Author: Gu Zhenguan/Editor: Zhang Fengyi
A few days ago, Ne Zha was confirmed to be the best international film for China.
The summer file of "Nezha" went all the way back, and finally rushed into the TOP3 of domestic box office. At this point, the top 3 domestic box office was contracted by "non-professional" directors. Jason Wu, the director of Wolf Warriors 2, studied martial arts, jiaozi, the director of Nezha, studied medicine, and Frant Gwo, the director of The Wandering Earth, studied law. This interesting phenomenon has also aroused heated discussion among netizens.
Although these three directors are not trained, in fact, their experiences are inextricably linked with the film industry.
Moreover, heroes don’t ask the source, and it is not a myth that good movies sell well. Behind the success of the three films, there is the intention of creating heroes in the times, and it is also inseparable from the ingenuity of the main creative team. In the "content is king" film market, all three films won the respect for quality and the internet thinking of "product" sales.
In fact, as the top three directors in China film history, it doesn’t matter whether they are trained or not, what matters is whether they have awe of the film. Interestingly, these three non-professional directors not only have awe of movies, but also fear of the market. This may be the key to their becoming the top three, and it is also the reason why we should give higher expectations.
The Victory of Values under "Content is King"
As early as 2017, the concept of "mass shooting era" appeared. The so-called "mass shooting era" means that it seems that everyone can be a director and make movies. But now, the market has entered the "post-auction era". After the ebb of capital hot money, the China film market has ushered in the stage of "content is king".
In the "post-mass shooting era", the biggest threshold for cross-border directors is the quality of content. Among the top three domestic box office films, "Wolf Warriors 2" scored 7.1 points with a box office of 5.68 billion; Nezha scored 8.5 points, with a box office of 4.97 billion; The Wandering Earth scored 7.9 points, with a box office of 4.65 billion. Excellent content production is the prerequisite for the three films to achieve high box office, which also reflects that the positive correlation coefficient between word-of-mouth and box office in the film market is improving.
Among the three films, Wolf Warriors 2 and The Wandering Earth both have the main melody. Among them, the success of "Wolf Warriors 2" is attributed to the factors of "the right time, the right place and the right people". For example, at that time, the audience was tired of the traffic niche, and the tough guy movies in the market were blank. However, Wolf Warriors 2 is a highly completed film in terms of script, action and special effects. In addition, the creation of "Chinese hero" makes it easier for the audience to feel the sense of security and pride brought about by the rising status of their home country.
If Liu Guoliang’s sentence "All victories are the victory of values" is used to evaluate, then "Wolf Warriors 2" is indeed stained with the bonus when the main theme film just rose. In contrast, The Wandering Earth’s main melody is not so strong. It won the box office in the Spring Festival file, not only because of the feelings of home country and Chinese’s nostalgia for his homeland, but also because it is a truly domestic sci-fi blockbuster.
As for Nezha, its success lies more in the "new compilation" of fairy tales. The story of "returning the bones to the flesh", which has been told for thousands of times, finally did not appear again, and it was no longer a fake China element. Nezha was "remolded" as a "nobody" who was born with original sin but dared to resist his fate. In addition, although the film is set in ancient times, the discussion on family education is more in line with modern thinking.
In fact, the high box office of the three films is also inseparable from the "added value" brought by the industry environment. First of all, the industrial standards of the three films are outstanding among domestic films in recent years, and promoting the industrialization process is one of the core words of China films in recent years.
Secondly, the appearance of "Wolf Warriors 2" gave birth to a "Chinese hero" that China film market has long lacked; The Wandering Earth opened the first year of China science fiction movies, and the milestone significance is beyond doubt; Nezha represents a genuine new hope for the country. It can be said that in the top three box office, there is also the audience’s affirmation of the contribution made by several films to China films.
As a guest in Today’s Film Review, Tan Fei thought that it was not accurate to call Jason Wu, jiaozi and Guo Fan "amateurs", because these people all had rich social experience and social cognition, so their grasp of audience psychology might be more accurate. Indeed, art comes from life, and jiaozi, who wrote Nezha, chewed for more than three years after graduation, switched to animation, and after a little fame, he was dormant for ten years. Finally, he realized his ideal with Nezha, and the story of Nezha breaking secular prejudice and turning his destiny was also integrated into jiaozi’s own bumpy experience.
In fact, although the three directors are non-professional, they are not without professional accumulation. Jason Wu has been in the film and television industry for more than 20 years; Frant Gwo participated in the study abroad program initiated by China Film Bureau in 2015 and studied in Hollywood. Jiaozi began to learn animation after coming into contact with MAYA in 2002. Before Nezha, he created an animated comedy short film "Fight, Fight a Big Watermelon".
Market-oriented operation driven by product thinking
Looking back at the top three films at the box office, it seems that the creative process is not particularly smooth.
When filming "Wolf Warriors 2", as an investor, Jason Wu invested 80 million yuan on real estate mortgage. As a director and starring role, Jason Wu insisted on not using body double. During the filming, he was bruised by gravel, accidentally fell on a high-altitude pipeline, injured his arm by a steel plate, and his wrist was caught in the chain … … It’s no exaggeration that Wolf Warriors 2 is called "the film that Jason Wu bought with his life".
A string of figures behind The Wandering Earth’s becoming a milestone in domestic science fiction films shocked many people: 8,000 shots, 10,000 props, and 3,000 design drawings … … But even so, because of the weak foundation of science fiction films in China, The Wandering Earth filmed half of the investors withdrawing their funds, which directly led to the collapse of the branch line of space articles in the past 30 minutes. do or die and Jason Wu invested 60 million yuan to make guest films at zero pay, which didn’t make the films difficult to produce. Later, director Frant Gwo always said, "Without Jason Wu, there would be no small broken ball."
Let’s talk about "Nezha". Director jiaozi took the team to grind the script for six months, and then changed it to 66 editions. The team designed more than 100 editions of Nezha with reference to the mythological images throughout the ages. Like science fiction films, China’s animation industry system lags far behind Hollywood. With the help of more than 60 animation production teams, such as Striped House and October Animation, and the death of director jiaozi, Nezha finally came out.
Selling money for a good film is not a myth, but more efforts are still behind the myth. As a guest of Today’s Film Review, Tan Fei said that the cross-border directors are more concerned about winning prizes in the era of mass shooting, but in the era of post-mass shooting, the original intention of these directors is more dreams and love. In the end, the audience also affirmed the sincerity of these creators and their respect for the content at the box office.
These bitter "entrepreneurial stories" later became the highlight of film marketing. When Wolf Warriors 2 was released, in addition to Weibo marketing, emotional marketing, topic marketing, group marketing and other multi-pronged approaches, Jason Wu’s "Shadow Idiot Design" for a good film was widely spread; When The Wandering Earth was released, in addition to the propaganda points of "hardcore science fiction" and "feelings for home and country" in the positions where young people such as Weibo and Tik Tok gathered, the ingenuity behind the film was constantly amplified, which incited the audience emotionally.
When "Nezha" was released, the arduous production process was also an important propaganda point, but the film marketing was more outstanding in the "CP marketing theory". The official "anti-routine" combined Ao Bing and Nezha, the traditional foes, into "Lotus Root Cake CP", which attracted a lot of second-generation fans and CP powder. Many fans produced their own UGC content, which can be described as an important driving force for "Lotus Root Cake" to become the hottest CP this summer.
It is not difficult to find that these films are more product-oriented in both content creation and marketing methods. The creative team looks at the content and marketing with the relationship between production and sales, so as to find a communication point that is more in line with the interests of contemporary audiences, so as to incite more box office space.
The surprise of China film market is far from enough.
It is true that the achievements of the top three films are inseparable from the ingenuity and pattern of the three directors, but for the current film market in China, we also need more films with higher artistic value after the genre commercial films such as Wolf Warriors 2, The Wandering Earth and Nezha gradually mature.
Whether it’s Wolf Warriors 2, The Wandering Earth or Nezha, when the box office keeps rising, they all face the question of "whether the film has been praised". In fact, these three films are not "over-praised" in terms of promoting the industrial level, cultivating the audience’s aesthetics, and breaking through China’s film types. However, if we compare the film content vertically from the film history, the three films are indeed slightly artistic.
Although the film market is diverse and inclusive, and the films have their own positioning, it is undeniable that these three films are all popular at home and have relatively limited overseas influence. Nezha’s overseas box office is about 1/250 of the mainland box office; Wolf Warriors 2’s North American box office is 2.721 million US dollars, and the local box office accounts for 99% of the global box office; The Wandering Earth’s North American box office is only one million dollars.
Nowadays, China’s film market has entered a benign stage of development, and reshaping its international influence has become one of the important propositions of the times. However, it is really difficult for domestic films to gain global popularity only by commercial films.
Not long ago, Nezha was selected as the best international film for this year’s Oscar. The story was born out of China’s traditional culture. From the perspectives of family, friendship, growth, dreams and responsibilities, Nezha has more universal value than previous films that bid for the Olympic Games. However, many netizens believe that although Nezha is a masterpiece, it is still far from the masterpiece, and it is very likely that it will capsize if it is sent to the best international film that hits the Oscar.
Over the past 20 years, China’s films have gained worldwide popularity, and most of them have won world acclaim, such as Hero, Raise the Red Lantern, Farewell My Concubine and other literary films with profound China culture. This year’s Golden Bear Award nomination for Auld Lang Syne is also very artistic.
For domestic audiences, many people think that the value of most high-grossing films in recent years can’t be compared with the works of Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige in 1980s and 1990s. Some netizens bluntly said: "These movies with high box office feel good and good when watching them, but they won’t want to see them again later. The film of the great director is that one day you suddenly think of it and watch it again with relish. "
In recent years, although the fifth and sixth generation directors are still higher in artistic achievements than many directors of the new generation and Mesozoic era, Waterloo, a veteran director of many films at the box office, has also made many film critics say: "They still understand movies, but they don’t understand the market."
The so-called ignorance of the market, in fact, objectively speaking, is that some directors are slightly derailed from the younger generation in expression, and the stories without young directors are more grounded. In addition, in marketing, veteran directors are relatively conservative, and many of them pay insufficient attention to marketing links, which is not conducive to the spread of film influence in the era of Internet announcement.
In Today’s Film Review, Tan Fei mentioned the "post-mass shooting era". The four basic abilities that directors need are aesthetic ability, artistic ability, execution ability and media ability, among which both execution ability and media ability are biased towards communication level.
A generation of directors adapt to a generation of audiences, and a new generation of directors firmly grasp the market. Can they continue to surprise the market in terms of aesthetic ability and artistic ability?