On December 17, the highly anticipated movie "Manslaughter 2" and the animated film "The Lion Boy" were released on the same day. These two works are optimistic about the audience, the former is the sequel to the word-of-mouth masterpiece "Manslaughter", continuing the original creative team, with Chen Sicheng as the supervising producer and Xiao Yang starring; and "Lion Boy" has been opened for many consecutive days before the release, the reputation is good, the current Douban score of 8.3, is a high-rated movie in the year.
As of press time, the box office results of the first day of the release of the two films have opened up a certain distance, because "Lion Boy" is optimistic, so it has an advantage in the schedule, but "Manslaughter 2" won 69.4% of the box office with a 23.3% schedule, and as of three o'clock in the afternoon of the 17th, the box office on the same day exceeded 33 million. Although the theater gave 25.6% of the film schedule, the box office at the same time barely exceeded 4.2 million, accounting for only 8.7%, and the attendance rate was only 1.0%, which will undoubtedly affect the next schedule.
From the box office prediction of professional ticketing software, the prediction of "Manslaughter 2" is close to the total box office of the mainland, as long as it is based on the current development momentum, it is not difficult to pass 1 billion, after all, the box office of the previous work is 1.333 billion, with the audience base of the previous work, plus the new audience attracted by this film, it is not impossible to reach 1 billion.
Affected by the sluggish attendance on the first day, the prediction of "Lion Boy" is only 393 million yuan in the mainland box office, far from meeting expectations, opening the on-demand screening many days in advance, not dominant in the theme, it is clear that "Lion Boy" hopes for the promotion of "tap water", relying on word of mouth to make the film turn against the wind and go further. As a result, the reputation of the two films has become very important.
Interestingly, the "treatment" of the two movies on Douban and social platforms is completely different.
First of all, "Lion Boy", from the beginning of the screening has a good reputation, and as early as before the release of the Douban has been opened, and stabilized at 8.3, as of the press release, there are more than 25,000 people to evaluate, the number of short reviews has exceeded 13,000, which shows that in the rules of Douban, the movie has not been released, as long as the number of reviews is enough, normally you can open the score, you can also show the "seen" comments.
But on the contrary, "Manslaughter 2", as a sequel to the popular movie "Manslaughter", has such a high degree of attention that it is impossible to score not enough viewers, but even if it has been released on December 17, Douban still does not show the rating.
Click on the short review page, the "seen" tag still can not show the comments, only leave "no one has written a short review" these words, normally the movie has been released, how can it not be that the audience has not seen the review?
And show that all the short reviews are only more than 800, and do not show the score, can only see the comments, the first popular comments have more than 900 likes, pointing out that the two works before and after the remake of two countries' films, and also became a series, accusing the filmmakers of not even looking for a screenwriter and writing a story. Later, some netizens posted comments on October 23 this year, saying, "Promise me, it is really an original story." "He may be disappointed by now!"
On another mainstream social platform, "Manslaughter 2" also has a similar problem under the page, the platform also organized a movie group before the release, calling on professional fans to watch the movie, it is difficult not to guess that there is cooperation with the distributor and the promoter, the "public comment" tag under the page is empty, and no audience reviews are included.
Under the so-called "big V review", the comments of some plus V film critics are displayed, and the four points and five stars are uniformly played, all of which are positive reviews.
For the problem that Douban did not show "seen" comments, some staff engaged in film promotion in the industry revealed that Douban can manually eliminate comments, and said that it can discuss with Douban and require Douban to block ratings or one-star bad reviews before release, but it will automatically appear after release. Of course, the film with good reputation is screened, and the publicist is also happy to see the word of mouth fermented in advance, and "The Lion Boy" is a good example.
Based on the above phenomenon, it is difficult not to suspect that the producer of "Manslaughter 2" is locking up the score and maintaining the reputation of the film, after all, the audience is paying more and more attention to word of mouth, if the reputation of a movie is not good, it will greatly affect the subsequent box office. So, what about Manslaughter 2? To be sure, the strengths and weaknesses of the film are equally obvious, and in terms of shortcomings, there are at least three major slots.
Let's start with the pros. "Manslaughter 2" and the previous work, the production is more careful, especially in the cinematography, art is in place, especially at the beginning of the movie, the photography and editing make the picture very rhythmic, and the tone of the movie perfectly matches, and there are a large number of actors' facial close-ups in the follow-up, which is used to highlight the dramatic tension, and also makes it easy for the audience to perceive the emotions of the characters.
The actor's performance can also be remarkable, Xiao Yang, Ren Dahua acting skills online, supporting roles are also very good, Li Zhiting does not play much, but the eyes and expression are enough to make people shudder.
Let's talk about the disadvantages.
The first slot point, I was punched in the face by the pre-publicity, saying that the result of the new story is still an adaptation. "Manslaughter 2" is based on the film "Imminent" starring Denzel Washington, but after the film began, executive producer Chen Sicheng personally said that "Manslaughter 2" is a completely new story. Of course, there is nothing wrong with this sentence, it really has nothing to do with the story of the previous part, and Chen Sicheng did not explicitly say that it was an original story at that time. But most of the expectant audiences thought it was an original script, and the result was still waiting to be adapted, which led to the reaction of netizens in the Douban short review so fiercely that they felt that they were "deceived".
The second slot point, the film shooting is very rushed. "Manslaughter 2" started in July and was announced on September 16, and it was only filmed for about 2 months. According to the netizens who noticed the set and the staff who participated in the film, although "Manslaughter 2" still tells the story of what happened in Thailand, the film did not actually go to Thailand to shoot, but completed filming in China and filmed in Zhuhai. Affected by this, "Manslaughter 2" location is very small, most of the shots occur in the hospital building, some of the location scenes in order not to wear gangs, save the cost of setting and props, photography can only use a large aperture shallow depth of field to blur the background, so there is a certain gap in the overall texture compared to the previous one.
The third slot point is the plot. They are also adapted from classic movies from the past, but "Manslaughter" is more tightly paced, the plot is more tense, and the part where the protagonist and the police fight each other is very tense and brain-burning enough.
And "Manslaughter 2" will shift the focus of the story to father-son affection, in fact, from the main story line, suspense and brain-burning elements have weakened a lot, and the audience who holds the expectation value of the previous film will definitely be somewhat disappointed!
Finally, I would like to ask, have you watched both movies? Which one is more optimistic about the box office?