Overview of today's film market

Core Tip: Since last year, almost all China filmmakers have started to talk about "our good market". Of course, the performance of China movies in 21 was not bad, and the box office of 1 billion was indeed a record high. However, behind the rising market, there is a very sad fact: if China filmmakers had excellent works in those days, but the market could not get the audience's response, then now, under the mature market, China films have fallen into a situation of insufficient creativity in both production and distribution.

it's not alarmist. Because from all the signs revealed in the China film market since March this year, everyone has lost the passion for innovation, which has led to all kinds of strange situations: in terms of creation, everyone gathers to engage in the same theme, even if they don't get together to engage in classical masterpieces, they all gather together to make sequels, and even in terms of releasing movies, our distributors have begun to be too lazy to think: when blockbusters come, they just hide, and when there are no blockbusters, they all rush to release them.

Strange Status Quo: Crash with the Same Theme

At the Hong Kong Film Festival on March 22nd, Cai Li Foquan 21 starring Wang Baoqiang and Michelle Ye was announced to be released on May 1th. Only two days later, Cai Lifo Boxing, starring Sammo Hung and his son Hong Tianzhao, announced their schedule for April 2nd. Although the stories are different and the starring roles are different, you can definitely see that these two films actually belong to the same theme, and they are both telling stories about Cai Lifo Boxing. The release of two films "Cai Lifo" in two months is actually just a microcosm of the theme crash in the Chinese film industry this year. According to the list of films approved and filmed by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television this year, starting from April, the audience will soon see five Guan Yunchang, four the Monkey King, three Mu Guiying and three White Snake, and then prepare three tables of the Hongmen Banquet. So that someone commented, "If the director crashes like this again, the audience will have to hit the wall." Among them, the five Guan Yunchang's first meeting with you is the upcoming "Guan Yunchang" by Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen in April; And Guan Gong directed by Tian Zhuangzhuang, Wu Sheng Yun Chang directed by Yang Zi, Biography of Wu Shen directed by Chen Musheng and The Three Kingdoms directed by Gao Xixi? Although Guan Yunchang has not been finished, it has been widely publicized. Four the Monkey King's are also vying for time. Donnie Yen's Make a scene in Heaven, Stephen Chow's A Chinese Odyssey 2, Zhang Jizhong's Monkey King and another the Monkey King are all in preparation, but who can be released first is still unknown. As for the legend of "Xu Xian and the White Snake", in addition to The Legend of the White Snake starring Jet Li and Eva Huang, there is Bona Film's The Legend of the New White Snake and another related animated film. The competition for the three tables of the Hongmen Banquet is even more outrageous: Lu Chuan's The Hongmen Banquet was even forced to be changed to The Feast of the King, because before him, Li Rengang had already reported the name of the Hongmen Banquet to the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, and there was a film Liu Bang and Xiang Yu with the same nature competing with them. Besides the films adapted from these traditional masterpieces, Stephen Chow and Jet Li fought Tai Chi. Wu Yusen's Flying Tiger met Ann An's Flying Tiger and Moon Flower. It is worth noting that the themes of these crashes almost include the mainstream directors and actors in the current Chinese film market. Jiang Wen, Donnie Yen, Jet Li, Lu Chuan, Stephen Chow, John Woo ... That is to say, this is not the malicious interference of some small producers out of the mentality of "taking a handful and leaving", but the Chinese film industry has really reached this "hand-to-hand" level in terms of creative themes.

In all fairness, among these crash themes, the "slow hand" project is likely to be the original creative source of this theme type. The simplest example: In 27, Wong Kar-wai told everyone that his next film would shoot a story about Ip Man. However, in the past two years, there have been five or six films with the title "Ip Man". Even Donnie Yen has become the annual box office champion with this theme, and Wong Kar-wai's "The Grandmaster" is still being filmed. Similarly, there are Lu Chuan, Stephen Chow and John Woo. Lu Chuan's previous "Nanjing! Nanjing! "It was because the shooting period was too long that it was robbed by Rabe Diary; Stephen Chow announced that he would shoot Tai Chi two years ago, but the preparations have not been completed yet. Instead, Jet Li and Chen Guofu beat him to it, claiming that a film of the same name would be finished before the end of this year.

Cause analysis: Is the original ability of screenwriters barren or nonexistent?

If you carefully observe these "crash" themes, you will find a very interesting phenomenon. Apart from Stephen Chow's Taiji, which is a martial arts film, all the other mentioned Guan Yu, the Monkey King, Bai Niangzi and Mu Guiying are reflected in China's traditional literary masterpieces without exception. Guan Yu and the Monkey King, as characters in Four Great Classical Novels, have long been known to us, and stories about the White Snake and Mu Guiying have already appeared in the Song and Yuan Dynasties.

why do directors favor traditional literary masterpieces so much? The directors gave their own opinions. Siu Fai Mak and Zhuang Wenqiang, directors of the Donnie Yen version of Guan Yunchang, once said that choosing such a theme has at least the following advantages: First, it is relatively safe. For Hong Kong directors who are marching into the mainland, the historical theme of costume is far easier to pass the censorship than that of gangster films and realistic films. Second, the mass base is strong. Because even if you don't know these characters very well, at least you know their names and some deeds, which is more likely to cause publicity advantages before the film is released; Third, under the background of China's growing national strength, the whole society is calling for attaching importance to Chinese traditional culture. As a carrier, movies can publicize the cultural spirit of China to the whole world, and it is easier to make money and attract investment by shooting cultural symbols such as Guan Yu and the Monkey King, which have been recognized by Chinese people all over the world.

However, such a swarm of bees rushing to shoot classical masterpieces also has obvious defects. According to Ge Ying, a professor at the School of Film and Television of Shanghai University, the biggest drawback of this theme crash is that many scripts are made with the influx of hot money, so it is obviously very limited to make projects with the strategy of "short, flat and fast", because in doing so, "as long as a work is popular, no one will study why it is popular. Everyone just simply thinks that it is a good theme, and then a group of people will gather around and do the same according to this theme. Costume films are safer and are not subject to ideological restrictions. But when you open the history books, there are only a few familiar stories going back and forth, and naturally you can't avoid a collision. In this way, only when the market deteriorates will everyone realize it. " Ge Ying said. However, film critic Lang Nuolin believes that everyone's scramble to gnaw at this bone not only proves that Chinese filmmakers have a narrow vision, but also shows that the original ability of screenwriters has fallen into desolation.

Huang Chenxing, a film critic, has a slightly different view on the "barren theory" of screenwriter's original ability. In his view, so far, domestic film writers are not a problem of the decline of originality at all, but have not formed "originality" at all: "How many real classic films are there in China that are formed through original scripts? Especially in the last thirty years. Taking stock of the classic China films over the years, you will find that most of them are directors who' accidentally' found a novel and then adapted it into a script. Zhang Yimou's Red Sorghum is a novel by Mo Yan, Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine is a novel by Li Bihua, Xiaogang Feng's representative works in his early years are all adapted from Wang Shuo's novels, Jiang Wen's Sunny Days is also a novel by Wang Shuo, and even Let the Bullets Fly, which created the highest box office last year, is also a novel by Ma Shitu. Therefore, if we only talk about China mainland movies, we must admit that the original ability of screenwriters has never reached the point where they can support the box office-there must be an excellent novel as the blueprint.

strange status quo: sequels have become a trend

sequels are certainly not a bad thing. However, in 211, in addition to the same theme, there were many sequels in China movies, on the one hand, it was a repetition of the same theme, on the other hand, it was a continuation of the same theme. Obviously, this is not a normal phenomenon. Yes, just as you don't want to see Guan Yunchang five times a year, you don't want to watch an episode of the Painted Skin, Love or Legend of the Wulin every year. After all, this is a cinema, this is not a TV set, and we are not extravagant enough to want to watch TV dramas in the cinema-it costs at least 8 yuan every time we go in.

For the movie market, making sequels is a very common thing. There are 27 sequels released in Hollywood this year, breaking the record of 24 sequels in 23, and there is a sequel almost every two weeks. However, compared with the "series movies" that Hollywood blockbusters strive to create, China's films with the prefix "2" lack not only originality, but a systematic packaging consciousness. The simplest example, the American Harry? The seventh film in the Potter series has been filmed now, but from the first film, almost everyone knows that it will be a series of movies. Investors and distributors of the film will also formulate different publicity strategies according to different films. In China, up to now, all sequel to the movie films have been made passively. Whether it's You Are the One 2, which won nearly 4 million box office, or Ip Man 2, which won both word-of-mouth and box office, before the first film was released, the director's answer to everyone was "Look at the box office of the first film, and if the box office is good, we will consider making a sequel."

This typical passivity can be seen from The Eavesdropping 2, which was announced in Hong Kong at the end of February. At the end of Wiretapping, the roles of Louis Koo and Daniel Wu are actually dead, and Liu Qingyun is jailed. Due to the good response of the film before, producer Tung shing Yee summed up the reason that the combination of these three people can bring good box office, so when preparing for the new film, the biggest idea is to use these three characters, but neither their names nor identities have anything to do with The Eavesdropping Storm, because the first episode didn't leave them any room to continue. And this "sequel", in fact, is completely taking advantage of the reputation of the old film, belonging to a type of over-development.

Similarly, there is The Painted Skin 2. In 29, Chen Jiashang's "The Painted Skin" also left little room at the end: although the main positive characters didn't hurt much, the fox demon played by Zhou Xun, the biggest selling point, had exhausted all her skills and was almost dead, so it was almost impossible to keep the original class to shoot the story about the "Painted Skin".

In fact, the appearance of this phenomenon has a lot to do with China's lack of series vision. Take "7", the most profitable series in the world, for example. In almost every episode of the 7 story, the protagonist will encounter new problems, and as long as 7 himself is not dead, the film can continue if any other protagonist is replaced. China's sequel to the movie's biggest problem at present is that investors underestimate the influence of a single protagonist, and they prefer to keep the "original crew" of the pros and cons when the first episode is successful. Once the protagonist is damaged in the first episode, people's expectation index for this "pseudo-sequel" will inevitably drop.

Cause analysis: I want to make money, but I'm afraid of risks

On the issue of Chinese film directors getting together to make sequels, Siu Fai Mak and Zhuang Wenqiang, two screenwriters and directors of Eavesdropping, said that when they first wrote Eavesdropping, they had thought about making this story into a series of movies. However, because the prospect of economic crimes reflected in the film was not clear, according to the opinions of investors, they still made great efforts to build the first story. Only after the mainland box office of the film exceeded 8 million did investors express their willingness to shoot a sequel. At this time, there was not much room for the original story to be explored, so they had to start a new stove.

It is normal for Wu Ershan, the director of Painted Skin 2, to say that this phenomenon is short-sighted. In his view, this is just one of the signs that the film market in China has begun to mature, because the first episode has been proved to be suitable for this market, and there are corresponding audiences. "If you look closely, you can find that many Chinese films that are flooded with hot money are basically shooting some new stories, and most of them have already filmed sequels in the market. That is to say, investors have also begun to turn to caution, knowing that this type of film and series can make money before continuing to invest. " Successful film sequels are often not made by the director of the first episode, which is the practice of the mature film industry. For example, there are four directors in the four episodes of Alien series, which shows that the mature producer system maintains the existence of a film series.

Of course, it's not that mainland filmmakers haven't taken the initiative to create a series of films. For example, Han Sanping, the head of China Film Group, the largest film company at present, is looking for a suitable theme for making a series of films in various films. But there is a lot of controversy about his choice mode. For example, he is very optimistic about the movie "Tough Guy". Although the first episode itself only achieved 1 million, both the box office and the word-of-mouth received a mediocre response, but he just felt that this kind of urban hero theme was suitable for making a series of movies, so Sheng Ding, the director of the film, almost suggested to continue filming. Sheng Ding himself admitted in an interview with reporters, "When it comes to the sequel, I am actually not ready."

Moreover, almost all the interviewees admitted that if a successful sequel is to be made, the most important thing is to establish the style of the sequel itself and keep the audience fresh. "Without the existence of the first episode, it can become a complete movie, which is a qualified sequel." From the current situation, due to the lack of investors' eyes, it is often required to have a certain connection with the first sequel, so what we can see in a short time will only be a low-quality repetition, and the damage caused by this repetition to those classic commercial films before is not what investors should consider.

Strange status quo: "one-day tour to the cinema"

If the repetition of themes and the proliferation of sequels will only lead to the decline of audience's enthusiasm for watching movies, then the "one-day tour to the cinema" of a large number of small and medium-sized films will do more harm to China's film from the box office to a higher goal. Because we don't want to see Guan Yunchang, we can have other choices, but if the cinema is full of "unheard of" movies, as an audience, even the cinema doesn't want to go in.

The simplest example is that there were more than 2 films released in March, many of which were "one-day trips to cinemas". One day, the reporter planned to see a movie, but when he got to the cinema, he found that the movie he wanted to see had already gone offline, so he easily chose another one from the dense schedule, but when he entered the cinema, he found that only four poor people were watching the movie. This phenomenon is not a case. In 21, the output of feature films in China reached 526, and only about 26 were actually shown in cinemas. And the box office is over 1 million