With the advent of August, China's summer season film market has finally welcomed its first blockbuster. Three-dimensional animation film "Ne Zha," the first of its kind, continued to lead its way at the box office last week. 

On Monday, the film's general box office earning exceeded 2.44 billion yuan (350 million U.S. dollars), becoming one of China's top 10 all-time hits. It is also the third-highest grossing film of 2019 so far, after domestic sci-fi "The Wandering Earth" and Hollywood superhero flick "Avengers: Endgame."

China's online ticketing service platform Maoyan predicts that the film may finally end up making around 4.4 billion yuan (6.26 million U.S. dollars).

The weekly runner-up is domestic film "The Bravest," which focuses on firefighters, a group of people who have rarely been depicted in artistic works.

The story is based on actual events that transpired on July 16, 2010, when a port in Dalian City, northeast China's Liaoning Province, caught fire after explosions in two pipelines. It took some 2,000 firefighters more than 15 hours to extinguish the fire. A firefighter lost his life, and another was severely injured. 

Chinese writer Bao'erji Yuanye interviewed 188 firefighters for his non-fiction book "Tears Are the Deepest Water," which was adapted into the film "The Bravest".

Many viewers said that they could not hold back their tears while watching the film. However, even as the film is centered around firefighters, it does not try to portray them as "heroes." The film's director claimed that he wanted to present the other side of heroes. 

"They are ordinary people, and they also have their families," said Chen Guohui, director of the film in an interview, adding that more than 90 percent of the film is based on real life experiences of the firefighters.

The film's visual effects succeed in taking the audiences to the fire spot. According to the director, real fire was used in about 75 percent of the fire-fighting scenes to arouse real emotions in people, when faced with similar situations.

However, critical voices also emerged. In some scenarios, moviegoers pointed out that the film did not deal with the details quite professionally, such as allowing many firefighters walk bare-faced in the fire.

Complaints regarding the arrangement of the plot, dialogues and actors' performances, especially the unnecessary flooding of sentiments, also popped up on social media. Many argued that the emotions would have been more heartrending if they were expressed in a restrained manner. Many others said that the film lacked depth.  

"If the director had tried harder to explore the reasons behind the explosion, and disaster's impact on people's life, the film would have had much more depth rather than just being a popcorn film," a comment read on Douban.com, a film rating website in China.

Even though, many movie buffs did not deny that the film is a good attempt in trying to explore the firefighters as ordinary people, rather than representing them as "heroes" far from real life. 

China's domestic film "Looking Up" grossed only 101 million yuan (14.3 million U.S. dollars) in its third week, with the total box office earning of 782 million yuan (110.9 million U.S. dollars). Comedy film "Coward Hero" follows behind with 57.2 million yuan (8.11 million U.S. dollars) on its first weekend.

Hollywood epic "The Lion King" is the only imported movie remaining on the weekly box office Top 5 chart. So far, it has pocketed a total of 760 million yuan (107.8 million U.S. dollars) on the Chinese box office.

According to the official data released by China Movie Data Information Network, box office earnings of July stood at 5.7 billion yuan (810 million U.S. dollars), an 18-percent drop year on year. The huge success of "Ne Zha" has obviously helped turn things around, but it is still too early to say whether August would be different.

Another dark-horse-to-be film, "Shanghai Fortress", will hit the cinemas on Friday. It is another domestic attempt in the sci-fi genre. The film is based on a namesake online novel. It is about a human battle against extraterrestrial attacks.

Earlier this year, "The Wandering Earth" ignited the passion for sci-fi genre, and now the earth-defending battle in "Shanghai Fortress" is expected to take it forward.

Another domestic film from Hong Kong, crime genre "Line Walker 2," is also expected to hit the big screens on Wednesday. With a line-up of several veteran actors, the film also bears the hope of refueling the summer film market.

(Cover image designed by CGTN's Gao Hongmei)