As a contemporary writer and screenwriter, Wang Shuo has a pivotal position in the history of Chinese cinema, with the highlight moments when four novels were put on the big screen in a year, and the happy days of relying on women to raise them. Chengquan Feng Xiaogang, Ge You and other top celebrities in the industry, loved Lao Xu and scolded celebrities, and now he is over sixty years old, but he is about to be forgotten by Generation Z.
Ten years ago, a movie with Wang Shuo's sign was a cash cow, no need to publicize more, no need to spell traffic, these two words to that swing, the audience will automatically buy it. Who would have thought that now the "old cannon" Wang Shuo can not move Wenqing, his latest work "The Wonders of Immortality" was released for 2 days at the box office of just over 10 million, Douban reviews only more than 800 people.
Wang Shuo himself did not give voice to the publicity for the film, and he was not put on the table by the film to shout. Is Wang Shuo really unable to fight, or is there something strange behind "The Wonder of Immortality"?
A film that is difficult to define
"The Strange Story of Immortality" tells the story of Guo Xiaolu (Wang Chuanjun) and Su Lingfang (Wang Luodan) who were young and lost contact due to a change, Su Lingfang said that when she grew up, her wish was to become a doctor, and with the hope of meeting Su again, Guo Xiaolu was admitted to a medical school in Beijing.
In Beijing, the two have been reunited for a long time but have long been human, and when Guo Xiaolu sees Su who is longing for her heart, she has become a singer with heavy makeup and no fixed place, and she is a low-level actor who wants to be famous and everywhere. One of them is "Su", a social person with a vague future, and the other is "Guo", a well-known medical student with a good future. Excellent Guo is around, naturally there are other girls who love, and fate has once again drawn a dividing line in their lives.
At the same time of emotional entanglement, Guo Xiaolu and His sister have discovered the secret of immortality - stem cell technology, time passes, and Guo Xiaolu, who will never grow old, experiences a fantastic life.
This ageless legend is easily reminiscent of the classic film Benjamin. But they are very different, and the filmmakers give such a definition of "The Wonders of Immortality": character biography, love, and light science fiction.
Biography and science fiction together seem to constitute a "miracle" in itself. Under the label of a biography, but who Guo Xiaolu's prototype is, the film did not make it clear in this promotion. In the early preparation period of "The Wonder of Immortality", the producer of the film, Guo Tingting, said that she had visited Dr. Guo Lei, a world-famous stem cell expert, but it was obviously not rigorous to say that Guo Xiaolu's prototype was Guo Radium.
Xu Chao, the director of the film, once said that this story was born out of a short film work in 2012, and later collided with Guo Tingting to create a spark, planning to put it on the big screen, and before they found Wang Shuo, they had already made 8 versions, with an 80,000-word story synopsis, and later they visited Wang Shuo and moved this god out with the greatest sincerity, saying, "This script must be written by you." According to director Xu Chao, Wang Shuo said at the time that this autobiographical story may be his last film script.
Is this the autobiography of Dr. Guo Lei, M.D., or the autobiography of Wang Shuo, a master of film and television literature? It seems that it is not, so the story that combines the experiences and spirits of several people can also be called a biography?
The reason why the film is defined as a fantasy genre is because it tells the story of the protagonist Guo Xiaolu who is immortal and immortal because of the injection of stem cells, but after all, this has not been clearly and scientifically confirmed in the medical field in the world, and it is not a fact, so it can only be divided into soft science fiction and fantasy. As for why it has to be a highly risky "stem cell" setting in terms of censorship, it is said that the investors behind the film are engaged in stem cell research and commercial applications.
When you think that "The Wonders of Immortality" is a feature film, it is actually a fantasy film, you say it is a fantasy film, but it is actually another advertising film. Unexpectedly, one day Wang Shuo, who was terrifying, talented and full of rages, began to implant advertisements in the script.
Not being old is a miracle, and Wang Shuo is really old?
In 1988 alone, he had four novels on the screen, including the film "The Stubborn Lord" directed by Mi Jiashan, "Reincarnation" directed by Huang Jianxin (adapted from "Floating out of the Sea"), "Half Sea water and half flame" directed by Liu Zhengzheng (adapted from "Half Flame and Half Sea Water"), and "Big Breath" directed by Ye Daying (adapted from "Rubber Man"). That year was called "Wang Shuonian" by the industry, and even he himself said, "Chinese film buddies are now flat." ”
It is also true that in 1995, Jiang Wen's directorial debut "Sunny Day" that became famous in 1995 came from his novel "Animal Fierce", Feng Xiaogang wanted to go out and have to be Shuo Ye, and Wang Shuo, who spanned the two worlds of film and television, also worked with Zheng Xiaolong, Zhao Baogang and others to make "The Story of the Editorial Department" and "Addiction" and other popular dramas that once made people empty. He was a symbol and a symbol of the great cultural circle at that time.
At that time, Wang Shuo was fierce and sharp, and he was too vulgar to be mad at Jin Yong, and the culture was flattering. Now, Feng Xiao has just begun to shoot the memoir of pure love", "Only Yun knows", and Wang Shuo has also begun to say that youth only belongs to young people, and adults see desolation. Seeing the desolate Wang Shuo, his "Immortal Wonders" is less "strange" and more "love" and "death".
In the great cycle of life in "The Wonders of Immortality", the story is cut into four paragraphs, the first paragraph tells about the childhood of Guo and Su, when their fate began to be linked, their relatives left forever; the second paragraph said that Guo and Su were reunited again, it was a fateful encounter and each of them was wrapped in fate and could not be together after all; the third paragraph was the little master's love for Guo and could not be; the fourth paragraph Guo broke through the cocoon and regained the "good medicine" of immortality, but he still could not save the life he loved and was about to die.
Although Wang Shuo is getting older, although it is this kind of large-scale advertising film, he still sublimates the theme of the film, wang Shuo tries to explore whether the body can live forever, and the soul can also? The body can be cloned, but the mind cannot be copied, what is the purpose of the person's pursuit of eternal life? He uses "love" to string together fragmentary plots.
Nowadays, the middle-aged and elderly version of 007 can no longer move the sister, began to love the family, lost the male charm to the extent that it can only be written to death, "Immortal Wonders" Guo Xiaolu has obtained the special function of immortality, in the end it is still a "virgin", and Wang Shuo, is no longer the Wang Shuo whose love comes to you.