director of the millennium

Jiang Wen's career development in recent years has indeed been somewhat subtle.

The movie "Let the Bullets Fly" released in 2010 can be said to have brought him to the pinnacle of his career, and he was even deified by movie fans.

After the release of "Let the Bullets Fly", "Let the bullets fly for a while" became a popular Internet phrase, and various lines from the movie also became popular on the Internet, and now they have even reached the level of being "approved for World Heritage".

It can be said that the movie "Let the Bullets Fly" not only made Jiang Wen earn a fortune, but also made him an indispensable director in the history of Chinese cinema. Even fifty or one hundred years later, this movie will probably still be mentioned.

For any filmmaker, being able to make a movie like this is enough in this lifetime.

But Jiang Wen definitely wouldn’t think so.

Even the movie "Let the Bullets Fly" is not the most satisfying movie for Jiang Wen. After all, in his opinion, the movie is still a little too "vulgar". Simply put, the metaphors are too straightforward, so straightforward that they can't be considered metaphors, but completely explicit.

This is still not enough for Jiang Wen, who has always loved leaving blank spaces in the movie plot, retaining room for imagination, and incorporating more profound meanings so that fans may not understand it the first time and need to watch it repeatedly to understand it.

So, in the next few years, he released "One Step Away" in 2014 and "Hidden Man" in 2018. These two films, together with "Let the Bullets Fly", are called Jiang Wen's "Republic of China Trilogy", or "Beiyang Trilogy".

However, compared to the heated discussion and rave reviews that "Let the Bullets Fly" sparked, the latter two films were confusing and pretentious to movie fans.

"One Step Away" earned 5.1 million yuan at the box office, but at least 3 million of that came from movie fans who came for the reputation accumulated by "Let the Bullets Fly", but they came with high hopes but left disappointed.

The box office of "Hidden Man" was higher than that of "One Step Away", with a box office of 5.8 million yuan. However, considering the growth of the mainland film market over the years, this result is actually declining instead of increasing. Even if we only consider the box office of the movie, the investors may not be able to make back their investment.

But it would be wrong to say that these two movies were not well made.

Movie fans don’t actually think that these two films are badly made. At least in terms of the pictures and the character performances, they are both top-notch Chinese-language films.

But both films are too "profound", and the completeness of the multi-threaded narrative needs to be improved. In other words, they are too self-centered. Except for director Jiang Wen, most other ordinary movie fans did not quite understand the complex and multi-threaded narratives and character relationships in the films, as well as the deeper secrets behind them.

It seemed that Jiang Wen tried to press the fans' heads and make them understand her complicated inner thoughts, but ultimately failed as few people could understand.

Wu Yuan could understand Jiang Wen's thoughts very well.

He wants to “earn money while doing nothing”!

The success of "Let the Bullets Fly" made Jiang Wen believe that he had the ability to make money without having to compromise with business, that is, he could still make movies that the public loved to watch without having to compromise with business.

Even if you shoot the movie according to your own ideas without considering any commercial returns, you can still be sought after by movie fans.

Well, imagination is beautiful, but reality is very skeletal. Obviously, the attempts of the two films have proved that this money really cannot be earned standing up, at least Jiang Wen can't do it. He must make more compromises with the business, not to say kneeling, but at least bend down, be less self-expressive, and consider the fans' ability to understand and commercial things more, so that fans can accept his movies.

But Jiang Wen really doesn’t understand this stuff, or even if he does, he doesn’t want to do it, otherwise he wouldn’t be called Jiang Wen.

The biggest compromise he made to commercialism was to get Xu Qing to show off her body in "Evil Does Not Suppress Justice", and this was because he himself enjoyed watching it, not just because the audience liked it.

Wu Yuan did not expect to convince Jiang Wen, so when faced with Jiang Wen's constant complaints about how the audience couldn't understand his movies, how the minds of this generation of audiences were as simple as single-celled organisms, and how there was no such thing as movies without art, Wu Yuan could only smile and console her:
"It's okay. Audiences that understand you will naturally always like your movies. Audiences that don't understand you are not your target audience."

"Which is the fixed standard for commercial or not commercial?"

“Just make the movies you want to make.”

Well, Wu Yuan said this unkindly, but Jiang Wen just fell for it, and the depressed look on her face immediately lessened a lot.

If a big director like Wu Yuan says so, then his idea of ​​making money without doing anything is definitely right!
As for whether Wu Yuan made the money by doing it?

At least in Jiang Wen's opinion, there are, because most of Wu Yuan's Chinese-language films cannot be regarded as purely commercial films. They all carry some deeper exploration. For example, "Painted Skin" explores "Do you love the soul or the body", "Ready Player One" is a reflection on virtuality and reality, and "Love Letter" is the conflict between the wrong time and the right love.

All in all, these are not movies that are purely commercial for the sake of commerciality, like Marvel superhero movies or low-brow comedies.

In Jiang Wen's opinion, Wu Yuan has undoubtedly achieved both satisfying his own ideas and commercial needs while making movies, and he has made money without any effort!
However, if he had watched "The Monkey King", he might have wavered in his conclusion.
Because "The Monkey King" is really a pure commercial popcorn movie, without any depth or artistry, and there is no theme worth exploring in depth after watching the movie.
Closer to home.

After chatting with Jiang Wen for a few words, Wu Yuan also chatted with Chen Kaige and Feng Xiaogang.

Chen Kaige and Jiang Wen can be considered as brothers in distress. After entering 2010, the film industry has been extremely difficult. Jiang Wen at least achieved his peak with "Let the Bullets Fly", but Chen Kaige's films since "The Promise" have received worse and worse reviews, and now he is almost becoming box office poison.

He seemed to be somewhat discouraged in the film industry, and now his focus was on supporting the next generation. When chatting with Wu Yuan, he often brought up the topic of his second son, implying that he hoped Wu Yuan would give him a hand.

Feng Xiaogang does have pursuits in movies, and those are pursuits in the field of literature and art. "Youth" not only had a box office of 14 billion yuan, but also had great reputation. It's a pity that he had great ambitions in making this movie, in order to win awards, so he followed Zhang Yimou's example and made such a movie telling a story about the s.

As a result, although this film received many nominations in both sides of the Taiwan Strait and Hong Kong, including some heavyweight awards, it ultimately failed to win any awards. The only award it received was Best Picture and Best Director at the first Saipan International Film Festival, but this had little influence, and it was also the first overseas film festival, so winning the award was indeed of little significance.

Feng Xiaogang was also chatting with Wu Yuan about winning awards. His idea was the same as Zhang Guorong's. They had both made enough money, and now all they lacked was the most important reputation. So he put all his attention on winning awards.

Unfortunately, Wu Yuan was unable to help. After all, he didn't have any good art film ideas to give out right now. Even if he did, he certainly wouldn't give them to Feng Xiaogang. He could only look around and talk about other things.

After much difficulty, after talking to several big directors, the guests and media from the various screening rooms finally took their seats one after another, and today's premiere finally officially began! (End of this chapter)