I watched the movie The Meg on Netflix. I thought it was supposed to be campy, which might have made it fun, but it was mostly serious, which made it boring. Then it got worse. Midway through the film I started rooting for the megalodon shark to eat everyone. It was a bad movie, but not bad so it's good (e.g. Plan 9 from Outer Space). Just plain bad.
However, maybe my low opinion of the film is due to being American. By contrast, the movie was a success abroad. It seemed primarily catered to the mainland Chinese. It mainly takes place in a super hi-tech underwater research center off the coast of China. Shanghai as I recall. The main scientist in charge of the lab is Chinese. The main love interest is Chinese. She has a cute little daughter. China and the Chinese are positively depicted for the most part. It looks like The Meg made approximately $145 million domestically. Its production budget was $130 million so it would've been considered a commercial failure (making "only" $15 million) had it only been distributed domestically in the US. However, The Meg made approximately $385 million internationally. So its grand total was a little over $530 million. The largest percentage of any nation in the total looks to be mainland China ($153 million). Overall The Meg did quite well commercially, largely thanks to international audiences. (Source is Box Office Mojo.)
I guess it's no surprise, but many movies now seem to be made primarily with the international market in mind. Often the Asian and especially Chinese market. Another example is the Pacific Rim series of movies. I presume the main reason is because that's where all the money and potential money is. Of course, this makes sense from a business perspective. However, what happens if (say) an American film production's business collides in significant enough ways with American values? Or even undermines American values? Suppose it becomes quite lucrative for an American studio to film and distribute communist Chinese propaganda.
Of course, this has wider implications than the entertainment industry. For instance, consider how tech companies like Google and Apple try to do business in China. In the US, these big tech companies rail against all sorts of social injustices. However, in China, these same companies tolerate human rights violations and other ethical issues as the price of doing business in China. At what point does business stop becoming "just business"? Remember when Google's motto used to be "Don't be evil"?
