Posters of Despicable Me 4 in a cinema in Shanghai Photo: VCG

China's summer movie season reached its peak in July, with Despicable Me 4 grossing over 300 million yuan ($41.5 million) after opening in the Chinese mainland for 20 days and Deadpool & Wolverine reaching 200 million yuan as of Wednesday, according to Maoyan, a major ticket-selling platform in China. Veteran film critics said that Hollywood is slowly catching up in the summer box office, dismissing the notion that the Chinese market rejects Hollywood as "nonsense."

The two films received mixed reactions after their release. Many moviegoers felt that Despicable Me 4 depicted the story of a lonely person seeking love due to past hurts, which was very relatable, others believe that the father-son relationship the film tried to present was not well-developed and lacked detailed buildup.

Reactions to Deadpool and Wolverine are also varied. "The film's filled with nostalgia, and it's just so surprising Deadpool has comes back," a long-time Marvel fan told the Global Times, seemingly reflecting the hearts of many long term Marvel fans. Others felt it was overly repetitive and said they are tired of the endless multiverse settings.

Shi Wenxue, a veteran film critic and judge at the Beijing International Film Festival, told the Global Times on Wednesday that from a storytelling perspective, the anti-hero theme of Deadpool &Wolverine brings a certain freshness. However, Shi noted that both films inevitably aimed to attract their original fans, with a relatively fixed viewer base.

"The films didn't sufficiently attract new audiences with their narratives and stories, leading to less optimistic box office results compared to their series' previous films," Shi said.

Despicable Me 3 grossed 1.03 billion yuan in 2017, while Logan, the third standalone Wolverine movie, earned 730 million yuan the same year.

Characters from the Despicable Me franchise, which was originally developed by a French studio, featured in a sequence for the Paris Olympics opening ceremony.

In a Bloomberg program aired on July 23, the two hosts attempted to use the current performance of China's film market to cast a shadow over China's economy.

Daniel Manwaring, CEO of IMAX China, denied in the program that China is reducing imports of Hollywood films, noting instead that they are receiving "positive support" from the Chinese side, with more Hollywood films being released simultaneously in China and North America compared to previous years.

"China's film market is now more open and inclusive, showing no trend of closing off to Hollywood," Shi said.

This summer season, Deadpool & Wolverine was released simultaneously in North America and the Chinese mainland, with lead actors Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds attending the Shanghai premiere and interacting with Chinese fans.

Shi noted that China is not rejecting Hollywood blockbusters, and China's cinema welcomes everyone.

"Using Hollywood's box office performance to suggest that China's economy is failing is a very arbitrary and far-fetched argument. It is the better quality of the film that naturally drew audiences' attention," Shi said.