The author | potato
At the beginning of the 2022 episode, if the new theme "Beginning" created by the noonday sun brings unlimited reverie to the audience, then what punctured this layer is the ancient puppet drama "Mirror • Twin Cities" that was broadcast a few days ago.
This adaptation of Cangyue's novel of the same name, starring Li Yifeng and Chen Yuqi, is suffering from market accusations: the production is not careful, the service is cheap, the actors behave like marionettes, and the IP adaptation fails... "Mirror Twin Cities" can be said to be questioned by the market in all directions.
However, although the reputation is mediocre, the popularity of this drama is unambiguous. Relevant data show that less than four hours after the premiere of the drama, Tencent's video click rate exceeded 100 million, the popularity of Youku station was 9332, and the effective playback market share of Yunhe film was 2.96%, which was enough to glimpse the market appeal of "the first generation of top stream + big IP".
"Mirrors and Twin Cities" was prepared in 2016 and completed in October 2020. In the four years of production time, the market wind direction has long been unpredictable. The "IP + traffic" production configuration loved by the audience in the past has also been broken one by one along with the slogan of returning to content.
The poor reputation and high popularity of "Mirror Twin Cities" at present also represent the current batch of untimely ancient puppet themes. However, at the time when Li Yifeng has marched towards powerful actors with "Hidden and Great" with 8 points on Douban and "Animal World" with double box office reputation, he has returned to the "ancient puppet" circle, which is inevitably regrettable. Is it true that the ancient puppet drama market can no longer produce decent works? The answer is unknown.
High popularity and low reputation, "Mirror · Twin Cities" "ancient doll" production failure?
The audience has always been more tolerant of ancient puppet dramas. This can be seen in works such as "Three Lives and Three Worlds and Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms" with a Douban score of 6.5 points, or "Flowers and Bones" with a Douban score of 6.9 points, and "Qingyunzhi" with a score of 5.4. That is, in the case of the overall production level of the series is not high, they can still win the rating myth, and even become a hit that the younger generations cannot match.
A very important reason is that in addition to having IP blessings, they are at least connected to the market at the level of production and character empathy.
"Mirrors of Twin Cities" stepped on the thunder in these two dimensions. First of all, the show has been blamed by the market for its production problems. In the face of the overhead S+ level production, the visual aesthetic of "Mirrors and Twin Cities" to the audience is rough, cheap and unobtrusive. Just like the male protagonist Su Mo's fishman style, a black robe, bubble noodle head, although the audience regrets why there is no fishtail form, but after watching the special effects of his sinking into the sea, I know that no fishtail form is already a "blessing" given to the audience by the crew.
The important scene mirror tower in the play, scrawled and not aesthetic design, was complained by netizens that "from a distance it looks like a different-dimensional communication device 20,000 years later, and up close it looks like the works of graduates of the Animation Academy, and at a medium distance it looks a bit like the Oriental Pearl". And the legendary "fish beads" in which the fish people fell into tears are also slightly cheap.
From the plot level, the editing of "Mirror Twin Cities" is messy and the story is dragging, which makes netizens complain. From the perspective of The Zhongzhou girl Na Sheng, who travels a long way to find her dream home, Yunhuang, to escape the chaotic world, tells the fantasy story of a group of teenagers guarding their homeland and leaving footprints in the mysterious land of Yunhuang. The story structure of "Mirror Twin Cities" is not narrow, and even in Cangyue's pen, the audience can not only see a group of teenagers with three-dimensional images and different personalities, but also from the huge and complex worldview structure.
However, from the current plot point of view, the filmed "Mirror • Twin Cities" does not seem to be presented. In the first 10 episodes of the plot, after the team briefly explained the world view, it basically revolved around two things: one was the emotional entanglement between the male and female protagonists Su G and Bai Ying a hundred years ago; the other was the story of Bai Ying's search for the true Lan spiritual knowledge for the unsealing of the Empty Sang Kingdom after the "resurrection".
The start of "Mirror Twin Cities" is not a good one. Two episodes tell the story of the male and female protagonists meeting each other, and the 5 episodes tell the story of what happened to them 100 years ago, which not only makes the show slightly delayed in the narrative technique, but also edits the messy and rigid "old" love story, but also really makes the audience retreat. In addition, Li Yifeng's state in this drama is not good, and the face of "Fa Fu", the broad shoulders, and his slightly cheap hairstyle make him "blunt"; Chen Yuqi's happy, surprised, and angry performance methods are all glaring, and it really makes the market less than two CP.
Although the market is tolerant of the aesthetics of ancient puppet dramas, a reverse indicator is that when they can't even bump into the "male and female protagonist CP" in the plot, the restoration of the plot becomes more demanding: many of the "famous scenes" mentioned in the novel, such as the "Seal of the Six Kings" that shocked the fans, and many important war scenes that explained the direction of the plot, were all "passed by", and even some of the war scenes were still completed by the actors, which also lowered the production level of the entire play. Netizens left a message: "I got a good script, but I only shot a script outline." ”
From the production of the series to the completion of the script, the empathy of the actors, and the restoration of IP, "Mirrors • Twin Cities" seems to have staged a demonstration of the production error of an ancient puppet drama for the audience. But in another dimension, the reason why the market is so harsh on "Mirrors and Twin Cities" is that it is an S+ level project with "first-generation traffic + big IP" overhead. High expectations and low production have magnified the production shortcomings of "Mirrors and Twin Cities".
The transformation of "the first generation" Li Yifeng: The dividend of ancient puppet dramas has finally passed?
The mass market knows Li Yifeng from the "Ancient Sword Qitan" starring him and Yang Mi. With this work, newcomer Li Yifeng became a hit and became the top of the market. At that time, the idol actors with the same name as him were Lu Han, who had just returned to China, and actors such as Yang Yang, TFBOYS, and Chen Weiting.
Among the female stars, Yang Mi, who came out of "Ancient Sword Qitan" with him, and "latecomer" Di Li Reba, and Zhao Liying, who became popular because of the hit of "Flowers and Bones", Liu Shishi, who came out of "Step by Step", and Tang Yan and other actresses, are on a par with Li Yifeng, and are collectively called top traffic and first-line actors by the market.
Some media have counted that when Li Yifeng's career was at its most brilliant, he won more than ten advertising endorsements a year, four film and television works were launched in the same year, and appeared on major party programs, which undoubtedly confirmed the brilliant moment of this top traffic. At a time when the list of major artists has not yet been closed and the Weibo star super talk is still alive, Li Yifeng has always been their darling. There is a joke in the anecdote, "Even if the big flowers and the first idols occasionally rest, the ability of young idols to pry the market topic is still inferior to that of their predecessors."
Looking at these first-generation idols, including Li Yifeng, their fame or the road to the peak of their careers are always indispensable to the blessing of "ancient puppet dramas". For example, Li Yifeng and Yang Mi's "Ancient Sword Qitan", Yang Mi, Liu Shishi, Tang Yan's "Legend of the Immortal Sword 3", and then Yang Mi's "Three Lives and Three Worlds and Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms" and Zhao Liying's "Biography of Chu Qiao" are all related to "ancient dolls".
The ancient puppet drama "praises people", which is one of the effective ways for the market to become famous by default in the early years. What further quantifies this approach is the "IP + strong card division" effect that ancient puppet dramas have always corresponded to. However, in recent years, it can be found from several ancient puppet dramas broadcast in the market that the top configuration of the past is gradually being replaced by the diversified types and small and medium-cost costume sweet pet dramas.
Still represented by the market in the past two years, Ren Jialun and Bai Lu starred in "A Lifetime", whether from the perspective of the size of the novel or the dimension of actors, it is not a head project. However, this drama has successfully achieved the circle effect by virtue of the actor's unusually suitable CP sense and the superb acting skills of the two actors; Zhao Lusi, who was rated as the "sweet pet drama sister", is outstanding in "Chen Qianqian in the Rumors", with a novel theme and the innovative dimension of the costumed big female lead drama, the drama gained traffic and word of mouth in that year, which is a dark horse work.
In contrast, the head idol actor who grew up with Li Yifeng, Zhao Liying's comeback "died prematurely" in the martial arts IP "You fei", Yang Mi starred in "Fu Sha" and "Lady Huozhu" in succession, the market completely no longer has expectations for its ancient puppet dramas; and Di Li Reba, who was rated as the representative of the post-90s Xiaohua, after the failure of many ancient puppet dramas such as "Fire Like a Song" and "Long Song Line", fans urgently called for him to return to the field of urban drama.
In recent years, there are also often film queens under the emperor Fan ancient puppet dramas. Zhou Dongyu was ridiculed in "Ancient Tricks and Dust" for "ugly appearance and difference in appearance"; Zhang Zhen was also ridiculed for "dressing up old and full of earthy taste" in "Chen Xi Yuan"... Even the male idols who have always won with their appearance have not taken the slightest advantage in ancient puppet dramas. For example, Yang Yang in "Wudong Qiankun" and Chen Weiting in "Lady Hu Zhu" have all been on Weibo's hot search due to etiquette problems.
The first stop of the "comeback" of idol actors is always partial to the ancient puppet drama market. However, it must be admitted that today's ancient puppet drama market has long ceased to favor this batch of "first-generation top streams", in other words, the "IP + traffic" model that the market once favored has long been unworkable at present.
First, this has been affected by the direction of market winds in recent years. In the face of the trend that costume dramas are difficult to get on the stars and the market is criticizing the "only traffic theory", ancient puppet dramas no longer have the advantages of the past in terms of the number of creations and the combination of lineups; second, it is also related to the creation mode of ancient puppet dramas themselves. When the same master-apprentice relationship, the worldview of "all over the world" and "several lifetimes", the market's sensitivity to this type of work has also declined.
Back to "Mirror Twin Cities", as an S+ grade costume project, Li Yifeng returned to the "fantasy" work after five years, which should have had an excellent appearance. However, as the current market trend shows, when all indicators tend to be king, the ancient puppet drama creation law that focuses on the "IP + traffic" model seems to no longer work. This is the market problem currently facing "Mirror Twin Cities", and it also sounds the alarm for other ancient puppet themes in the future.