Ten bets and nine losses, except for the old thousands, there is no one thing in the world that is securely won. /Figureworm Creative
The loneliness of the gambling film has the internal reason that the story itself lacks tension and loses the audience's popularity, and there are also external reasons that the progress of the times forced it to recede. It should be known that in the 1980s and 1990s, when gambling films were prevalent, the salaries of most people in the mainland ranged from tens to hundreds of yuan. The gambling behavior of pressing 30 million Swiss bank cashier's checks in one game can not make people's eyes widen to chase the drama to the end.
How long have you not seen such a scene in a movie?
The two men in suits and leather shoes sat on one side of the table, and the crowd of onlookers who existed as background boards were all dressed in chinese clothes, exposing that this was a casino with millions of minutes.
The progress bar towards the end is also reminding the audience: this is not a drill, this is a life and death game that bets on the lives of all the people.
Lighting and music are ready to go. Even the hair revealed a treacherous villain's exaggerated laughter, arrogantly showing the bottom card four A's. After everyone thought that the victory or defeat had been decided, the camera suddenly gave the protagonist.
He first shook his head with regret, then a bitter smile turned into pride, and the jade hand flipped over: Flush, Stud!
In the applause and cheers that exploded the audience, the protagonist waved his sleeve and left the scene, leaving only a stunned villain as if his body was hollowed out and paralyzed.
As early as the 1990s, the above slightly routine scene almost contracted 99.99% of Hong Kong's gambling-themed film endings. However, with the decline of Hong Kong dramas, the Hong Kong gambling films that once dominated the screen seem to fade out of people's memories one step earlier than Hong Kong-made movies.
Thirty years ago, "The Gambler" came out, and this movie brought together the gambler Dao Boy played by Andy Lau and the gambler Saint Ah Xing played by Stephen Chow for the first time.
One is the beloved disciple of the god of gambling Gao Jin, and the other is a fan of the god of gambling Gao Jin, and the two work together to defeat the gambling king faction that has always been the enemy of Gao Jin. At this point, the gambling series of movies has officially taken shape.
At that time, Wang Jing had not yet been awarded the title of "King of Bad Films". And he created the God of Gamblers universe with the god of gamblers as the core, more than a decade earlier than the Marvel universe that contracted the summer file today.
The God of Gamblers and his variants
Maybe you haven't seen any of the gambling series, but you must have seen The emoji of Zhou Runfa smiling and clapping with a big back.
This GIF that saves people from not wanting to take a stand but having to keep the formation of the horse's ass is from the first movie that laid the foundation for the origin of the God of Gamblers universe - "God of Gamblers".
In this movie, Gao Jin, a celebrity gambler living in the legend of the jianghu, is invited to Hong Kong to fight with Singaporean gambling king Chen Jincheng, but he is chased and killed halfway down a cliff, losing his memory and losing his mind.
This tactical fall from the altar to mortal dust fell off a cliff, allowing him to encounter a small knife boy who had achieved nothing. The two swindled and cheated and farce, and also experienced the thrill of birth and death.
The ending is naturally that the god recovers his skills and brutalizes the villain, and then brings the grassroots brother to the peak of life.
Although Zhou Runfa, who starred in the god of gambling, is high enough, the responsibility of a person to support a universe is still too great.
At the end of "God of Gamblers", Wang Jing arranges for Gao Jin to collect the knife boy as an apprentice. After the master taught the nine successful powers, the little brother of the gambling stick became a generation of gamblers who could go out on behalf of the master.
However, whether it is Zhou Runfa's gambling god or Andy Lau's gambler, it is a technical flow that is strong and good at psychological warfare, and it is inevitable that aesthetic fatigue will inevitably occur when you see more.
Therefore, after the great success of the God of Gamblers, Liu Zhenwei took advantage of the hot iron to pull Zhou Xingchi into the gang and created a role that was completely out of the ordinary in the eyes of the God of God's decency - Gamble Saint.
This shuffle is like a car accident scene, but it has its own naked eye perspective and other special functions of the mainland Boy Ah Xing, so that the "thousand skills" of the competition card skills and equipment have a new way to open.
Wang Jing was not convinced that Liu Zhenwei imitated his own parody to a new height, so he launched a two-man male protagonist's drama, and arranged the tall and complete gambler and the senseless gambler saint on a card table in the gambler movie of the same name.
In order to add to the God of Gamblers universe, the Gamblers were given the attribute of a fan who worshiped the God of Gamblers, and after the two joined forces to defeat the fierce enemies, fortunately, they were introduced by the Gamblers, and the Gamblers became the second apprentices of the Gods of Gamblers.
The story that follows revolves around the Three Divine Heroes. In addition to the protagonist, the third uncle who led the gambling saint to Hong Kong, played by Wu Mengda, and the green leaves such as the dragon five before and after the saddle of the gambling god and the bodyguard long wu played by Xiang Huaqiang, weave an impenetrable network of character relationships for the stability of the universe.
However, unlike Marvel, which often allows heroes to gather and reunite to train in groups, the follow-up production of the God of Gamblers Universe is basically a single-player movie.
"God of Gamblers 3 Young God of Gamblers" as a prequel to the God of Gamblers, explains that Gao Jin learned gambling skills from Qianwang Jin Neng, but suffered a brain injury in the same door and could only find details such as aftertaste through chocolate, which can be regarded as a work of filling the pit with sincerity.
Other sequels, however, perform mediocrely. Whether it is the "God of Gamblers 2" in which the god of gamblers re-enters the jianghu and fights the Taiwanese gangsters; or the "Gamblers 2 on the Beach" in which the gambler crosses back to the beach and tears the devils; and even the white-headed gambler King series that Andy Lau supports by his face, he has repeated himself too much.
After the shenxia returned to the hidden gambling saint retirement, on Monday Liu collectively bid farewell to the rotten script of Wang Dao's fried cold rice, and the god of gambling universe collapsed.
Gambling film is not logical,
It's about showmanship and showmanship
In terms of the number of characters and the time span, the God of Gamblers universe is far less massive than the Marvel Universe. But it is undeniable that every character has been injected with souls by Hong Kong stars who are worthy of the word acting.
Gao Jin, the god of gamblers played by Zhou Runfa, switches freely between a very silly and naïve dementia child and an elite big guy with an aura of two meters and eight meters.
Big back tuxedo, crazy dragging cool toothpick, always can't help but turn the tail ring in his hand when he is thinking, if you change someone to play, it is definitely the greasy look of Daqing Oilfield.
But Zhou Runfa's one-handed move and one foot presents the high-level daily life of an arsonist.
Zhou Xingchi, who has always been good at nonsense performances, performed a poisoned person with extremely excited emotions, dancing hands, trembling and cramping in five seconds.
But at the end of the film in Shanghai Beach, he wants to bring the stupid rich girl played by Gong Li back to modern treatment, but he can't bear her to age step by step during the crossing process.
In the end, a picture of a trembling and letting go of the hand makes "love is a hand that wants to touch but withdraws" have a more concrete expression.
It is a lifetime series to see Chow Yun Fat Andy Lau, Zhang Min, Wu Mengda and other golden generations representing Hong Kong's acting career, and even the contradictory hard wounds of "The God of Gamblers never takes pictures of ordinary people but can have their positive posters" can be ignored.
However, what pulls the gambling film back from the edge of the bad film is not only today's valuable acting skills, but also the gambling skills that we seem to have seen little in the world at that time.
If you say that in "Casino Tycoon", which is based on the gambling king Ho Hung-sun, he uses his heels to knock on the floor to send a password, and then a special person translates the message to the gambler who wears a hearing aid.
Then the god of gamblers series uses high-tech eyes to see through the bottom card, move the finger can steal the beam and change the pillar and other brain holes of the competition, is not to talk about the basic law of the magic move.
Of course, more is the action scene under the combination of magic and acrobatics.
Shuffle and pull cards, the flow of water seems to be doubled; the sharp flying card technique of holding the card and calmly throwing the hand can kill people; the dice cup can be shaken, and the sugar cube dice can be built up; just by the different degrees of friction of the dice surface, you can know the point listening dice technique...
Those who completed these actions were gold medal dealers in Macau casinos, top poker magicians, and Jiang Daohai, who was the "first stunt martial artist in Asia" and created the classic section of Ge You's fingernail peeling egg shells in "No Thief in the World".
In the ultimate showdown between Gao Jin and Chen Jincheng in "God of Gamblers", it is Jiang Daohai who plays the card as the dealer.
Legend has it that in the absence of a miniature camera, Jiang Daohai boldly adopted a gastroscope from the actor's cuff to insert a dice cup to close up the dice movement picture shooting method, which only understood the ineffable gambling technique in reality, and visually pulled it to full score.
With the blessing of the gods, the story logic has become the most untickable part of the gambling film.
The essence of gambling films is anti-gambling
Compared with Wang Jing's gambling film universe where the form is greater than the content, the real impact on the audience with the storyline is the TV series "Winner is King" filmed by ATV in 1991.
The male protagonist is Chen Tingwei, who followed his mother Shen Dianxia from TVB to ATV, and the male protagonist is deeply involved in the love triangle between Wu Qili, who gave birth to a little dragon girl for Jackie Chan, and Wan Qiwen, who is known as "Hong Kong's first beautiful leg".
The emotional drama is just embellished, the main plot of this TV series is to tell the story of Shi Zhikang, the son of a vegetable vendor who knows nothing about gambling, mistakenly enters the casino to become a waiter, and after being taught by a one-armed gambling stick who is bent on revenge, a naughty boy gambler who can predict the lottery, and other hidden masters, he fights monsters and upgrades layer by layer, and finally defeats the gambling king Nie Wanlong to replace him.
Shi Zhikang to Nie Wanlong, just like Guo Jing to Ouyang Feng, a series with jin Yong martial arts painting style, began with the title of "there are five titles of god, saint, hero, hegemony and king in the gambling world, and Wang is the strongest" to complete the prescribed actions of tribute and stepping on the previous work of the same theme.
Another connection it has with the God of Gamblers series is the dazzling card design, which also comes from Edokai.
Although it is slightly better in storytelling, due to the competition of teenagers to imitate, it was not long after it was introduced to the mainland, "Winner is King" was banned.
But "teaching bad kids" is the biggest misconception of the world about gambling films. Under the cloak of the cool film, anti-gambling is the spiritual core of the gambling film.
Wang Jing repeatedly stressed that she made gambling films to counter-gamble, because her mother had a bad gambling history and twice lost all her wealth.
Wang Jing once borrowed Andy Lau in "Gambler 1999" to say: "Ten bets and nine losses, except for the old thousands, there is no one thing in the world that is stable to win." ”
The same is true of Chow Yun-fat's father. On more than one occasion, he recalled in interviews that his father, who was a seafarer at the time, often overdrafted his salary because of bad gambling, and on each payday, his mother, who was counting on his father's salary, could only receive a barrel of oil.
"Because the money is lost."
Born in the same year as "God of Gamblers", there is also a movie that focuses on gambling, but is diametrically opposite to Wang Jing's consistent emotional tone, "Supreme Supreme".
Andy Lau, known for his fast hand, and Tan Yonglin, who is known for his thousand skills, were the golden partners who swept the casino, but they did not wait for the perfect ending of the fierce battle and laughter, and they were greeted by a bleak ending of losing their left hand and losing their girlfriend.
When the director of the sequel was replaced by Du Qifeng, who studied under Wang Jing's father Wang Tianlin, but went farther and farther down the road of literature and art, the tone of the whole movie was no longer anti-gambling but to persuade people to quit gambling.
"Gambling? The kind that will blindly break hands and break their wives and children. ”
Today's gambling film is a basket, and everything can be loaded into it
Gambling films are difficult to leave a good reputation, but winning can absorb gold.
Chow Yun-fat, who returned to the table in the name of the magician Shi Yijian, helped Wang Jing complete the "Macau Storm" series.
Under the guise of gambling, this is a film that assists the police in cracking down on evil, and the reputation is not as good as one, but the box office is rising steadily, from 500 million in the first part to 1.1 billion in the third part, three big bad films that are nailed down, but it has created a total of 2.6 billion box office.
But how many people, with a love for Zhou Runfa, have entered the cinema, but after appreciating the awkward technology terriers such as rough scripts, exaggerated performances, and flying cards with their own GPS that will turn, such as sitting on needle felts and wanting to refund tickets?
However, as long as the gambling film can make money one day, Wang Jing will not stop the pace of fried cold rice, and the "Casino Heroes" and "Hollywood Has a Big Old Man" produced by TVB are good examples.
The plot of the smorgasbord of east and west is obviously unable to fool countless audiences who read the film, and the loneliness of the gambling film has the internal reason that the story itself lacks tension and loses the audience's popularity, and there are also external reasons that the progress of the times forced it to retreat.
It should be known that in the 1980s and 1990s, when gambling films were prevalent, the salaries of most people in the mainland ranged from tens to hundreds of yuan.
The gambling behavior of pressing 30 million Swiss bank cashier's checks in one game can not make people's eyes widen to chase the drama to the end.
At that time, gambling was almost the only way to get rich overnight.
One side of the table, a few hands of bright cards, the rise and fall of life in an instant, without the courage of stud, it is also good to feel the thrill of an adrenaline rush outside the screen.
But now, the legend of getting rich overnight is overgrown. Tens of millions of assets are said to be more, but when it comes to the housing prices in the north, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, it seems that it is not so worth looking at.
Entertainment KOL Meng Jing once commented on the history of the demise of gambling films:
"The prosperity and decline of gambling films is inevitable, just like the fate of Hong Kong films, the loss of economic advantages makes people lose curiosity and freshness, and the tens of millions of dollars of high gambling and random rushing also lack authenticity, and those who are in the gambling world have washed their hands and gone ashore to do white business." Even the underworld is gone, where is there any gambling god? ”
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