bodies. And it is this perception of images beyond the solid object level that I call particle perception. Writing about the attraction of swirling dust, flickering flames and other fuzzy objects in CGI, Jordan Schonig has argued that the cinematic reproduction of such “contingent motion forms” derives its appeal not from an indexical imbrication of the natural phenomenon but the cinema’s capacity to grasp such “unplannable” motion as an aesthetic object (42-9). Likewise, the attraction in the particle perception of CGI in the cycle comes, if not totally, at least equally from its technological modulation as from its visual appearance. Different from Schonig’s framing of such technology-perception attunement as an epistemic experience, I would argue that the attraction of such technologically framed, contingent motion in the cycle is a historical experience driven by a specific social desire—a desire for a sense of national modernity achieved through the sensations of a modern cinematic experience.

The technologized eye

Before turning to the social desire that drives the cycle’s effects-heavy imagery, I want to discuss another aspect of its perception and affect: its impression of a technologized eye. In different accounts of the movie camera, the metaphor of a human eye has been evoked to illustrate how it allows the viewer to perceive a fictional three-dimensional space (the general camera eye), share ideas and emotions with cinematic characters (the point of view), and generate bodily sensations of movement (the embodied eye). Such a metaphor is often bound to an anthropomorphic understanding of the camera, emphasizing either its mimesis of human vision or its phenomenological faculty of natural perception. I use the term “the technologized eye,” therefore, to accentuate the mechanical properties and thus the non-anthropomorphism of the camera in the cycle. As I posit, the technologized eye constitutes another aspect of the attraction of the Hollywoodesque effects-heavy imagery in the cycle.

In his account of visual effects in cinema, Prince notes that the shift to digital filmmaking brings about the aesthetic design of a “digitally realized long take” (91). This aesthetic design has engendered some of the most thrilling moments in the cycle of main melody blockbusters. In the opening sequence of Wolf Warrior 2, for instance, we are invited to follow the camera first flying leisurely over the idyllic landscape near the Indian Ocean, then speeding up and slowing down to catch the attack of a fishing ship by Somali pirates, and finally transcending the spaces above and under the water to follow the titular hero as he defeats the pirates. While most of the shots in the sequence are from live-action cinematography—including that of the hero’s underwater fight—the sequence that seems one single camera movement is no doubt a result of the digital amalgamation of a series of independent shots. In Battle at Lake Changjin, a similar design is utilized in the violent aircraft attack sequence when two U.S aircrafts fire upon a rocky plain without knowing the Chinese soldiers are lying below pretending to be dead. Like the opening sequence of Wolf Warrior 2, the flexible acceleration and deceleration of the camera as well as its elastic movement within a vast space elicit strong sensations in the viewer and make the sequence an awe-inspiring moment in the film.

Yet what is unsettling or delightful here is not simply the virtuosic camera movement. Equally, the illusionist experience of impossible movement brings “the sensations of self,” which as Scott Richmond elaborates, comes from the finiteness of the self’s body and the cinema’s capacity to extend its potential (8). Comparable to the particle perception, the digitally realized long take assumes its wonder simultaneously from its visual appearance and the modulating capacity of cinematic technologies. In all these cases, the difference between a technologized eye and natural human vision is often reinforced through the elimination of a stand-in character perspective for the motivation of its movement. In the opening sequence of Wolf Warrior 2, what we share is certainly neither the perspective of the hero nor the perspective of his antagonists. Similarly in the aircraft attack sequence of Battle at Lake Changjin, while obviously the camera does not provide the perspective of the soldiers, it flows so closely to them that it cannot be the perspective of the pilots on the U.S aircrafts either. In other words, the technologized eye belongs to no-body, or rather, it belongs to its own.

The no-body of the camera in the cycle can be further found in those computer-generated movements. In the sequence from Wandering Earth 2 when the characters first participate in a test launch of the space elevator, the camera first seems to follow their capsule in a conventional chasing manner though the movement here is obviously generated by computer other than being shot through camera. With the capsule sometimes getting closer and sometimes leaving us, the viewer experiences the “apprehension” that Jennifer Barker describes in the experience of a car chasing scene (106-19). However, at some point, the camera breaks itself from the chasing and turns to look at the architecture of the space elevator until it finally comes back to follow the capsule again.

In this sequence from Wandering Earth 2 when the characters first participate in a test launch of the space elevator, we see how the camera continually shifts its look between the character’s capsule and the space elevator’s architecture. The intermittent turning-away of the camera from the characters’ movement shows the camera’s own intention which is beyond the narrative progress or character motivation.

The turning-away of the camera again shows the film’s fascination with its CGI. But at the same time, the turning-away also indicates the camera’s own intentional movement which is beyond the narrative progress or character motivation. By deviating away from the characters’ movement, the camera turns the viewer’s attention to the movement of itself: a movement animated by computers across an indeterminate space that is equally constructed computationally.

In Battle at Lake Changjin 2, we similarly find the showcase of such a computer-generated movement across a computer-generated space. In the sequence when the then U.S president Harry Truman approved the request to use an A-bomb in the Korean War, the camera first follows his secretary from a bird’s eye angle, then penetrates the wall to enter Truman’s office and finally stops at the front of his desk. Truman’s decision is then revealed from the headline of a newspaper and interview played back in the soundtrack. After that, another smooth camera movement retreats itself from his office to the outside and then transits continually to the snowing frontline through a computer-generated aerial shot.

Equivalent to the digitally realized long takes in Wolf Warrior 2 and Battle at Lake Changjin, the seemly infinite faculty of the camera to move across a vast range of spaces in these latter cases reveals the impossibility of a character perspective behind them. Indeed, Truman speaks no word in the sequence even though he seems to be the essential actor in this subplot. Moving further than the previous long takes that integrate their seemingly one-shot takes from live-action shots and therefore give an unusual experience of movement in a still realistic space, the sequences here exaggerate the unnaturalness of the movement through an amalgamation of both digitally realized camera movements and CGI. To the degree that one might argue the overly dark and blank appearance of outer space in Wandering Earth 2 and the matte line during the computer-generated aerial shot in Battle at Lake Changjin 2 belie the plasticity of their special effects, such wobbly effects also accidently direct the viewer’s attention to the technological foundation of these not-yet-magnificent-but-still-spectacular visual appearances.

After Truman’s decision is revealed from the headline of a newspaper and interview played back in the soundtrack, another smooth camera movement retreats itself from his office into the outside and then transits continually to the snowing frontline through a computer-generated aerial shot. To the degree that one might argue the matte line during the aerial shot belies the plasticity of the film’s special effects, it also accidently directs the viewer’s attention to the technological foundation of these not-yet-magnificent-but-still-spectacular visual appearances.

Such a non-anthropomorphism, I argue, constitutes the underlying motive for the camera use in the cycle including those less spectacular cases. Critics have noticed how the cycle favors the depiction of a character ensemble instead of a single point of view. In part, this is a long-standing convention in main melody filmmaking. What appears distinct in the cycle is that the preference for a character ensemble seems to possess an advantage of complying with a technologized eye. In arguably the most auteurist entry of the cycle The Eight Hundred, Cinematographer Cao Yu insists on shooting with a single camera throughout the film to “make the camera a sensitive actor other than an indifferent recorder” (Chen 145).  Yet instead of being attached to a specific character, this camera eye frequently moves around the ensemble cast without indicating whose perspective it represents. As a result, the camera appears to be the eye of no-body. Indeed, the idea of an anthropomorphic camera is ostensibly challenged in the film. Throughout the film, black-and-white documentary-like sequences are intermittently inserted to indicate the perspective of the journalist Fang, who has come to the forefront to record the historical event.

At some points, the film tries hard to verify the historical presence of Fang’s camera by emphasizing its material functioning. For instance, when Duanwu, a young soldier, was dying after being shot by an enemy aircraft, Fang uses his camera to take a photo of him. The widescreen frame of the film is suddenly cut to a classic aspect ratio with black-and-white coloration. The shimmering of the image together with the hissing of film running in the soundtrack tries to bring us to the materiality of Fang’s camera and asserts that what we see is from the eye of a person who was present at the historical moment. Yet during the final retreat, Fang’s camera was shown as destroyed by a bullet and left on the bridge. But if Fang’s camera were destroyed, how should we perceive the previous footage that the film tries so hard to assert the existence of by invoking the aura of the “photographic image” (Bazin 4-9)? The paradox here paradoxically brings us to the core of the issue: it seems that the film asserts the existence of Fang’s camera so hard from the beginning only to destroy it at the end. Rather than accentuating the camera’s ability to record physical reality, the film invokes the aura of photography only to showcase how the technologized eye is capable of (re)creating to the extent that it can recreate the “language of photography.”

Indeed, the underlying logic of a non-anthropomorphic camera eye might better explain the failure of Sacrifice (Guan Hu, Guo Fan and Lu Yang, 2020) in the cycle. As an entry that attempted to exploit the success of The Eight Hundred, Sacrifice seems an unexpected flop. While the popular explanation for its failure suggests that limited production time—a total of 110 days from writing scripts to completing post-production[16]—led to its repetitive usage of those spectacular images which eventually compromised its economic and artistic values, I note that this failure was instead exaggerated by its attempt to attach the technologized eye to a human perspective.

Sacrifice is divided into four chapters, each intending to tell the story from the respective perspective of the soldiers, the adversaries, the gunners and the bridge builders. Yet the film’s attempt to attach itself to a human perspective contradicts with the cycle’s fascination with a non-anthropomorphous technologized eye and leads to the film’s unexpected box-office flop. In other words, the title card appearing at the opening of each chapter negates the possibility for the audience to lose in the wonder that the technologized eye brings.

Telling the story of a group of Chinese soldiers who try to repair a bridge to the front amid brutal bombing from the U.S air force, the film is divided into four chapters, each aiming to tell the story from the perspective of the soldiers, the adversaries, the gunners and the bridge builders. The attempt to anchor the perspective of the film by attaching it to a human perspective, nevertheless, contradicts with the non-anthropomorphic camera eye that drives the appeal of the cycle. In other words, a human perspective requires a degree of difference in its imagery which the non-anthropomorphism of the technologized eye does not stipulate (as seen in the often undifferentiated effects-heavy imagery in the cycle). The title card appearing at the opening of each chapter, therefore, distracts the viewer’s attention and negates the possibility for them to lose themselves in the wonder that the technologized eye brings. It is this contradiction that essentially results in the film’s box-office flop yet, at the same time, asserts the attraction of the technologized eye for the cycle.