How narrative techniques attract young parents: The refiguration of Logger Vick in the Chinese 3D animated film, Boonie Bears: To the Rescue

Abstract

This article analyses the screenwriting of Boonie Bears: To the Rescue (2014), a film version of the Chinese 3D animated adventure TV series, Boonie Bears. The child-oriented principle of storytelling is one of the most distinctive features of full-length Chinese animated films, especially those produced over the past decade. Within this context, Boonie Bears: To the Rescue epitomizes how Chinese animators are striving to expand the scope of their target audience from children to parent–child groups through the development of narrative competence. This article explores how the arrangement of narrative techniques helps to attract young parents (in their late 20s and early 30s) to cinemas while also retaining the child audience. These endeavours are primarily represented by the refiguration of Logger Vick, the main antagonist in the Boonie Bears animated TV series, who is transformed from a thoroughly wicked villain to a living, ordinary person who could be considered to be the ‘spokesperson’ for young Chinese adults. In this way, the screenwriting techniques in the film strike a responsive chord in the hearts of its adult viewers, thereby broadening the range of its original (TV series) target audience.