Star Wars: The Force Awakens and its $740 million (so far… The Force Awakens will soon surpass Avatar and its $760 million domestic gross) certainly looks like an unprecedented box office perfect storm. Coming at the tail end of a year which saw a rubbish Jurassic Park sequel break records, the confluence of 80s-90s nostalgia and cinematic sci-fi domination could not have found a more perfect embodiment than a new Star Wars movie. But several factors will assure that Star Wars: Episode 7 The Force Awakens’ time at the top of the box office heap end sooner rather than later, and it all begins with Jackie Chan, John Cusack, and a CGI radish monster.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

and The Future of Blockbusters

While Hollywood is unlikely to be superseded by Bollywood or the emerging Chinese film industry, the American hegemony on international pop culture is beginning to crack. As Chinese consumers exercise more buying power at the box office early American efforts to court Chinese filmgoers will begin to look quaint. Squeezing a China-only scene into Iron Man 3 or capitulating to government censorship before the release of Red Dawn (producer Trip Vinson made the rancid claim that changing the villain to North Korea, a country utterly incapable of militarily challenging the United States, made his Red Dawn “scarier, smarter and more dangerous.”) is just the beginning.

China is currently the second biggest movie market in the world, with 28,000 screens (the United States has nearly 40,000). Bloomberg Business claims that China is adding 15 new screens every day. Furious 7 made more money there than it did domestically.

If mainstream movies seem increasingly bland, as they maneuver to hit all four major demographic quadrants, just wait until major release budgets bloat enough to demand a movie appeal to everyone in the world.

It’s a safe bet that major American movie studios are looking closely at Monster Hunt, a Chinese blockbuster that topped several American releases in its opening weekend and has gone on to be the highest-grossing Chinese movie yet made.

While Avatar’s simplistic moral fable translated internationally, it remains to be seen whether or not Star Wars: The Force Awakens—and the ongoing Star Wars series—will be as big in China (The Force Awakens’ Chinese release date is Jan. 9).

Can American movie studios figure out how to harness the magic of radish monsters?

Monster Hunt Trailer

Highlighting the increasing importance of international box office returns is not novel analysis, but its effects have yet to reverberate through blockbuster records. As it stands, the American domestic and international chart-toppers are nearly identical. If American movie studios’ stranglehold is to continue then token gestures to international audiences will have to give way to true cultural cross-pollination.

Dragon Blade (our review) is an inauspicious start to a model which may well generate the blockbuster that trumps Star Wars: Episode 9 Why, Disney, Why Are You Giving This To Colin Trevorrow? The Chinese production combined piles of state money with major corporate investors like Alibaba to buy Western stars Adrien Brody and John Cusack. They joined Jackie Chan in a terrible movie desperately designed to speak to everyone. And while it was box office failure outside of China, Dragon Blade took multicultural moviemaking to a level that Hollywood has yet to attempt.

Titanic held the domestic and international box office record for 12 years. Avatar lasted only six (though it might barely hold on to the top spot internationally). As ticket prices soar and 3D IMAX experiences are forced upon us, new domestic box office records will keep the charts churning. But combine these trends with an international movie machine that will soon learn the secrets to the utterly genericized and universalized human heart it seems certain that the next few years will bring about the end of Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ box office reign.