Great expectations

The latest Transformers film will release in China soon after its North America debut, and there are hopes it could do exceedingly well in the country. Xu Fan reports in Guangzhou.

On the big screen, Transformers star Josh Duhamel is a US military hero. But in Guangzhou, the capital city of South China's Guangdong province, his biggest "enemy" is the hot, humid summer.

On a 60-meter-long red carpet, the American actor with director Michael Bay and actresses Isabela Moner and Laura Haddock linger for nearly an hour to sign posters and pose for pictures with screaming fans.

They are soon sweaty and Duhamel wishes for rain. His prayers are answered.

Then, on the outdoor stage of the city's landmark Hanxinsha Asian Games Stadium, the Hollywood celebrities sit under umbrellas and share details about the upcoming Transformers: The Last Knight, a Paramount Pictures movie.

The fifth installment of the Transformers franchise - which was launched in 2007 - will release on the Chinese mainland on June 23, two days after its North America debut.

Meanwhile, despite its slightly delayed release in China, the country is the first stop on the film's global promotion campaign.

Up to 7,000 fans and hundreds of reporters, including some from South Korea and the United States are part of the event.

During the past 10 years, the previous four Transformers movies totally earned nearly 3.8 billion yuan ($560 million) in China, making it one of the most commercially successful Hollywood franchises in the world's second-largest movie market.

The most stunning performance was by the fourth movie, Transformers: Age of Extinction, which topped world box-office charts in 2014.

The movie raked 1.97 billion yuan in China, around 35 percent more than the $2.33 million from North America.

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Transformers franchise, Paramount chose Guangzhou for the promotional event from 20 Chinese cities in an online campaign that received 6 million votes earlier this year.

In the movie, Mark Wahlberg reprises his role as the Texan inventor Cade Yeager, while Duhamel returns as Lieutenant Colonel Lennox.

Duhamel, who appeared in the first three films but did not perform the fourth, says it was a big surprise for him when he was invited again.

He says the movie has changed his life, making him feel a part of the franchise.

In the film, Yeager faces the biggest challenge of his life - being chosen to save the world, through an unlikely teaming up with a streetwise tomboy, a sagacious English aristocrat and a beautiful Oxford scholar.

The three roles are played respectively by teenage American actress Moner, Anthony Hopkins, the British veteran who won the Oscar for best actor for The Silence of the Lambs (1991), and English actress Haddock, known for The Guardians of Galaxy movies.

From the trailer released for Chinese audiences on June 13, the movie seems to be a hodgepodge of King Arthur's myth and a modern adventure.

Speaking about the movie, Bay says it is an epic with more roles and spectacles compared with the earlier films, and that it was shot in eight months.

He adds that the post-production work was completed just a few days ago, and says that the film is his swan song as far as the franchise is concerned.

"It's sad to say goodbye to Optimus Prime and Bumblebee," he says.

He adds the franchise will have a Bumblebee spinoff, but he cannot predict the future of the Autobots.

The 10-year-old franchise, which saw its launch coincide with the take-off of China's burgeoning film market, makes Bay among the most recognized Hollywood directors in the country.

Producer Mark Vahradian says the movie has a unique touch as a majority of the filming took pace in the United Kingdom, and includes Stonehenge and Oxford University.

"You'll see unusual scenes," says Vahradian, adding that the movie was shot in Imax 3D to make the visual effects as real as possible.

Unlike the last film, which starred Chinese stars Li Bingbing and Han Geng and had scenes filmed in China, the new movie has hardly any Chinese elements.

Lorenzo di Bonaventura, the Hollywood producer behind all the five Transformers movies, says the key to making the franchise appealing is "to be true to the original and at the same time make it relevant for today".

He says that building personalities for characters, such as making Optimus Prime like a "grandfather" and Bumblebee a "teenager", resonate with modern audiences.

Speaking about the lack of Chinese elements in the movie despite their presence in the last one, he says: "We don't look at it as a reduction. We're telling the story in a different place. How can you tell a Chinese story in England? It would be hard. It's really about where we decided to tell the story," says Di Bonaventura.

"I hope some time in the future we can find a way to tell a story that has a lot of interesting Chinese characters."

Speaking about the combination of King Arthur's myth and the Transformers story, he says: "We realized that there are very strong similarities between the two. Honor, loyalty, trust and brotherhood. They exist in both stories. So we put them together."

Jiang Yong, a Beijing-based industry analyst, says the Transformers films resonate with Chinese born in the 1970s and 1980s, as the American animated series The Transformers was a hit when it was introduced to China in 1988.

"Transformers 5 will be one of the biggest movies of the summer. It may break the box-office record of the eighth Fast & Furious film in China," says Jiang.

Universal's blockbuster The Fate of the Furious earned 2.67 billion yuan in China, the highest grossing import in history.

Contact the writer at xufan@chinadaily.com.cn

From left: Chinese singer Zhang Jie, who sings the film's Chinese theme song, actresses Isabela Moner, director Michael Bay, actor Josh Duhamel, actress Laura Haddock, producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Mark Vahradian at the Guangzhou promotional event. Photos Provided To China Daily