By Aynne Kokas

Bigger, louder, crazier pyrotechnics...and that's before you even enter the theater. APA watches "Miami Vice" in Taipei and steps into an uncanny simulacra of sensations.

Foreign box office numbers are taking ever-increasing importance in the world of mega-budget film sales, and industry trades highlight the shift in foreign/domestic box office percentages. However, the oft un-reported story is how cultures of international spectatorship cultivated by transnational media companies lead to a shift in the viewing populations of international blockbusters.  Less a question of a shift in the market demand, the story behind the new global spectator is more about the creation of a measurable, quantifiable international market operating with infrastructure similar to that available in the U.S.  Viewing Michael Mann's Miami Vice in Taipei offered valuable insights into the world of foreign box office sales.

Chinese philosopher Sunzi's de rigeur business mantra that “the war is won before it begins” is one of the central tenets behind the success of American blockbusters internationally. Miami Vice's surrounding media blitz in Taipei astounded this typically L.A.-based viewer.  Taipei's metro rapid transit (MRT) stations have flat-screened televisions placed at regular intervals across the train platform filled with continuously streaming ads.  Prior to international film releases each week, these LCD screens exclusively showed film trailers for the upcoming major film release.  For nearly three weeks prior to the release of Miami Vice, the film's trailer played continuously in the city's crowded, busy subway stations, in addition to being featured prominently in ads throughout the city and trailers in movie theaters.  My awareness of Miami Vice prior to viewing the film in Taipei was significantly higher than for any equivalent film in Los Angeles, despite living two blocks away from the Westwood Village Theater, one of Hollywood's most well known premiere cinemas, for the past two years. 

Viewing Miami Vice in Taipei's Warner Village was the equivalent of having the spectacle of the American film-viewing experience distilled to its essentials, and then super-sized.  So much attention has been placed on creating the appropriately “authentic” film-viewing experience that every moment -- before, during and after viewing the film -- carries a feeling of overwhelming hyper-reality.  With multiple stories of theaters, a fluorescent green food court, and even a second-story open-air bridge connecting two sides of the theater complex, often accompanied by a bandstand stage populated with dancing girls or fire-juggling monks in the courtyard beneath, Times Squares' multiplexes are tame models of stoicism by comparison. 

Naturally, the complex's name belies the building's ownership and the firm behind a large part of Taipei's theater infrastructure development.  Beyond massive, targeted marketing campaigns abroad, Warner, and other Hollywood entertainment conglomerates, have been systematically investing in international film-viewing infrastructure.  In combination with international marketing blitzes, infrastructure investment is finally starting to pay off in box-office grosses.  Increased overseas interest in American blockbusters may partially explain increased sales, but patterns of infrastructure development and expanded marketing penetration offer likelier reasons. 

Viewing Miami Vice from Taipei, given the film's content and star power, adds an intriguing alternate dimension to the analysis of shifts in foreign box office-related marketing and infrastructure development. With Mainland Chinese actress Gong Li in a substantial supporting role in her first American action film, Miami Vice becomes a film with potentially greater appeal to Chinese-speaking audiences. Gong's appeal as a Mainland actress in Taiwan is up for debate due to the complex political and cultural between Taiwan and the Mainland.  However, the overall subtext of the film explicitly addresses trends in global capitalism with particular resonance for Taiwan.  Gong's role, as a Chinese businesswoman detached from any nation, living by her wits internationally from Africa to Cuba to Colombia to Miami, highlights the increased importance of Chinese-speaking populations in the global economy. 

Strangely, the film structures Gong's character in such a way that her role as an international dealmaker directly reflects the trends of increased market integration that has led to events such as the exhibition of American films like Miami Vice in international theaters. Miami Vice is saddled with a plot formulaic even for a film based on a weekly TV series.  However, the not-so subtle underpinings of globalization that are present in the film's overreaching story about global trade make the work also function as a meta-commentary on the principles of international box office development.

Miami Vice, viewed in Taipei, was more than a sock-rocking, fire-bombing action adventure replete with accoutrements like fake butter popcorn and giddy teenager spectators, though car chases, junk food, and swarms of adolescents were never far away.  Watching the film in Taiwan highlighted the strangely familiar consistency of the international blockbuster viewing experience.  From the presence of Ruby Tuesday's for the post-movie repast to double Snakes on a Train trailers prior to the film, Warner has made every effort to create an internationally replicable entertainment experience.  Transnational spectator infrastructure, and the resulting shift in modes of spectatorship, has formed the groundwork for internationally commensurable box office figures, which in turn has lead to readily quantifiable total international sales figures.  In other words, the revolutionary part about viewing a big budget American film like Miami Vice halfway across the world from South Beach, was the doggedly familiar replication of the movie-going experience.

Official site: http://www.miamivice.com/

Published: Tuesday, August 22, 2006