Chapter 402: Big Bad Movie

Chapter 402: Big Bad Movie

Chapter 402: Big Bad Movie

"Recently, I heard someone say that the badness of Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains is not only a problem of the film itself, but also a problem of imbalance between the rapidly expanding market and the aesthetic taste of moviegoers.

I personally have reservations about this. China has always been carrying out popular education work. Most of the people have read books and attended school and have basic aesthetic concepts. Therefore, the aesthetic gap in the article itself does not hold true.

Even the general public has aesthetic values ​​and knows what is a good movie and what is a bad movie.

For example, the science fiction blockbusters released by Galaxy Pictures and director Wang Hao in recent years, "Wolf Warrior 1" has a domestic box office of more than 11 billion yuan, "Inception" has a domestic box office of more than 14 billion yuan, and the cumulative global box office is 13 billion US dollars.

There is also "Gravity", which was released at the beginning of this year and grossed 16 billion yuan in mainland China.

Everyone is willing to go to the cinema to support these good movies, so how can you say that domestic movie fans don't know how to appreciate movies? You can't say that the movies are not well made, just say that people are like wild pigs that can't eat fine bran, and then say that there are also rubbish movies abroad.

If everyone has no respect for movies, keeps lowering the standards, engages in bad movie marketing, and thinks that a good movie is not as good as advertised, then wouldn't it be unfair to the filmmakers who make movies conscientiously?

If the entire film industry is permeated with such a perverse trend, what future does Chinese film have?"

The person who made these remarks was none other than the "national teacher" Zhang Yimou.

Although Wang Hao is now the number one commercial film director in China, Zhang Yimou's influence in the film and television entertainment industry and among the public is still high.

Moreover, the existence of "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains" is currently dominated by criticism in the market. With a backbone like him raising his voice, the response from the majority of movie fans will naturally be more intense.

The voices on the Internet boycotting "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains" are growing louder, which in turn led to a sharp drop in the box office performance of "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains" in the second week.

At the same time, reminded by Zhang Yimou and with the comparison of bad movies like "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains", countless movie fans have increasingly recognized the excellence of "Gravity" and previous movies in the "Galaxy Cinematic Universe".

This is how things are in this world. It’s not that you don’t know the goods, but you’re afraid of comparing the goods.

"Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains" claims to have hired a Hollywood 3D special effects team, but its quality is inferior to Wang Hao's movies, and even "Source Code" released in 2007.

No, if we consider the overall story, rhythm, special effects and other aspects, Wang Hao’s original TV movie “The Shallows” is better than it.

Speaking of "The Shallows", CCTV-6 broadcast several works from the [Galaxy Cinematic Universe] including "Buried", "The Call", "Wushuang", and "Source Code" when "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains" was released.

As for "The Shallows", just five days after the release of "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains", the 3D remake of "The Shallows" jointly produced by Galaxy Pictures and Movie Channel was also released in cinemas.

This movie was released in 2005. Due to funding and technical reasons at that time, it was chosen to be a TV movie, and the graphics and special effects were still relatively rough.

Now after the remake, Galaxy Group has invested some manpower and material resources to improve the image quality, redo the special effects, and call in Wang Zhi to reshoot some shots and convert it into a 3D movie.

As for the publicity and distribution, it was done by Tao Piaopiao.com, which is affiliated to Xinhe Group. As for the publicity, the movie channel contributed partly, and director Zhang Yimou also made an indelible contribution.

Do you really think Director Zhang is worried about the Chinese film industry?

If someone is interested and investigates carefully, they will find that after Zhang Yimou and Zhang Weiping parted ways, the largest shareholder of the personal director studio he established was not someone else, but Xingdou Culture.

Director Zhang is just trying to make peace with himself.

After the re-release of "The Shallows", its box office continued to rise and soon exceeded 100 million, approaching the box office performance of "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains".

Even though many people had seen this movie on TV before, it was still shown in theaters because of the influence of public opinion and the contrast with "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains".

A bad movie was released and Galaxy Pictures became the biggest winner.

"The Shallows", which only cost a few million yuan to re-invest, successfully surpassed "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains" in box office performance just two weeks after its release, and raked in 4 million yuan at the box office.

As for "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains", due to the sudden disruption of "The Shallows", the movie failed to break the 3 million yuan box office as originally planned, but stopped at 2.6 million Chinese yuan.

Compared with its cost of 2 million yuan, this box office is naturally a complete loss.

At the same time, this terrible movie also overdrew the public reputation of its leading actors.

As the leading actor of the film, Andy Lau received the heaviest "stain" in his film career, which had a serious negative impact on his subsequent films and future acting career.

However, as the saying goes, there are always higher mountains than others. Two weeks later, netizens' criticism and ridicule of "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains" and its creators did not disappear, but were drowned out by the criticism of another bad movie.

The bad movie that helped "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains" escape disaster was the movie "Tiny Times", which was adapted from the novel of the same name by Guo Jingming, written and directed by Guo Jingming, produced by Li Li, and starred by Yang Mi, Ke Zhendong, Amber Kuo, Guo Biting and others.

With Guo Jingming's signature work, this film, adapted from the best-selling novel of the same name, is not only Guo Jingming's directorial debut, but also stars handsome men and beautiful women such as Yang Mi. It had already whetted the appetite of moviegoers before it was released, and it can be said to have become popular before it even hit the theaters.

However, after the movie was released, the word of mouth was unexpectedly a dud, no, it should be said that it was a stink.

The badness of "Tiny Times" is completely different from that of "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains".

"Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains" is bad because the director has no clue and no plan, and only knows how to imitate, plagiarize, pile up and splice at will. This has led to the movie directly occupying the worst throne among many Chinese science fiction films, action films, suspense films, romance films, police and gangster films, etc. since its release.

As for "Tiny Times", it can be a commercial genre film with a very precise positioning, targeting the so-called fan economy.

Guo Xiaosi should not be called a director, but an extremely shrewd businessman.

The badness of "Tiny Times" lies in its blatant plagiarism and patchwork, its infuriatingly shameless output of vulgar values, and its opportunistic creative mode.

If we look at it from the perspective of its far-reaching influence on future generations, "Tiny Times" is even more deplorable. "Fuchun Mountain Residence" is finished, but the emergence of "Tiny Times" has set a bad precedent for Chinese films. It can be said that the emergence of "Tiny Times" has contributed greatly to the beginning of the era of traffic stars.

After all, even though the reputation plummeted after its release and a number of film critics and industry insiders criticized Guo Xiaosi and his movies, the box office of "Tiny Times" at the midnight show still reached 740 million.

After that, the first-day box office of "Tiny Times" successfully exceeded 7000 million, and despite the attack of a lot of negative word of mouth, it earned 6000 million on the second day of its release.

On the 3rd and 4th days, because it was the weekend, the box office of "Tiny Times" continued to rise, and it also led to a successful recovery of the sluggish market. The single-day box office of the mainland film market exceeded 4 million for two consecutive days, and the cumulative box office of "Tiny Times" in the first 2.6 days of the week reached million.

The box office soared despite word of mouth, and this bizarre situation shocked many senior people in the industry.

Moreover, the rise in word-of-mouth of "Tiny Times" is different from that of "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains". The rise in word-of-mouth of "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains" was mainly due to the public's aesthetic taste for ugliness and people were deceived into going to the cinema by the trailer.

"Tiny Times" is different. A large number of people know that it is a bad movie, but there are still many young people and fans of Guo Xiaosi who go to the cinema to watch this movie.

Even Guo Xiaosi's fans are still verbally abusing and fighting with those film critics and industry insiders who gave bad reviews to the movie on the Internet.

Such a counterintuitive situation also fully proves that as long as the characters chosen are good-looking, and you are willing to spend money on scene layout and invest resources in promotion and marketing, the game will be a success.

No matter how unrealistic the script is, no matter how bad, vile and vulgar the values ​​are, they can be accepted by young people who have not experienced the world, and they can even be regarded as a guiding principle.

This is the fan economy, this is the traffic movie.

The sudden popularity of "Tiny Times" was difficult for many traditional filmmakers to accept. However, it also allowed another group of new-age filmmakers who were more active and had no artistic pursuits to see business opportunities.

Compared to Wang Hao's sci-fi commercial blockbusters with huge investments, big productions and extremely high barriers to entry, "Tiny Times" is undoubtedly easier to replicate.

Youth literature, handsome men and beautiful women, melodramatic plots, and female perspectives, these seem to have become the winning magic weapons in the eyes of many film and television companies.

While those people were criticizing "Tiny Times" on the Internet and in the media, they were also privately launching film and television projects that imitated "Tiny Times".

Wang Hao, who was in the crew of Wolf Warrior 2, had heard a little about the chaos in the domestic film, television and entertainment circles caused by these two films, but he did not care much.

He never thought that such bad movies would have any impact on his career. At the same time, he also didn't think that with the Chinese film and television industry having the "Galaxy Cinematic Universe" as a stabilizer, there was nothing to be afraid of with a few jumping clowns.

Moreover, people's thoughts sometimes change. In the past, when Wang Hao was just starting out, there were some newcomers in the industry who were arrogant and always felt that they were time travelers and took on the responsibility of saving Chinese films.

However, after working in the industry for so many years, his mentality has gradually become mature and stable. The more he knows about the industry, the more he understands that the Chinese film and television industry can never be saved by him alone.

No one can be the savior of Chinese films, and Chinese films do not need a savior. His so-called saving of Chinese films and saving of Chinese science fiction films is nothing but a fatherly, condescending behavior that attempts to educate the audience.

The audience knows what they want and what they like to watch. They will vote with their feet. They can also tell whose films are truly heartfelt and whose films have problems.

As for the so-called industry chaos and so-called opportunism, the audience and the market will teach them a lesson.

Dapeng's movie "The Pancake Man" required him to make several movies to pay off his debts, and Jia Ling's weight loss movie ruined the audience popularity she had accumulated over the years.

As for Guo Xiaosi, he is also a well-known writer who switched to being a director. Han Han will make one movie after another in the future, but after "Jade Dynasty", Guo Xiaosi will no longer be able to direct.

So let these rubbish be as they are. Does he have to step on a pile of stinky dog ​​shit on the roadside? That would really be beneath the status of an international director like him.

Although Wang Hao does not care about bad movies like "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains" and "Tiny Times", the existence of him and his company still plays an important role in the Chinese film and television industry, and any slight move can have a significant impact.

Just one week after the release of "Tiny Times", the spin-off film of the "Galaxy Cinematic Universe", "The Machinist", co-produced by Galaxy Pictures and Hollywood Columbia Pictures, was released on July 2013, 7.

Also released on the same day was the new movie "Blind Detective" directed by Johnnie To and starring Andy Lau and Sammi Cheng.

However, due to the negative impact of "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains" last month, this movie did not make any waves when it was first released.

The majority of movie fans chose the movie "Mechanic" in the middle period of this summer season because of the reputation of the "Galaxy Cinematic Universe".

As the chief designer of the Galaxy Cinematic Universe and an internationally renowned director, Wang Hao naturally took time out to attend the premiere ceremony of "The Mechanic" in Beijing when it was released.

Because Jing Tian has joined the crew of Cheng Long's "Police Story 2013", the woman who accompanied him to the premiere of "The Mechanic" this time was Lu Jingshan.

This girl is of mixed descent from five countries and has a very distinctive appearance.

Also, when she debuted in 2008, she played the female lead, policewoman Xiaohe, in the movie "Wolf Tooth" directed and acted by Wu Jing, and she has a good relationship with Wu Jing.

So when Wu Jing learned that "Wolf Warrior 2" needed a mixed-race female supporting role with European and American features, she took the initiative to recommend her.

This time, she accompanied Wang Hao to attend the premiere of "The Mechanic", which can be regarded as an advance promotion for "Wolf Warrior 2".

As a well-known international director, Wang Hao and the exotic beauty Lu Jingshan who appeared beside him naturally attracted the attention of many media reporters.

However, they were not the protagonists of today's premiere, so the two of them walked across the red carpet at a very fast speed and did not stay for long.

There is nothing much to say about the premiere afterwards. As for the movie "Mechanic", to be honest, it can only be considered as passing in the "Galaxy Cinematic Universe".

Galaxy Films' version of "The Mechanic" is not much different from the original "The Mechanic". Both are remakes of the 1972 movie of the same name (translated as "The Machinist"), but the main storyline has been rewritten, the character relationships have been slightly adjusted, and some elements of the [Galaxy Cinematic Universe] have also been incorporated.

(End of this chapter)