Kangaroo in space hops to a Chinese box office hit

Moon Man has given cinema-goers a break from jingoistic war films and led some to dream of holidaying in Australia.

Shen Teng, who has the box office pull of Hollywood’s Will Smith, stars as a stranded astronaut in sci-fi comedy Moon Man. Picture: China Daily

A kangaroo space comedy has become a surprise box office hit in China, as viewers in the world’s biggest movie market enjoy a break from nationalistic war films and saturation coverage of Chinese military drills around Taiwan.

Two weeks after being released, marsupial science-fiction movie Moon Man is already China’s second-biggest hit of 2022, having already grossed almost $500m.

And thanks to rave reviews for the performance of Hao Han – who plays a CGI-enhanced feisty kangaroo – the Chinese summer blockbuster may overtake this year’s biggest hit, The Battle at Lake Changjin II, a patriotic Korean War movie overseen and promoted by the Communist Party’s propaganda department.

The new kangaroo buddy movie even has some excited Chinese cinemagoers dreaming of travelling to Australia, once Beijing ends its now more than two-year ban on overseas tourism.

“I want to go to Australia to see a kangaroo with my own eyes!” said one excited nine-year-old at a packed screening in Beijing.

“It made my summer,” his father, Wang Xiangwen, an electric appliance engineer, told The Weekend Australian. “We laughed so loudly!”

On its opening weekend, an incredible 90 per cent of all box office takings in China were for the eccentric comedy, which also stars Shen Teng, a hugely popular Chinese actor.

Shen has the box office pull of Will Smith in his prime and his kangaroo space adventure has him poised to overtake rival Wu Jing – star of the jingoistic Wolf Warrior franchise – as the highest-grossing actor in China.

Beijing closely scrutinises cinema releases. A quota system allows 34 Hollywood movies at most in China each year, although last year only 19 were given permission to screen. The two highest-grossing films in the world this year – Top Gun: Maverick and Marvel’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness – have both been denied permission to screen on China’s 82,000 movie screens.

The grumpy kangaroo.

A mixture of politics and protectionism lie behind the ban. Foreign films that are screened in China are often edited to remove passages deemed threatening by the Chinese Communist Party. In contrast, patriotic Chinese movies get huge party state support.

The first instalment of the Battle at Lake Changjin series was the highest-grossing film of 2021 and was released during the 100th anniversary of the CCP.

Employees at state-owned enterprises went during work hours, schools booked out entire cinemas and party state media gave it saturation coverage. The official “Study Xi, Strong Country” app – a digital tool run by the propaganda department – encouraged users to get tickets.

The success of Moon Man, a movie about a Chinese astronaut stranded on a lunar base with a kangaroo, seems to have had more to do with a fun script, good special effects and the popularity of strange Australian ­marsupials.

Hao Han, who trained at the Qingdao Film Academy, spent a year preparing for the role of the “King Kong Kangaroo”. The 30-year-old actor rented an apartment for four months next to the Beijing Zoo to more closely observe its kangaroo population and better learn how to hop.

“He spent a whole year thinking about and studying kangaroos,” director Zhang Chiyu told the Beijing Daily. “Because the first thing to give the audience is the feeling that ‘he’ is a real kangaroo.”

Despite Beijing’s political campaign against Canberra now in its third year, there remains deep affection among many in China for Australia – and even more so for Australian wildlife.

Many Chinese moviegoers are also clearly enjoying a break from heightened tensions with Taiwan and the world’s strictest Covid restrictions. “After all the depressions of the pandemic,” said Zhao Linlin, a 26-year-old office administrator, at a cinema in Beijing, ”what a relief!”