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Matt Glasby

This is the latest instalment in a feature series reflecting on instances of East meets West in world cinema, including China-US co-productions.
Australian cinema has never been the most outward-looking. Its greatest films tend to lean into national stereotypes, and its greatest stars tend to leave for Hollywood.
In 2008, however, the government signed a co-production treaty with China, which was fast becoming one of the biggest film markets in the world. This resulted in underperforming efforts such as the 2008 drama The Children of Huang Shi and the 2011 family film The Dragon Pearl, both of which were set in China.
But 2012’s Bait 3D – about sharks attacking shoppers in a flooded Queensland supermarket – proved an unlikely success, making US$24 million in China compared with US$800,000 back home.


Having found a lucrative niche, director Kimble Rendall attempted to repeat the trick with 2018’s Guardians of the Tomb, also known as Nest and 7 Guardians of the Tomb.
Shot in Australia’s Gold Coast, Beijing and the Gobi desert, and starring Li Bingbing (The Meg), this 3D Australian-Chinese monster movie drastically upped the Chinese element.
Pitched somewhere between Indiana Jones and Arachnophobia, it sees two researchers, played by Taiwanese singer Wu Chun and Ryan Johnson, stumbling upon an ancient tomb full of deadly spiders in western China, then losing contact with the outside world.
The hastily assembled search party includes venomous creatures expert Jia (Li), also the sister of Wu’s character; evil biotech businessman Mason (Kelsey Grammer), who believes the tombs hold the secret to eternal life; and Indiana Jones-like action man Jack Ridley (Kellan Lutz).
The rest of the team are either stock Chinese figures, boorish Australians or Australian actors pretending to be Americans – a confusing mix.

A surprisingly delicate animated intro shows ancient Chinese travellers making it to Australia, meeting indigenous tribes, then travelling home with their spoils – including some funnel-web spiders.
But once the search party heads down into the tomb and the spider attacks begin in earnest, the quality takes a dramatic dive.
Acting in a different language must be tricky, but Li sounds like she is reading a PowerPoint presentation.
It does not help that Rendall and Paul Staheli’s script contains such clangers as: “The toxins in your blood are making you crazy!” The logic of taking a Chinese scientist to China to teach Australians about spiders never quite lands, either.

To the SFX team’s credit, the CG spiders themselves are fairly effective, and the film’s best moments come when it goes all out to show them off – like when guide Chen (Jason Chong) finds a desiccated corpse with bulging skin, then makes the error of waiting to see what emerges.
Mason, meanwhile, gets a deserved spider up the trouser leg, and youngster Yin (Eva Liu) even vomits one straight to camera. There is also a clever scene where Jia uses her iPhone camera to make a funnel-web attack itself.
But the question remains: who exactly was this for?
America already had more than enough CG spider movies, from 2002’s Eight Legged Freaks to 2013’s Spiders 3D. Australia – also known as the spider capital of the world – was unlikely to be convinced by exchanges like this:
Jia: “This is a funnel-web bite.”
Jack: “As in funnel-web spider?”
Jia: “As in funnel-web giraffe!”

“This film was designed for the Chinese market,” Rendall told the Selling Your Screenplay podcast. “It’s pretty much a Chinese story.”
But is it really? The Chinese characters are humourless and clumsily written, and we do not see anything of the country beyond the desert and some unconvincing underground tombs.
Whatever the pitch, the film was released on 6,000 screens across China and only 12 in Australia. When the Financial Review called it “the Australian blockbuster you’ll probably never see”, Rendall was unfazed.
“That doesn’t worry me,” he said. “Our main thing is: will our [target] audience enjoy it?”
To begin with, they did. In China, the film made US$6.5 million in its first three days – less than Bait 3D, but still encouraging.
“It was satisfying to sit there with all these teenage girls and watch their reactions,” said Rendall. “It looks like the film is positioned to do as well as Bait or even better.”

After its early success, however, box office takings levelled off, with an estimated total of US$7.9 million in China and US$8,850 in Australia – all on a budget of US$26 million.
So what went wrong? Besides the fact that the film was poorly made and poorly reviewed, surely watching an internationally recognisable cast fighting CG spiders in 3D should have been more fun?
But Guardians of the Tomb unearthed a deeper truth about co-productions: you cannot make films for the sole purpose of selling them to other countries. Or, at least, not bad ones.
Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook


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Li Bingbing as Jia, an expert on venomous creatures, in a still from Guardians of the Tomb.

Kellan Lutz (left) and Kelsey Grammer in a still from Guardians of the Tomb.

(From left) Li Bingbing, Jason Chong, Kellan Lutz and Kelsey Grammer in a still from Guardians of the Tomb.

Kelsey Grammer in a still from Guardians of the Tomb.

Li Bingbing (left) and Kellan Lutz in a still from Guardians of the Tomb.

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Ulrich Tukur as the titular character in a still from John Rabe.

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This 2018 co-production starring Li Bingbing about deadly spiders in China was poorly made and scripted, earning well below its budget


This 2018 co-production starring Li Bingbing about deadly spiders in China was poorly made and scripted, earning well below its budget.
