With 2010-2011 the year of Australian Culture in China, the first China-Australia co-production film The Dragon Pearl began showing in cinema worldwide Friday. With half the budget spent on effects, the fantasy adventure story hopes to bring the legend of the Chinese dragon to life for audiences.

Directed by Emmy award winner Mario Andreacchio and starring Sam Neill (Jurassic Park, 1993), Li Linjin and Louis Corbett, the story is about two teenagers, Chinese girl Ling and Australian Josh, helping a Chinese dragon to find and protect the long-lost Dragon Pearl from tomb robbers.

Respectful dragon

At a cost of 100 million yuan ($15.21 million), well-known Australian visual effect company Rising Sun Pictures (RSP) were mainly responsible for the CGI dragon and special effects. The work took a year and was hard both technically and culturally.

The dragon is traditionally a potent symbol of China and indicates power, strength and good luck in Chinese culture.

Unfortunately, Hollywood depictions of the dragon have often caused insult to the Chinese. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008) featured a reincarnated Qin Emperor as a three-headed dragon battling the hero and led Hong Kong critic Perry Lam to denounce the film as "a malicious political metaphor."

A 2004 Nike commercial that featured NBA star Lebron James fighting off cartoon kung-fu dragons was banned in China after causing a storm of online controversy among fenqing netizens.

Aware of the dangers, the Australian team was keen to respect people's feelings.

"[Having] looked at thousands of dragons' pictures that varied depending on the area and periods, we chose the one that most people recognized: [the] dragons on the nine-dragon wall of the Forbidden City," Andreacchio told the Global Times.

According to Andreacchio, a lot of experiment was also done to produce the right sound for the dragon; the final sound is a mix of animals such as tigers and lions. Together with lively animation of the elbows, eyeballs and claws, RSP are confident they have produced a proper representation of the Chinese dragon. Other authentic elements include the music and lyrics of the theme song featuring lines from a titan of Chinese poetry, Li Bai.

Mixed cast

Leading actor Sam Neill plays archaeologist Chris Chase, a role similar to his famous portrayal of paleontologist Dr Alan Grant in Jurassic Park. According to Zhao Xiaohei, media manager of The Dragon Pearl, Neil is currently in New Zealand for personal reasons, related to the Christchurch earthquake, but agreed that both roles required a long-term commitment and devotion, adding that filming in China was a great experience and a pleasure.

Newly married Hong Kong actor Jordan Chan, playing a temple guard, has caught much media attention, as it is his first role after the nuptials. "I did a lot of kung fu training [but] it is also a comic role," Chan described how he got the role after talking with director Andreacchio: "We communicated well on the phone and the next thing I knew, I was there filming."

After advanced screenings in Australia and China, audiences responded well. "Some of the reaction we got from Australia is that 'the film is very Chinese,' while the reaction from the Chinese is 'it's very Western,' which is very good. It means we got a good blend between the two," Andreacchio told the Global Times. "The principle of co-production is a creative collaboration, but also a culture exchange, [and] we hope to do more after this film."

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