Although the Spring Festival file is still not over, "The Wandering Earth" has already sat firmly on the throne of the Champion of the Spring Festival file. On the third day of the Chinese New Year, "The Wandering Earth" counterattacked "Crazy Alien" to become the single-day box office champion, and on the fourth day of the Chinese New Year, the number of films scheduled for "The Wandering Earth" also increased from the initial 11.5% to 30.3%, nearly tripled.
Maoyan Professional Edition's box office prediction for "The Wandering Earth" is 5.334 billion yuan
But with the rise of "The Wandering Earth" at the box office, it is an increasingly torn field of public opinion. After the Douban score was made public, the rating of "The Wandering Earth" was 8.4 points, which is the best reputation among many films released during the Spring Festival; with the increase in criticism, the rating has also begun to decline, and as of February 8, it has slowly dropped to 8 points (with 319,000 people scoring). A "Wandering Earth, Fail." After the article was released on the WeChat public account, it quickly became 100,000+ and became the mainstream voice criticizing "The Wandering Earth".
The Wandering Earth, Fail. Screenshot of the article. The author explained why the film was not passed from four aspects, such as scientific setting and script creation, and some of the wording was more exciting.
A hundred schools of thought are good, and it is normal to have different evaluations of a movie, but the controversy surrounding "The Wandering Earth" seems to be gradually deviating from the track of rational discussion, whether it is a popular article or a hot review area of Douban, many reviews are mixed with labeling, hats, standing positions, asking motives, and emotion and radicalization have become a mainstream.
This is an important opportunity for reflection: in the noisy Internet age, when the threshold for criticism is lowered, do we need some consensus of comment? What kind of critical ethics do we need to establish?
The Wandering Earth, Fail. After the article was posted on Douban, the comments at the bottom were listed. A small number of people discuss the film with the author, and most of them directly give the author a hat.
Does the controversy mean that there is no standard in criticism?
The Wandering Earth, Fail. After it became a blockbuster article, the public account published a "Reply to the comments on < Wandering Earth, Failing > Article". The second entry in the reply reads: "There are a large number of opponents who think that it is too unobjective for me to play one star. Some of the remarks are very interesting: 'Playing five stars does have an element of encouragement and an element of feelings, but you play a star is too unobjective'. Art criticism is inherently subjective. Asking art criticism to be objective is a very rude and ignorant act. ”
We often hear the phrase, "Ten thousand Hamlets in the hearts of ten thousand readers", and the "ten thousand" in this sentence is a fictitious reference, which expresses that art criticism is subjective, and that different readers may have different views. However, many critics have written a lifetime of commentary, and may also use "ten thousand" as a real reference, and use this as a support for art criticism without standards.
This is actually a very low-level mistake – because everything has the most basic standards. What is beautiful, what is ugly, what is good, what is evil, the specific cognition of each person may be different, but this does not mean that beauty, ugliness, good, and evil are nothing, they are relativistic; they all have some kind of substance and standard, according to which we will not regard beautiful things as ugly, and we will not regard evil as good. All the education we receive—whether moral, personality, or aesthetic—is designed to help us shape correct and normal cognitive and evaluation systems.
In this way, we have the so-called "four classics", there are all kinds of selection of hundreds of classic movies in the past century, there are Douban top 250 movie lists, there are various award ceremonies - all of which are to establish some kind of beautiful and classic standards.
Art criticism can have a subjective component, but it is not a subjective thing; to be objective is not to say that there can only be one voice, but that we cannot deviate from the most basic aesthetic standards, just as we cannot give "Dream of the Red Chamber" a score without any basis, and also call it "a hundred schools of thought".
Understanding this truth, let's evaluate "The Wandering Earth". For the evaluation of a movie, be sure to put it in a most basic coordinate system. Obviously, the two most basic coordinates of "The Wandering Earth" are science fiction movies in film history and Chinese science fiction movies. From the perspective of film history, although it is not as good as science fiction classics, "The Wandering Earth" is at least above the qualified line, whether it is a value or special effects display, so foreign media such as the New York Times have given praise; and if placed in the coordinates of Chinese science fiction films, "The Wandering Earth" is like many people praised, "opening the first year of Chinese science fiction films", which is of great significance.
In the coordinates of Chinese science fiction movies, "The Wandering Earth" deserves praise
On the basis of the coordinate system, critics can carry out specific discussions according to their own interests, such as discussing performances, special effects, etc.; but an objective premise that cannot be changed is that "The Wandering Earth" is qualified in the coordinate system. Ordinary viewers have the right to rate according to their own preferences, but if professional film critics are still very subjective and erase all with a certain shortcoming, it is irresponsible for their own profession - after all, the art industry should have a specialty.
As a film critic, many times I try to be "tolerant", although I know that criticism is the easiest - you just have to set the standard as the height of "The Godfather" and "Citizen Kane", even the best movie you can say a lot of shortcomings - readers often think that the criticism of the film review has the most "depth". Such criticisms are deflated, but they are "out of reach", and they do not mean much to the situation of Chinese films, because they have lost the most basic constructiveness.
I personally don't think "The Wandering Earth" is a classic, but if professional film critics break away from the basic evaluation coordinate system to play a star, I will feel that this harshness is "sensationalism". I'm reminded of a quote from Auden, "It's at least a stupid thing to spread your peacock wings at a pile of garbage at any time; if you put all your passion into chasing all types of flies, you'll end up finding your favorite place right in the toilet".
Therefore, I personally don't like "The Wandering Earth, Fail" at all. Articles like this, its writing is extreme and blocks too much valuable stuff. As Ross put it in The Theory of Justice, "I don't want to raise objections to these examples; because it would be too easy to do so and would ignore something important." Discovering beauty and saying where the good is is much more difficult and meaningful than picking out insignificant problems.
From the original to the adaptation, is it good to follow the original?
Part of the controversy in The Wandering Earth comes from the original party. Of course, the dispute between the original party and the adaptation party did not start with "The Wandering Earth", and naturally did not end in "The Wandering Earth". The reason why the controversy over the original work and adaptation has risen over the years is because under the ip boom, adaptation has become a norm, but few can adapt first-class novels into first-class films and television, and the original party naturally rises up and attacks, and is highly sensitive to adaptation.
The emotions of the original party can be understood, but there should also be three basic understandings of the adaptation: First, the adaptation is another form of originality, which has the privilege of any re-creation. Our evaluation of the adapted work should not be a personal evaluation of "different from the original", let alone a moral accusation of "spoiling the classic", but a more market-oriented evaluation standard: good or bad. As long as it looks good, how do you adapt it, and if it is not good, what is the benefit of you reproducing the original?
Like many films adapted from second-rate novels, the final film product is first-class, like Stephen King's "The Shawshank Redemption" and Mario Puzo's "The Godfather" are not the most first-class novels, but the films adapted on this basis, "The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Godfather" series have become film history classics. If the movie "The Godfather" is really like the original party said to "respect the original work", then it may only be a second-rate movie. It can be seen that "respect for the original work" is not a universal criticism model, and it is not always effective.
Second, adapting a novel into a movie has always been a technical job. The reason is very simple, these are two completely different types of literature and art, one appeals to words, one appeals to images; one is very dense in content, one is appealed to intuitive visual effects, and the narrative must be simplified. Therefore, in the process of adaptation, it is necessary to recreate it for the sake of plot, picture, viewability, imaging, popularization, and commercialization.
This should be understood, not nitpicked. Like "The Wandering Earth", it mainly borrows the setting of Liu Cixin's novel "The Sun Expands, Human Beings Build Planetary Engines", and derives a new story on the basis of the setting. Some critics have pointed out that before the "Wandering Earth" project began in the original work, there was a dispute between the "Earth Escape Faction" and the "Spaceship Escape Faction", and if it could be retained in the film, the film would be more logically smooth. That being said, in a two-hour science fiction film, there are too many such dramas, which is bound to lead to fewer visual scenes and less watchability. It is completely understandable that the filmmakers made such a trade-off.
Third, for a large-scale commercial blockbuster, it is never just for fans of the original, but more people who have never seen the original, do not know who Liu Cixin is or even do not know what science fiction movies are. This also touches on another fundamental controversy about The Wandering Earth: the science fiction world it presents is simplified compared to fiction.
As some scholars have pointed out, the number of science fiction fans has a certain positive correlation with the economic development level of a country or region, and the more developed the society, the more science fiction fans there are, and the more classic science fiction novels there are. Liu Cixin was the first person in contemporary Chinese science fiction, "single-handedly pulling Chinese science fiction literature to a world-class height". But we have to admit that China is a country with no science fiction soil, and the understanding of science fiction by ordinary people may be very simple, such as "science fiction = science fiction = blockbusters = special effects". Liu Cixin's novels strive to be profound, but as a commercial film, we must strive to popularize, the more popular and simple the better, the more successful it can be marketized; and only by letting more people enter the cinema, the Chinese science fiction soil will become deeper and deeper - this is the market condition for the birth of classics.
Therefore, measuring "Crazy Aliens" and "The Wandering Earth" by the standards of Liu Cixin's novels is an important critical angle, but it should not be the only one. Liu Cixin himself said this: "People ask me how your novel is successful, and I say, 'As long as a person reads my novel and does something he has never done before on the night road, that is, he looks up at the starry sky, and this is considered a success.'" The biggest significance of China's science fiction movies in the future is that it expands our horizons, it makes our lives come out of the acres and thirds of the Chinese, lets us see farther, and lets us expand our life experience in the time and space that we have not experienced. ”
The evaluation method of "guessing the individual" should be abandoned
The last controversy surrounding "The Wandering Earth" comes from the value orientation presented by the film and the "dislike" of Liu Cixin and Wu Jing.
For example, the article "Reply to the Comments on the < Wandering Earth, Failing >" wrote, "The values of the Wandering Earth movie emit a stench." Isn't it enough that the film has so many people insulting and insulting critics? During the interview, Liu Cixin insisted that if he continued to pass on human civilization, he could eat the female host... I am quite disgusted with Liu Cixin for this. ”
Several douban popular short comments are written as follows: "A good science fiction film should first admit human ignorance and look at the relationship between man and the universe from a human perspective, rather than plunging into narrow family disputes and big country feelings." ”
"It was about to shock me to death in the theater seat." The film has a science fiction setting without a science fiction spirit, and each character is in a state of brain hypoxia that has been long-term victimized by collectivism. ”
In terms of knowledge, there are also such questions: "Is there anyone who does not want to watch "The Wandering Earth" because of Wu Jing?" The questioner wrote, "I really hate Wu Jing, this kind of straight male cancer + brainless little pink starring film, is really not interested in contributing to the box office, the original wolf warrior 2 has made me disgusted, so I don't want to see what space wolf, do you understand and agree with my ideas?" ”
Knowing the question
Privilege, collectivism, nationalism, little pink... These are the key words mentioned by critics. Critics object to an extreme state of these emotions, and their position, based on the basic logic of liberalism, is "to argue against public power." Everyone has their own value position, which is understandable, but these critics show a cynical posture: they have lost the ability and courage to criticize public power head-on, so they turn to "guessing the individual" and turning to "bad guessing of the individual." Behind the "evil guessing of public power" is "treating individuals well", but the critics are just the opposite, they are "aphasia of public power, bad guessing of private rights", along with the most simple emotions are smeared. Pan-politicized evaluation models are making a comeback, often giving dissidents all kinds of big hats, and labeling thinking is rampant.
In fact, the home-country ideology and collectivist feelings revealed in "The Wandering Earth" are beyond reproach, and even if you do not agree, you will not necessarily stigmatize this emotion. But in the case of critics, they label these emotions as "brainwashing," as if you were moved by that emotion, that you were "losing the ability to think" and "brainwashed." This kind of labeling is precisely the embodiment of extremism, intellectual withering, and intellectual laziness.
Labeling is not only reflected in some critics, but also in some of the extreme supporters of The Wandering Earth. For those critics who have hit one or two stars, some extreme supporters have also been on the platform at every turn, and the big political hat has been buttoned up, as if your criticism of Wu Jing and criticism of "The Wandering Earth" is "unpatriotic". Many people are very keen to "turn over the old account" to see how this person has scored, how he has spoken, and what kind of value position he has held in the past, so as to negate his current behavior; as if you have made a little careless remark in the past, it means that you have lost the right to normal evaluation today. But everything will change, people's thinking and value tendencies are the same, when I was a child, I loved to look at Qiong Yao, and now I may feel childish; before it was "cents", now it may also be "little pink" - for such changes should be forgiveness and respect, these are inalienable private rights.
In short, pan-politicization is the enemy of creation and criticism, and anyone should be vigilant about this, but when it comes to the private domain and private rights of others, please be careful in words and deeds. If you love "The Wandering Earth", then more people in Amway will go to the cinema to support it, rather than indiscriminately labeling one-star critics as "sunspots" and "water troops", and even cursing other people's families. If you don't like Liu Cixin and Wu Jing, you probably don't look at their works, but because of the so-called values, you laugh at their works and supporters, and you think you stand out from the crowd, but instead reveal your "small in the robe".