More than books, plays, paintings, or even music, movies are the greatest cultural common ground our world has. Global blockbusters like Avatar and Harry Potter tell the same stories of environment and childhood to audiences whose customs otherwise differ in every conceivable way. They insert into disparate minds a common dream.

Such is the lens through which we will examine the global blockbuster: As narratives with global socio-cultural significance. We will set aside financial and structural definitions (i.e. box office composition) in favor of narrative, thematic, and representational characteristics in defining a “global blockbuster”. We will begin with the dominant model of global blockbuster filmmaking — the Hollywood model — then move on to challenges facing this model, and explore how this model might evolve to truly be “global”.

The Hollywood Global Blockbuster Model
When Hollywood first exported globally, its films were selling America. Bolstered by the world wars and leading cinematic technology, Hollywood both contributed to and profited from the global fascination with American spaces and stories (Peña). People looked to Hollywood for the inspiration of American ideals and prosperity. As French resistance fighters say in the 1969 French film Army of Shadows, “You’ll know we’re liberated when we can see Gone with the Wind on the Champs Elysee.”

Hollywood blockbusters of today are made for a different world. Following the Cold War, War on Terrorism, and globalization, America has become polemical just as other national cinemas flourished. To maintain global hegemony, Hollywood has shifted away from the American space into an universal space. In the words of the writers of Avatar, Penguins of Madagascar, and X-Men, this is a space that is “simple, understandable and instantaneously relatable,” which “touches upon something fundamentally human” (Dell).

To implement universality, Hollywood has shifted its narratives into fictional/fantastical spaces to which audiences from all background have equal claim.  In Middle Earth, Jurassic World, and Pandora, present national and cultural differences are irrelevant. Any viewer can choose to be any character and live “fundamental” human stories like heroism, redemption, and homecoming without feeling unduly foreign.

Another approach Hollywood has adopted is the utopian world space. Unlike the fictional/fantastical space, the utopian space acknowledges nations and backgrounds, but renders them non-issues. In the James Bond and Fast and Furious franchises, for example, contemporary countries exist, but their differences are assets to spectacle. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, countries only matter insofar as they strengthen the heroes as a force for global good. People across cultures do not bicker because of their differences. Instead, they exist in a peaceful utopia where they always help one another and address common threats (think The Martian or Pacific Rim).

Both approaches are the global equivalents to “I don’t see race”: International divisions do not exist, or if they do, do not matter. But as with “I don’t see race”, both the fantasy/fiction and utopian spaces end up favoring the status quo. Hollywood’s definition of universal is white and Western. Its stories use as backbone the three-act structure of Classical Hollywood (Dell).  Its ideological spine stresses “individual prosperity, success, and a rise in social status” (Rosen). Its executives believe that “films without white protagonists ‘cannot travel’ abroad” (Yang). From casting Scarlett Johansson as the Asian protagonist of Ghost in the Shell to minimizing John Boyega’s face on posters for Star Wars: The Force Awakens to masking Chadwick Boseman’s face on Asian Black Panther posters (Yang), universality often becomes the buzzword with which Hollywood justifies its racial and cultural hierarchy.

Hollywood very much sees race. It’s in fact afraid of it. Afterall, Hollywood has incredible soft-power implications for the US globally. Decision-makers recognize that the inclusion of other cultures has the “effect of allowing the gravitational center of pop culture to drift and disperse toward marginalized communities” (Yang). It’s why the US government is so concerned over Chinese investment influence in Hollywood; “Pandering”, “self-censoring”, and “propaganda” are all criticisms against shifting ideological messaging (Robinson). They much prefer films like The Great Wall, where Hollywood’s hold on the status quo was so strong that Chinese filmmakers themselves opted to feature a white, individualistic protagonist (Berry). Underneath universality, what’s at stake for the blockbuster hasn’t changed since Hollywood first began exporting: The primacy of American ideals and aesthetics.

Challenges to Universality
Except, it’s no longer 1949.

While the syntax of the blockbuster hasn’t entirely changed, the world has. Globalization and “national rejuvenation”, especially in countries formerly affected by American imperialism, have made audiences more prideful of their identities (Wu). International audiences are no longer content with being left on the fringe. “Hollywood treats China like a moneytree,” says Le Vision CEO Zhang Zhao, a major Chinese entertainment investor. “How much have [Hollywood] changed their mindset? Hollywood needs to treat us like an equal partner, not just a market” (Beech).

Hollywood executives seem to actively do the opposite. One Variety article quotes a producer for Transformers 4 brag that “in the end we were able to gain more of the benefits of co-production status without saddling [ourselves] with the type of Chinese cultural content or Chinese actors in major roles” (Rosen). Another confesses “studios spend less time making films than they do marketing them around the world” (Friend). The Transformers franchise is set in China to maximize funding from Chinese product-placement, while Iron Man 3 features additional scenes with Fan Bingbing to utilize her star power in publicity (Beech). With the noted exception of The Martian or Rogue One, most Hollywood films approach international representation from a business perspectives, not a narrative or artistic one.

 
And so audiences are leaving. Indian and Chinese cinemas in particularly have witnessed a rise in the market share of domestic blockbusters (Yeh). Through economic booms, national film industries are catching up in technology and craft (Berry). Whereas Hollywood’s greatest value proposition used to be its unrivaled ability to execute spectacular set pieces and VFX — think Jurassic Park, Avatar — the likes of the French Valerian and Chinese Wolf Warrior 2 are fast closing the gap. Foreign industries are adapting Hollywood form, style, and even talents to stories with local faces and languages. Wolf Warrior 2, for example, features Mission Impossible-esque action sequences with a protagonist of Chinese masculine ideal. The advantage over Hollywood is obvious: Aside from the business (reduced costs, more ancillary markets, favorable governmental policy), narratively these “homegrown alternatives to the Hollywood fix” have “distinct local ingredients that allow the audience a sense of recognition and empowerment” (Yeh). It’s what some scholars call new localism: The rise of blockbusters that re-injects cultural nuances in juxtaposition to Hollywood’s universal (American) fare.

It’s important at this point to refocus on the core issue of this essay: The global blockbuster and its future. For much of above, we have highlighted the shortcomings of the dominant Hollywood model in truly fulfilling its responsibilities as narratives with sociocultural implications. But Hollywood is unique. It is the only consistently global cinema (Scott). For all its faults, no other cinema has accomplished the same aspirations better. Just look at Wolf Warrior 2, China’s bid to export films with “socialist core values as guide” (Rosen 2). Riddled with nationalism, racism, and sexism, it is no less imperialistic than Bond. And the new localism films? They are successful precisely because they do not aim to leave their cultural borders. Thus, the question isn’t the merits of Hollywood, but the feasibility of what it’s trying to do: Tell one story to a global audience. Is that a misguided approach? Is universality a false concept?

This is the juncture global blockbusters have reached. If even Crazy Rich Asians, which features Asian faces, music, locale, food, references, and customs, are still quickly marked out by Asian markets as “American” — espousing materialism and individualism over more Eastern ethics of “self sacrifice and collective effort” (Wu) — what hope is there for any film industry to earnestly engage beyond its borders? In other words, are good stories fundamentally localized, situated within a particular national or cultural framework? Can there be a truly “global” blockbuster?

Justifying the “Global” Blockbuster
Global blockbusters favor spectacle over narrative. They strip away cultural nuance to attempt “universality”. They default to the status-quo when defining “universal”. They are, as one Hollywood exec puts it, “C+ films intended to appeal to everyone and ends up leaving everyone cold” (Friend).

They are also a socio-cultural necessity.

“We can better see ourselves when we can see ourselves in others,” says Lupita Nyong’o on Good Morning America, regarding Black Panther. What global blockbusters do is connect audiences around the world with “others”. They are Roger Ebert’s “machines of empathy” adapted to the global scale of the 21st century. And we need them. Rampant nationalism, religious radicalization, unequal distribution of the benefits of globalization… Countries previously unacquainted with one another will only have growing influence on each other’s fates. Our films — our cultural discourse — need to mirror the socio-political landscape. Now more than ever, our narratives need to reach across borders, not dig in within them.

Black Panther is perhaps the best recent example of a blockbuster that lives up to its global responsibilities. Centering on a developed African nation’s geopolitical decision to engage in world affairs — an explicit recognition of national boundaries and differences, unlike the “universal” models above — Black Panther creates a space where international audiences can address issues of race and imperialism. In a time when Asian mining and development interests are stirring up controversies in Africa, this isn’t empty progressivism, but a socio-political necessity. As Sandra Song writes for Nylon:

[films like Black Panther] play an instrumental role in changing global perceptions of blackness, especially in places like Asia where blackness is virtually nonexistent...Exporting more narratives like Black Panther is paramount to helping Asian viewers understand why conversations about blackness are of such global importance and, in turn, will provide grounds for understanding moving forward.

The future of a truly “global” blockbuster, then, lies precisely in specificity. After all, cultural specificity and universality are not mutually exclusive. Just look at Black Panther. For all its Afrofuturist aesthetics and Afrocentric story, its core themes — diaspora, isolationism, colonialism — are widely applicable across nations. Even looking at China, which Hollywood uses as its excuse to “dumb down” stories and resist representation (and we can ignore Hollywood’s role in propagating anti-blackness in China historically for now), it’s clear that audiences are not solely interested in worlds exactly like their own. Fast and Furious (Korean, Isreali, and Brazilian leads), Coco (Latino cast set in Mexico), and Dangal (Bollywood) all rank as China’s top imports.

The myth of universality isn’t that it doesn’t exist, but that it is somehow a different beast from the stories we’d otherwise tell our own peoples. Global blockbusters are not a place to pretend all is well. They are a place to stage our differences. Show us unique identities. Show us different value systems. Audiences are curious and ready to learn. We have to.