The "Madagascar" series of films unveils the mystery of this African island nation, which is no longer a distant country in the documentary, but the opposite of urban life, symbolizing wildness, freedom and tranquility.
Reporter | Song Shiting
The jungle design in the film Madagascar is based on the work of the Impressionist painter Henri Rousseau
<h1>From New York to Madagascar</h1>
Africa has long been a bounty of inspiration for Hollywood movies. In particular, animated films, whether it is the Hollywood classic animation "The Lion King", or the stylized French animation "The Adventures of Twitter", or the most classic African background series "Madagascar", where the unique natural environment, unique flora and fauna, and the local life logic different from developed societies have brought a lot of creative materials to the animated film.
At the same time, animation has become a more flexible and vivid form of expression than live-action films. Due to the limitations of filming conditions, the animation form seems to be more conducive to telling the story of the animals and plants of the land.
Of all the animated films related to Africa, the "Madagascar" series of films is the most unique and popular. Instead of setting the story on the African continent like in other films, it goes further and towards the island of Madagascar, where flora and fauna are more exotic than those of the continent, and where the story of what happens in that uncivilized land is a better reflection of the collision of modernity and tradition.
The story of Madagascar stems from a question: What would happen if animals that have been living in a civilized world were placed in primeval forests?
DreamWorks Animation illustrates this question with the story of four animals fleeing New York and trapped in Madagascar.
Stills from the movie Madagascar 2: Escape to Africa
In 2005, the movie Madagascar was released, which was another series of movies launched by DreamWorks after the "Monster Shrek" series. The film features four animals from the African continent: Alex the Lion, Marty the Zebra, Melman the Giraffe and Gloria the Fat Hippo. This group of animals, kept in captivity in New York's Central Park, live a carefree life. Alex is the king of the park, and every day a large number of tourists come to see its performances. Melman was worried about his health every day, and his body was checked again and again like obsessive-compulsive disorder. Gloria, like all the animals in the zoo, doesn't think about the past, the present, and the future, but is an optimist. Marty is an outlier among the people, on his 10th birthday, he receives a lot of blessings, but he is not satisfied, like the human beings who live in the city, he is tired of the city and wants to see the outside world.
Inspired by four penguins who also wanted to escape the park and return to Antarctica, Marty "escaped" successfully, but this escape sparked public controversy over the significance of the zoo, and the new York people protested en masse, and the zoo was forced to send Marty and his friends back to their hometown. On the way from New York to Africa, the four partners accidentally landed in the sea and drifted along the ocean current to a mysterious island, Madagascar. Baobab trees, lemurs, Horse Island badgers... It's a completely alien wilderness world where New Yorkers find and fight their wildness on the island, and friendships are tested like never before. At the same time, they also used their urban wisdom accumulated in the zoo to help the local animals and complete an adventure.
As an animated film positioned at home, Madagascar grossed more than $190 million when it was released, ranking ninth in north America that year. In the years that followed, the "Madagascar" series launched several films, Madagascar 2: Escape to Africa, Madagascar 3: The Great European Roundup, and penguins in previous films as the protagonist of "Penguins of Madagascar", each of which squeezed into the top ten of the North American box office that year, which is a rare achievement for animated films.
Lemurs are animals unique to the island of Madagascar, and in the "Madagascar" series of films, lemurs have always existed as important characters
Such achievements are inseparable from the five words "Madagascar". The world's fourth-largest island in Africa is certainly not the first time it has appeared in movies, but it is the first time it has become an important space in animated films. In an interview, director Eric Daniel once said: "The four protagonists are all African animals, and Madagascar is the largest island in Africa more than 400 kilometers from the east coast of the African continent, where the flora and fauna are very unique, and our favorite lemur is a rare animal unique to Madagascar." In that fantastic country, we have a huge creative space to play freely. ”
The first Madagascar is the basis for the series, an African island that provides a spiritual basis for the subsequent plot that stems from the wilderness. Because of the mysterious geography and species of Madagascar, directors Eric Daniel and Tom McGrath did not even dwell on the natural beauty of Madagascar as they did in the subsequent entanglement of the realism of the African continent and the order of European cities, and most of the landscape and spatial design were created under the basic realistic reference.
In addition to the New York part, most of the scenes in Madagascar take place in the jungle, and the jungle and the unique species of the island are also a major selling point of the film. In the design of the jungle, the film refers to the real geographical environment of Madagascar and draws on the works of the French painter Henri Rousseau, who has created a large number of works on the theme of tropical jungle scenery, and the romantic style of the painting is somewhat clumsy, which is in line with the retro tone of the entire animation.
Because of the uniqueness of the natural ecology, Madagas has many rare animals and plants, and the film naturally has to make a fuss about them. Scott Singer, a special effects designer, calculated that they had designed a total of 50 species of plants with regional characteristics, including 7 baobab trees and 12 flower and fruit trees, and relied on DreamWorks' industry-leading special effects technology at the time to develop a unique jungle vegetation movement system, where millions of leaves take on a natural and realistic dynamic as characters and winds pass through the jungle vegetation.
A few years later, when "Kung Fu Panda" produced by DreamWorks was released, the industry and the audience lamented the agility and reality of the characters and scene textures, but in 2005, CG technology was far less mature than it is today, and "Madagascar" was a classic case of successful application of this technology at that time.
The new technology is mainly used for the styling of characters. Under the principle that 3D form and realism have become the mainstream animation character modeling, "Madagascar" chose the retro style, the designer abandoned the realistic character structure, turned around and looked for inspiration from 2D animation, flattened the character as a whole, and presented the shape of part of the paper-cut painting.
At the same time, the application of CG technology has given these unbalanced images a real sense of movement. For plot reasons, Madagascar became the film with the most hairy characters in the history of CG at that time, Alex the Lion had a total of 1.7 million hairs, the mane was composed of more than 50,000 hairs, each hair moved with the movement of the character, and the mane alone had millions of motion curves.
These techniques were also used to design the unique species of madagascar – lemurs and horse howls. King Julien the Lemur and his right-hand men Maurice and Mort are ring-tailed lemurs, large lemurs and mouse lemurs, respectively, and in addition to the three main characters, dozens of lemurs on the island of Madagascar are almost all shown in the film. As a natural enemy of lemurs, the Horse Island Badger also took on the responsibility of a major villain in the film, and these rare and rare species added a viewing angle to Madagascar.
Because of the popularity of the "Madagascar" series of movies, this mysterious island and the life it carries are recognized by more and more ordinary people. Madagascar is no longer unique to BBC documentaries and nature photography, in a sense, it has become a primitive symbol in the minds of ordinary people, pinning on the imagination of urban people for freedom and wildness.
<h1>A metaphor for the urban psyche</h1>
In an interview, Ben Stiller, who voiced Alex, mentioned that he himself grew up in New York, and he knew the superiority of New Yorkers, "Alex lived a life of eating and opening his mouth, and as a star in the zoo, he enjoyed the praise of tourists." As it says in the film: there are fans, there is food, there is pampering, what else do you want? ”
As Ben Stiller says, Madagascar is ostensibly a story of animals fleeing captivity and returning to nature, but it is actually a metaphor for modern urban life. From New York to Madagascar, from the tip of the pyramid of human civilization to the primitive islands that preserve ancient flora and fauna, the collision of social logic and natural logic has made this series of films go beyond teen animation and make adults entertained.
Almost every character in the film has a reality mapping. Alex the Lion is a well-to-do affluent class, it eats the special beef prepared for it by the keepers, there are special people responsible for bathing and massage, and it enjoys the applause and the fame and fortune that comes with it. wildness? Long since castrated. Melman the Giraffe is more like a neurosensitive urbanite, nervously concerned about his body and weakened by being overprotected. Like many non-committal company employees, it is timid and fearful to maintain the status quo rather than change. Fat Hippo Gloria is the kind of person who is fierce, and the opposite of this character is impatience, easy to be instigated. The confusion of ZebraMarty is more representative of the city's majority middle class. They have no worries about food and clothing, but they feel deprived mentally. From time to time, they yearn for excitement and adventure, but due to the proper comfort of real life, the idea of "going far" and escaping is always on the spot.
There is also a group of mysterious penguins in the movie, which does not appear much, but every time it appears, it is a surprise. Director Tom McGrath said that before making Madagascar, he and producer Mireille Soria had an idea to animate the beatles' film "A Hard Day's Night" in the early 1960s, with four penguins as the film's four protagonists. Later, the project was shelved, but the two really liked the idea and stuffed them into Madagascar. In the film, the four penguins symbolize the spirit of rock and roll, and they have a fate-changing drive that other animals do not have, although the director presents this trait in a humorous and comical way.
The "city people" are exiled to a desert island, bringing with them a confrontation between civilization and barbarism. Julian the Lemur and the "natives" led by her regard survival as the first priority, and the way to solve problems is also primitive. This contrast is even more pronounced in Madagascar 2: Escape to Africa. On the African continent, the water source of the animal sanctuary has been cut off by humans to build, and the animals are in danger, and Alex and the penguins solve the problem in the human world, and they actively think about countermeasures and rescue the animals by breaking the dam. Julian's way is primitive, and it attempts to ask for water in a sacrificial way.
If you look at the three "Madagascar" films together, you will find that the deepening of the theme of the film is a process from utopia to dystopia. In Madagascar, the "New Yorkers" wander to a small island without humans, and the only thing they desire is to return to the comfort of the zoo and return to a comfortable life. Alex the Lion is wild by hunger and the prairie, and the zebra Marty, who has become a good friend against the laws of nature, has become the target of his pursuit. Already civilized, Alex feared the wildness in his body and suppressed it with willpower and kindness. If New York's Central Park is a utopia, from the first film, this utopia is positive, although the wild is free and open, but everywhere is dangerous, and the human order can avoid these dangers.
In the second film, Madagascar 2: Escape to Africa, the utopia in memory still exists, but human intervention gives the film another layer of ecological critique significance. Compared with Madagascar, which remains in its primitive state, the African continent is a transitional zone between modern civilization and primitive state, which is the home of four animals, rich in species, and also has traces of human modification. It's no longer just nature, and human hunting forces animals to fight to stay in the reserve, which is a larger park than the zoo in New York, but it's big enough that the animal's nature is preserved.
In this series of films, humans are portrayed as Superman, whether it is the grandmother in the second part or the female officer of the Animal Control Bureau in the third part, Captain Dewar, who can fight the lion with their bare hands, which is a symbol of human aggression and destructive power. In "Escape to Africa," the tour group wanders the prairie, and the grandmother's encouragement of "We are New Yorkers" makes everyone determined to transform the environment. They built hydroelectric power plants with human logic and fought against animals. Another storyline also shows the influence of humans on the distant African continent, where Alex found his biological parents on the steppes and learned of his origins: many years ago it was taken by poachers and taken to New York, and its dancing, styling and performance skills were not innate, but the result of human influence and domestication.
Despite the addition of ecological critical elements to the film's narrative, the end of the story is still utopian. Alex and Dad impressed the New Yorkers with dancing (in a human way) and thus rescued the animals of the prairie. Wild and human nature have temporarily reconciled.
By "Madagascar 3: The Great Siege of Europe", the film set leaves Africa and enters modern European cities, except for Julian and Moto, the lemurs who have been following the "New Yorker", Madagascar has no trace of reality, and it is a free, primitive spiritual core throughout the film.
In the city, the persecution of animals and the natural environment by humans is further intensified, and this series of films has finally moved from utopia to dystopia. Captain Dewar, a female officer at the Animal Control Bureau, was keen to collect animal specimens, and she did everything she could to catch Alex and make it into a specimen. From the construction of the embankment in the second part to the specimen collection in the third part, the destruction of nature and animals by human beings has risen from satisfying basic needs to satisfying vanity, and the antagonism between humans and animals has been established. Led by Alex, the New Yorkers, with the help of a group of circus animal friends, finally returned to central park where they had in mind. At the moment of standing in the doorway, they found that the "home" in front of them was not as big as they thought, and the barrier of the cage also had a depressing feeling. At that moment, these "New Yorkers" realized that after experiencing Madagascar and the African continent, they saw freedom and could never go back to the past.
What is the most primitive state of life? As we head to a future that is either happy or confused, what exactly remains in the past that we can never return to? This is a warning to the world from Madagascar and the "Madagascar" series of films.