This director needs to apologize

Chapter 199 Big Earthquake Youth Movie

The big event in August is that Wang Xiaogang's epic disaster movie "Earthquake" is finally released.

Thanks to Xiaogang Canouhe, Chen Yiming was spared the trouble of attending the premiere, but he still contributed a movie ticket.

After all, director Xiaogang said that he was not Chinese, and Chen Yiming was publicly criticized by him several times. Even if it was to keep his Chinese nationality, he had to go and see it in person.

Judging from the early publicity, "Earthquake" should be the kind of earth-shattering scene like "The Ark". The price increase of 50 yuan a ticket is naturally deserved, and Chen Yiming is willing to pay for it.

However, after watching the movie, he couldn't help but feel a little bit like Prime Minister Zhuge had finished writing "Shi Shi Biao", and he was confused.

Fortunately, he brought a large pack of tissues, but he didn't use any of them.

The first ten minutes of the movie are great. The noisy fireworks and dim life immediately transport Chen Yiming to that strange era more than 30 years ago.

Then came 5 minutes of earthquakes shaking mountains and houses collapsing. As expected of Hollywood's top special effects team, the effect was truly explosive.

Escape, self-rescue, and rescuing others are all considered normal here.

But then something went wrong. The husband rushed home to save the children, but was crushed to death under the rubble after an aftershock. The wife faced an ultimate problem. A pair of twin children were trapped on both sides of the room. She had to choose one of the two to save.

Chen Yiming was already into Oz at that time, Wang Defa, Director Wang, are you serious?
  Even if you want to set up an issue to torture human nature, there is no need to arrange it in such a scene where the whole country is sad, right?
  There were indeed a lot of tears in the audience around him, but Chen Yiming himself was completely out of his element.

Returning to God's perspective, Chen Yiming can examine Director Wang's masterpiece from a purely professional perspective.

The daughter who was given up survived, and the son who was chosen was disabled. This development was naturally within the expectations of screenwriter Chen.

The wife who made the decision and the son who was reborn must bear the original sin, and the daughter who was accidentally rescued also lives in resentment. In the final analysis, everyone should not think about it.

Afterwards, Director Wang spent 2 hours telling the 30-year history of China, taking the audience to experience how a city destroyed by an earthquake can regain its new life, and how a broken family can move forward separately. .

In the end, of course, the family reconciled and reunited. The arrangement was indeed exquisite, but because Chen Yiming guessed the ending early, he was not moved at all.

The co-authorship is such an "epic disaster masterpiece". The first fifteen minutes are a disaster, and the last two hours are epic. The two are not close to each other at all.

Isn't this a family ethics drama? If the background is pushed forward a few years, and one of the two options is to replace the city children with going to the countryside, there is no sense of violation.

No wonder Chen Yiming always felt that the main plot of the movie seemed familiar. In the 90s, this kind of painful and scarred TV series was particularly popular in China. When he was doing homework, he was forced to sit in on many of them, and he knew all the routines.

Other TV series can be shot for thirty or fifty episodes at a time, and some of them have space for foreshadowing and exaggeration. Director Wang uses the duration of a movie to shoot a long series, and the pace is inevitably too fast and too simple.

Therefore, every character in the movie is like an actor in a stage play, changing every scene. Growth only has results but no process.

Chen Yiming's emotions were torn apart by the rhythm of the movie. By the time the Gao Dynasty scene where the family recognized each other came, he had no feelings at all.

His aging wife cried heartbrokenly on the big screen, but Chen Yiming only found her noisy.

On the way home, Chen Yiming couldn't help but think about how he would handle this story if it were him.

The first thing to bear the brunt of is to combine disaster and epic into one, or simply give up epic and only shoot disaster, instead of forcibly piecing together the first half and the second half like now.

It is said that it is a film about the past of China, but the historical events of the past thirty years have been avoided and downplayed. Chen Yiming can understand the pressure of passing the review, but to shoot such a superficial and sloppy film, it is better to abandon the epic feeling and abandon the grand narrative.

If it goes the way of a typed disaster film, the length of the main shock and aftershocks will be extended, and the three-line narrative of the family can be run through from beginning to end.

The main perspective is on the resentful daughter. Every time she wakes up from a nightmare, she has to relive the sad past of being abandoned by her biological mother.

Another parallel line is her twin brother who has telepathy with her. He is pulled into his sister's nightmares again and again, and has to repeatedly relive the memories he has always wanted to forget.

Chen Yiming patted his head and said that Director Wang was using his routine. Isn't he also very routine now? When he saw the twin siblings, he thought of telepathy.

Picking up people's wisdom without any original ideas.

From the telepathy in the nightmare, he thought of Xiangrui's "Super Sense". It seems that the movie will be released in the next few days, right?
  After returning home, Chen Yiming turned on his computer and made a video call to Xiangrui.

Five minutes later, Xiangrui's face appeared on the screen.

Chen Yiming smiled and said, "Your face is glowing. It seems that the movie has done well after it was released?" Xiangrui, who was opposite him, raised his hand and rubbed the board that he had just managed. He looked very embarrassed, "That's right, don't you see? Who will take action? It opened in 1200 theaters, with a box office of 680 million in the first week, and the film was so popular that it was all over the place."

"Hey, this must be ranked among the top five in North America's summer season. Our director Fu became an instant hit."

Xiangrui waved his hand with a smile, "No, Director Chen was so complimentary. He was only ranked sixth in a single week, and there is still a huge gap of [-] from fifth."

"With these results, I think I'll have no problem graduating. What are your plans next? The Hollywood giants must be eyeing you, a rising star, right?"

"That's not the case. The media put all the credit on Lily, and I, a cute new director, have no sense of existence.

After the movie is released and I get my degree, I will return to China and join Bo Jue. You must take me in. "

"That's natural. The number one female director in China, who is better than She Xiangrui? Bo Jue is still waiting for you to lead her."

The two bragged and slapped each other for half an hour before Chen Yiming ended the call.

Taking into account Xiangrui's return to China, the script "writing" that he had temporarily interrupted due to "Mulan" also needs to be put on the agenda.

With Xiangrui's current strength, it would be a waste to give him another role as an assistant director. The cycle of "Mulan" is relatively long, and the company's current financial pressure is not great. It can be done in parallel and let Xiangrui take on a small-cost project to test the waters.

So the question is, in the current market stage, which types of films have greater hope of breaking out?
  Chen Yiming opened the webpage and scanned the theater movies released in the first half of the year.

It may be that "Pandora" was too powerful a shot in the arm. After it was released with a box office of 15 billion, the Chinese film market was a little listless throughout the first half of the year.

So far, only 13 movies have exceeded 5 million yuan, including 6 Hollywood blockbusters, 1 Hong Kong movies, [-] cartoon for children, and only one mainland movie.

"Run La La Run" may sound like its title is a bit over the line, but it's actually a female workplace movie directed and starred by Gong Rui, which grossed 1.5 million at the box office.

This is already the best result for a domestic genre film. The ones ranked ahead of it are either Hollywood visual effects blockbusters or magically modified period costume films produced by Hong Kong City, which have no reference value at all.

In fact, "Run La La Run" was not able to be typecast to the end, because the heroine fell in love again just after her career started.

Chen Yiming's box office performance continues to decline. Above 5000 million, there are two martial arts films, two romance films, and two comedies, either with big casts or sequels to famous works.

Further down, there are finally a few thrillers on the list in the 2000 million category, such as "Hotel in the Desert", "Heartbeat in the Midnight", and "Alien Apartment". Just by looking at the names, they smell like bad movies.

I clicked on the fava beans and checked, and sure enough, one scored 3.9, one scored 4.2, and one scored 3.5, all of which are the stuff of seven-day tours in theaters.

Thriller films are not easy to make in China because they are not allowed to be produced. Chen Yiming does have some reserves of psychological thriller scripts, but with the current market capacity, it is obviously difficult to maximize the box office potential.

There are only two opportunities to take it out, or a similar dark horse film successfully breaks through and opens the box office ceiling of this genre. Or there may be a large number of low-quality, money-grabbing movies being released together, causing the audience to develop a rebellious mentality.

No matter what the situation is, it means that the audience for this type of film has formed a considerable scale, which is enough to support the recovery of investment in medium-cost production.

Now is obviously not the time. Chen Yiming silently said sorry to domestic horror film lovers, please endure the abuse of bad movies for a while longer.

If we follow the example of "La La Run" and let the female director Xiangrui make a female-themed movie, it will be just right.

The problem is that Chen Yiming is already tinkering with "Mulan". If the next film has a female theme and "Holiday" with a female protagonist, it will easily lead to Bo Jue being defined and categorized by the media and movie fans. This is not a good thing.

Chen Yiming referred to the memories of his previous life. Regardless of chick flicks and comedy movies, in the next few years, it seems that the only ones that will have some climate-friendly themes are youth movies.

Buffy Zhao's "Youth" and Xiao Siguo's "Tiny Times" are both milestones in the history of Chinese film, pioneering high-profile movies, and have been the wealth code of capital for the next N years.

Fighting (tearing), love, breakup, youth three-piece suit as the main line, physical disability represented by pregnancy, and mental disability led by amnesia, as one or two sub-lines, various permutations and combinations, and then forming a traffic lineup. You can show it and make money.

After "Wolf Warrior 2" and "The God of Medicine" are released and open up more tracks, and the audience who grew up with youth films have also graduated and started working, youth films can change their shell and be packaged into the "Predecessor" series [-] Four again.

There is currently no similar film on the market. Chen Yiming can easily save a book with a passing grade or above. The project will be approved in the second half of the year and will be released next year.

He was a little bit reluctant to fool Xiangrui with this Xiang-flavored chocolate, and it seemed that he didn't take Director Fu's reputation seriously.

After much deliberation, I still had no choice but to resort to magic reform and take (copy) a movie with a mature structure from the previous life and adapt it locally.

(End of this chapter)