Why Wolf Warrior 2 Was 2017’s Biggest Story

You probably checked out the trailer for Wolf Warrior 2 last year, then forgot about the movie without even watching it.  But while you were all sleeping, the movie has morphed into a tyrannosaur-tiered monster.

As of now, despite not even having completed its international run (or indeed opened in all countries), the movie has grossed $875 million.  But as good as that sounds, consider the margins: the movie, sequel to the original starring Scott Adkins, had a budget of $30 million.

While everyone is talking about Star Wars: The Last Jedi pulling similar numbers, it had a significantly larger budget.  Wolf Warrior 2, is without question the biggest ‘conventional action’ effort from 2017, regardless of how good the movie actually is.

The film is also analogous to big changes in China too, in more ways than one.  China continues to grow, intelligently.  For example as criminals like Hillary Clinton bombed the shit out of Africa – to no tangible end, China was quietly shipping biblical amounts of oil out of the continent in return for laying infrastructure, roads and such.  The carrot and the stick, quietly, but ruthlessly efficiently.

A professor of the University of California has also noted that the movie had a purposely nationalistic bent: “It’s a very individualist personal quest, which is much more of a Hollywood thing. They’re definitely downplaying the Communist Party in favor of patriotism and defending Chinese people and Chinese interests all over the world”, Stanley Rosen has said.

No leotards in sight, no virtue signalling heard

He was not the only one to note the positive patriotism and militarism found within the movie.  That’s also reflective of growing changes in China, ostensibly a communist country in 2018, but in practice its engine room is increasingly capitalistic.

All of this is kind of an inversion of what we’re seeing in the west, both in society and at the movies.  We’re going off the deep, which shows in our films.  Things are tilting east.  Are the Chinese going to fill a void in entertainment for us, at least, while we sit in our burning camp?

And more importantly, in manly action movies?  If so, I welcome our new Chinese overlords.  Fuck Hollywood.