Novel Russian fare hits screens

Lykov (second right) with director Indar Dzhendubaev (first right), producer Igor Tsay (second left) and choreography and stunt director Robert Kun (left) during their Beijing promotional tour. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Adapted from the best-selling novel Ritual written by Marina and Serhiy Dyachenko, Dragon is a romance set in a fictionalized era.

In the story, a princess is kidnapped by a dragon during her wedding ceremony and falls in love with the kidnapper.

The story also has some Chinese elements, such as using shadow puppetry to tell a story in the movie.

While the film performed poorly in Russia and received only 6.3 points out of 10 on the review site IMDb, it was different with the Chinese, who showed a lot of enthusiasm for the so-called "Mary Sue-styled" film (referring to an over-idealized female character loved by the men around her). It received 7.3 points out of 10 on China's largest review site Douban.com.

Thanks to online novels, China has a lot of similar TV series and movies.

Before Dragon was officially released in China, the 110-minute movie was downloaded 5.6 million times from online sources and reviewed 270,000 times on social media platforms, according to Mtime.com.

To industry watchers, Dragon is similar to the American coming-of-age romance The Twilight Saga.

Yu Ruoran, a Beijing-based movie critic, says: "Such romances thrill fans as many picture themselves as the female protagonist."

But for ordinary moviegoers, the fascination is more straightforward.