In the middle of this year, I met director Chen Sicheng once.
At that time, "Manslaughter 2" was being filmed, and every day in his office in Beijing's Chaoyang District, he reviewed the shooting materials sent back from the front set.
I sat with him and watched the shooting content of the day for a while, which happened to be the clip of the mayor played by Jiang Haowen making a public speech, and I could feel that his role was different from the first episode, but he also went into the mood, and it was not the top at the end.
At that time, I didn't know that the sequel adaptation was "Imminent", but if I really continued to remake "Contest 2", the space would be smaller and more boring.
But director Chen Sicheng was not concerned about the problem of emotional topping, at least he did not focus on it at that time.
Because he constantly stressed to me, let me explain to my friends around me that this episode and the previous episode are not a continuation of the story, just a continuation of the theme, and the story is another story.
I was a little unresponsive, because I thought, I can understand what kind of sequel it is when I look at a hot 8-minute material sent back in front of me. Are the audience all stupid? Haven't seen a series like "Eavesdropping" and "Kill the Wolf"? Even if I never go to the cinema, I know that every part of "Golden Branch Desire" is not related (but I have not seen any "Golden Branch Desire"). Won't you get a look at it when the time comes?
It wasn't until the movie was released that I understood where this concern lay.
The first direct confusion of "Manslaughter 2" on the public viewing is that the characters and the plot do not have an actual connection with the first episode, which has become a deception.
I'm still a little surprised, I even think these views are very watery, but after flipping through the comments of cat's eye shopping, it is indeed the reaction of the real audience.
The controversy after "Manslaughter 2" is the word-of-mouth myth "Love Myth", which is rare to appear on the Chinese big screen with such a work full of extended significance.
But the reality is that your Douban score is too good, and you will also be regurgitated and scolded. Because its praise is indeed so fierce, the film's bad reviews are classified as a state of "bullying of the weak", becoming enemies once expressed, or forming a slightly dull confrontation outside the film.
Just when you were about to carefully analyze the reasons for its bad reviews, the audience of positive reviews overwhelmed it, and could have discussed it seriously, but eventually rose to personal attack.
It's unnecessary, but it's unstoppable.
The film's artillery development to these days, finally to the peak, from the sequel to the original, from Shanghainese to Cantonese, 2021 year's most negative circle-breaking, the most bizarre criticism appeared - Chinese eye problem.
People's Artist Shen Teng scolded Lu Yu, when a person looks good and others say you are ugly, you will certainly not be angry, because you know that the other party is jealous of you, but if you are really ugly, everyone says you are ugly, you must be angry, because this is the truth.
"The Lion Boy" was screened at that meeting, and there was no audience to discuss, but after the release, it set off a national ideological war. Why, is it because of these two days of New Year's Eve, everyone has been irritable for a year of reflex arc?
This time the movie does not need to be watched, what story it tells, what kind of crowd it stands in, it does not matter at all, all the discussions here are completely unequal.
In the past two years, people in the industry have always said that Chinese audiences have improved, the quality is higher than before, they will choose films, and bad films will have no space.
I'm a little skeptical, I have to be so skeptical, if the Chinese cinema is sitting in the Chinese, then I think, first of all, Chinese never take the movie itself seriously, then how does the "Chinese audience" improve?
One more nagging tale of disaster that I experienced firsthand.
This year, due to family changes, I moved back to Tianjin from Beijing, where I have lived for more than ten years, but as soon as I returned to Tianjin, I encountered an unprecedented movie-watching accident in a movie theater that was still crowded.
It was the first in the country of "Antiques Bureau Central Bureau", at 7:10 p.m., starting from the patch advertisement and trailer, the entire frame was deformed, the two sides were squeezed to the middle, Lei Jiayin's face was directly compressed into Yi Qianxi, and his Tianling cover and bottom subtitles were also squeezed out of the frame.
Ask who doesn't jump on their feet, and immediately call the staff out to solve the problem. So something even more terrible came, and the audience looked at me like a madman.
Behind me, a female audience member had a physiological repulsion to my amplified volume, and she covered her ears; the female audience next to her grew a sense of shame because she sat close to me; a female audience member in front of her did not move at all, and her boyfriend actually wanted to ask about the situation, but she pulled her!
Am I living in a matrix? Especially the matrix in episode four, isn't it?
So I really never believed in the saying that "Chinese audiences are getting better" because we are in a magical age shaped by incompetence.
Doctor Strange of the Department of Magic held out his finger and hinted to Iron Man of the Science Department, you die, we win.
Here, in the end, it is still necessary to study magic, use magic against magic, and maybe you can find reason.
You can inject an advantage into this magic, a symbol that can fight ignorance, something like an antibiotic, a destructive resistance.
Movies that now carry this kind of magic may still affect the nerves of the public in such a muddy public opinion.
Analyzed, it is actually the only mainstream film after "I Am Not a Medicine God" that involves medical disputes.
It is also the only crime film in 2021 that actually tells the story of anti-privilege within a country's system.
It is also a film that criticizes the police system in 2021, and the policeman played by the second male is a decent person, but the portrayal of it is also passive.
It has a hidden anti-populist, anti-spectator purpose, and it is extremely easy to overturn the ship than the first episode, but when the slogan "Today is his encounter with injustice, the future may be us" is shouted, and the audience can also receive it on their own.
Its age is contemporary.
It did adapt a Douban high-scoring Hollywood movie, but its adaptation can be said to completely subvert the original flattering world view, and it does have clever places in the play.
It makes as easy-to-understand figurative sentences as possible, such as fireflies corresponding to the male protagonist's child in distress (worms), and the doctors look at the aerial camera under the surgical lamp, which is extremely frightening.
The father and the child pretend to play shooting when they are playing, which looks quite empty, but in fact, shooting this action is also the concept he wants to perform later, and the play itself also indicates that he will not really pick up the police gun, because he belongs to kindness.
Even Zhang Zhengyi, played by Ren Dahua, finally made a gesture of reaching out to obstruct, but obstruction also proved that he was "seeking justice".
These things are done like magic. I think it's funny.
The real audiences of Love Myth and Lion Boy don't need magic at all, they've passed the intellectual level. They can continue to find that the magic movie "Antiques Central Bureau" has similar views like "The Devil is Coming" and "Alive".
Therefore, most of the audiences who have not passed their own level have to work hard by the filmmakers to delve into a shortcut that suits them, so as not to be killed by mistake.