The King of Huayu Science Fiction

Chapter 402 The philosophy of "King of Science Fiction"?

Taking off the 3D glasses, Jiang Yong took one last look at the subtitles with white characters on a black background. There were no easter eggs, and he looked down at his watch.

Sure enough, two and a half hours.

Slightly less than The Matrix.

It is a full hour longer than "Gravity".

This is not surprising. After all, the plot has a lot more twists and turns. The limited time and dense information create a fast rhythm, and the hard core is far more than "The Center of the Earth".

The fast-paced and dense amount of knowledge made the two and a half hours seem to be condensed into a moment, like a dream, without any feeling of time passing, and even the physiology was frozen.

Therefore, the sudden strong desire to release water made Jiang Yong stand up and walk out of the theater with some unfinished business.

There were applause and cheers from the corridor, which should have been caused by the main creator of the movie speaking on stage, but it didn't attract Jiang Yong's attention. He was still half-immersed in "The Martian".

In his opinion, this ending is really quite charming. The scenes, characters, lines, rhythm of the whole movie...the style is very uniform.

It's really different from "Gravity".

Chen Jingxing still did not miss this time, of course this is predictable.

Many great directors in this world have made bad films, at least mediocre ones. This is not uncommon, especially for film critics like Jiang Yong who have read countless films. He deeply understands that talent is not endless. .

Some directors may exhaust all the creativity and talent accumulated in the first half of their life in one or two films, and then become mediocre. All subsequent works are like the embers of a supernova explosion, and there are shadows of supernova explosions everywhere.

This is not bad, but if some directors are not willing to be "embers" and want to recreate or even surpass the former glory, the result is often even more disastrous.

Perhaps a few years ago, he would have ridiculed this like many movie fans and audiences, but in recent years, perhaps because of getting older, or perhaps because he has seen more and more movies, he can now understand that this is a normal phenomenon.

Of course people have limits.

A director like Chen Jingxing who has maintained a high standard for seven consecutive films since his debut, and is still on the rise, is too rare.

It can already be regarded as a peerless genius.

Artistic creation is output, and people will be exhausted by light output, so there must be input.

It can be reading, it can be watching other film and television works, but the most important thing is life.

Some things need to be accumulated, even ideas need to be accumulated. There is a huge difference between an immature idea and a complete and practical idea.

It can only be said that Chen Jingxing's brain may really be different from that of normal people.

Of course, Jiang Yong doesn't expect Chen Jingxing to be talented all the time, but if he can extend this creative peak period as much as possible, it will undoubtedly be a kind of enjoyment for Huaguo movies, science fiction movies, film critics and audiences like him. .

When "Gravity" and "Matrix" were released last year, he thought that this was Chen Jingxing's peak, and usually he would go down wherever he went after the peak.

However, "Skyhawk Warrior" made him feel amazing again, which was no less amazing than "Matrix".

Although this is an animated series, and Chen Jingxing is not the director, the amazing "Human Completion Project" and the brain holes in the animation have a strong Chen Jingxing style.

This is definitely a work led by Chen Jingxing.

He didn't know about Chen Jingxing's "Hua Guo Version Pacific Rim Mecha Movie" project, so he was inevitably surprised by its "excessive extravagance".

This level of creativity is willing to "waste" on a two-dimensional hand-painted animation theme?

What a rich brain!

"Sky Eagle Warrior" not only allowed Jiang Yong to write a movie review for an animated drama for the first time, but also gave him a signal that Chen Jingxing would still stand at the top with a high probability, and there seemed to be no downward trend.

And The Martian proves it.

On the way home, Jiang Yong was still thinking excitedly: "Now calm down and think about it carefully, "Mars" is indeed the same as "The Center of the Earth", but the things shown are very different..."

Not only the gender gap of the protagonist, but also the scene from space in low earth orbit to Mars tens of millions of kilometers away.

The overall atmosphere is different.

"The Center of the Earth" has a more literary temperament and a more poetic narrative, which is why it can become the darling of major film awards. It is a treasure that perfectly integrates technology and film art.

And if "Center of the Earth" is compared to Yin, then "Mars" is Yang, rational, optimistic, and enterprising. Even the heavy plot has a strong sense of resistance and burning.

If "The Center of the Earth" puts more emphasis on inner activities and sensibility, then "Mars" is almost the embodiment of human reason.

But this yin-yang, sensibility-rationality all lead to the same goal by different routes, achieving a kind of perfection that surpasses the structure of the film.

Not only because Lei Jiayin and Wu Yue, the pair of "space specialists", have completed a certain "intertextuality" of mutual salvation across the film, but the core values ​​and concepts of the two films not only converge into the same river, but also gain Stronger resonance.

The poem "Do not go gentle into that good night" appears in both films.

At the time of "Gravity", many people interpreted the meaning of this poem.

Jiang Yong also checked the source of this poem at that time. It was a poem by Dylan Thomas, a poet in the early 20th century. The superficial meaning is that the poet strongly hopes to arouse his father’s will to survive, and use a strong soul to overcome disease and years.

The deep meaning is to show the poet's pessimism and worry about the fate of mankind.

But in Chen Jingxing's movie, it seems to have become a battle song again.

In "Gravity", what Jiang Yong gets is the shock of life's unyielding roar against death, encouraging people who encounter a seemingly invincible fate not to give up on themselves gently, not to accept fate gently.

In "The Martian", it seems to become a hero who explores space and roars unyieldingly to fate. It is a metaphor and symbol of the belief and courage of human beings to explore space.

"The Martian" actually continues the imagery of "Gravity" and strengthens the echoes of this imagery.

It is said that text conveys truth, and it is obvious that Chen Jingxing has entrusted some of his beliefs and emotions in these two space works that are enough to be recorded in the annals of science fiction movies in China.

If we say that in the process of watching the movie, Jiang Yong, who was deeply substituted into the protagonist's situation, also had similar resentment that Chen Jingxing was addicted to shaking and tossing the hero.

Moreover, the male protagonist also exhibits some kind of "superhuman" traits, the incarnation of an ideal personality. Although the heroine of "The Center of the Earth" is also a "strong person", she is closer to ordinary people, or more sensual, bursting out of sensibility Compared with the superhuman will of "Mars", the male protagonist of "Mars" seems to be a lot thinner, without that kind of shocking inner cosmic explosion.

But when he went back and re-examined, when he used the poem "Don't go gentle into that good night" to connect the two movies "Center of the Earth" and "Mars".

He suddenly discovered that the powerful, wise, optimistic, rational, and outrageous protagonist played by Lei Jiayin is just the embodiment of human beings, part of them.

The difficulties that Lei Jiayin encountered on Mars trying to knock him down are just a symbol of the challenges that human beings will encounter in their progress and exploration.

The hero of "Mars" is the embodiment of the rational and scientific side of human beings.

The heroine of "The Center of the Earth" is the embodiment of the human soul and the emotional side.

Of course, it is not absolute, and the distinction is not clear. The heroine of "Center of the Earth" also has a wise side, and the hero of "Mars" also has a side of emotional vulnerability and entanglement.

But it does have a focus.

Perhaps this is also the fundamental reason for the difference in temperament between the two films. Why Chen Jingxing used poetic lens language to describe the spiritual growth of the heroine in "The Center of the Earth", and used humor and hard-core scientific knowledge to describe the hero's survival in "Mars".

The growth of the soul is epiphany and imagery, so 90 minutes is enough for the heroine to establish her own character arc.

The strength of rationality and wisdom can only be manifested through repeated hardships, so Chen Jingxing turned into his father and punched the hero again and again in the name of fate.

One is the metamorphosis of the mind, gradually becoming stronger.

One is the relaxation of wisdom, and the strength born after overcoming difficulties.

The same thing is that both of them burst out with amazing courage and will.

Through these two films, Chen Jingxing seems to be saying that the perfect fusion of human heart and wisdom, sensibility and rationality can give birth to true courage and will.

Jiang Yong, who was shocked by the animation "Skyhawk Warrior" not long ago, thought of the "human completion plan" of this animation.

The fruit of wisdom and the fruit of life.

After this brainstorming, Jiang Yong seemed to have opened a new door. He seemed to have glimpsed into the inner world and philosophical thought of Chen Jingxing, a talented director who is well-known at home and abroad.

Every great director has his own values ​​and worldview, as well as his answers to certain ultimate propositions.

And these things are hard to hide, and the greater the director, the harder it is to hide.

The fifth and sixth generation directors, Jiang Wen, Li Ang, Wang Jiawei, Hou Xiaoxian and other film masters, their ideas, thoughts, and imprints can be found in almost all of their works.

It's just that some are conspicuous, some are obscure, some are so strong that they overflow the screen, and some are as silent as spring breeze and rain.

Movies often carry creators' private goods, and generally speaking, only mediocre movies have no private goods.

For a film critic like Jiang Yong, it is only in recent years that he has reached the state of reading the director's spiritual world through movies. Reading movies is reading people.

However, young directors who have recently emerged, especially directors of commercial films, are relatively difficult to read.

In other words, their films do not carry their thoughts and beliefs on some grand issues.

Jiang Yong is more inclined that most of them do not have any deep and valuable thinking at all, and their cultural level may not be as good as that of ordinary people. What values ​​and thinking can they have?Pretending to be deep, and carrying private goods may make people laugh.

Make money and you're done.

Playing with cinematic tricks is the best.

But Chen Jingxing is different, and should be different.

Since "Comet", Chen Jingxing has expressed his thoughts, but it may be too creative and rich in ideas, which made his previous films feel that concepts and ideas are more important than content.

Take an interesting sci-fi idea and wrap it up in a well-structured story that wows the audience with its imagination.

But there are still subtle contexts, such as the time travel of "Signal" and the time rewinding of "Source Code", which have been further developed and extended in DreamWorks' follow-up film and television works.

"Black Mirror" is a surprise, symbolizing Chen Jingxing's reflection on technology, discussing human nature from the impact of technology on human society and even alienation. In Jiang Yong's view, "Black Mirror" marks Chen Jingxing's farewell to purely entertaining sci-fi creativity , with a foundation that can carry both business and art and balance them.

But Chen Jingxing's own film is on a different line from "Black Mirror". It is positive and positive from beginning to end, even if it is a dystopian background like "Matrix".

It was also the emergence of "Gravity" that gave Jiang Yong a glimpse of Chen Jingxing's sci-fi concepts. This genius who has been focusing on sci-fi and even brought sci-fi film and television works to unprecedented heights by himself cannot have only brains. Without its own concept of building through science fiction.

"Science fiction may provide us with a possibility of the future, let us re-examine our present, perceive the living conditions of human beings, and learn from them, and become part of human beings' grand efforts to create a better future." This sentence is not exactly Chen Jingxing Is it a famous speech in Jingying?
It is hailed by many sci-fi fans as the clarion call to let the unrealistic theme of sci-fi enter the mainstream aesthetic system of upper-class literary works.

Oscar night made this rhetoric a reality, and the "King of Science Fiction" seems to have started to describe to the world his ideas based on science fiction from here.

Jiang Yong thinks this is normal, and it is something that Chen Jingxing must do. A master must not only have superb skills, but also have superb thinking, let alone you, a "King of Science Fiction" who has already ascended half of the altar up.

As a film critic, he doesn't think that the title of master can be obtained by box office alone.

Even if Chen Sicheng filmed "Tang Detective" to the tenth part, the box office of the series of films is tens of billions, can he be called the king of comedy?Or is it called the king of comedy detectives?
The same is true for Guo Fan. In Jiang Yong’s view, even if he makes ten more films of the level of “The Mekong River”, he cannot be called a master of military films, or the king of military action. Many villains.

And through "Skyhawk Warrior" and "The Martian" just watched, Jiang Yong seems to connect several works after "Gravity" and see the science fiction philosophy of "King of Science Fiction".

This made him a little inexplicably excited.

""Gravity" talks about the human soul, and "The Martian" talks about human wisdom. The combination of the two can give birth to the courage and will for human beings to overcome difficulties and make continuous progress. If it is in "Skyhawk Warrior" In the middle, it is equivalent to completing it... Is there anything missing?"

Jiang Yong excitedly prepared to write this review of Chen Jingxing's personal movie while Wen Siquan was springing up after returning home, and at the same time he was trying to piece together a complete picture of Chen Jingxing's personal thoughts.

"The space trilogy... What will the rest be? The wall of the heart in Aquila? Or love in The Matrix?"

The resurrection of the male protagonist at the end of "The Matrix" comes from the kiss of the female protagonist. The discussion on how the male protagonist becomes the savior is also a hot topic among movie fans. The mainstream view is of course love. This should also be what Chen Jingxing wants in "The Matrix" something to express.

He has never been so looking forward to a movie that has not even been approved for a moment. The movie that gathered a lot of stars on the Internet a while ago is obviously not the last of the space trilogy. Compared with Chen Jingxing, the name "Inception" The previous works may seem a bit too straightforward.

(End of this chapter)