The author | Xie Minghong
Editor| Li Chunhui
Watching "The Beginning" at home, your mother couldn't help but ask after two hours: "Why do you watch this episode repeatedly?" "For the bus scenes that are constantly repeated, and the male and female protagonists who wake up again and again, it is indeed very much like the same episode...
Before, Fan Wei in "There is no end", looping through April Fool's Day, repeating the date with Jia Jingwen. Later, in "Rescue Against Time", the big power of power through particle reorganization, back to the past and evolved into three different selves, using parallel time and space to stage rescue tricks.
Although the theme of time loop is not new in domestic movies, it is still eye-catching in national dramas (Lu Han's "In the End" in 2020 also has a similar setting, and there is no splash). Although many viewers have seen "Source Code", "Lola Run", "Horror Cruise", "Escape from the Loop", "Groundhog Day", "Twelve o'clock zero", "Time-out Transmission", "Happy Death Day", "Edge of Tomorrow", "The Night the Comet Came" and other "compositions" with the same title, they still do not hesitate to praise "Beginning".
On the 7th day of broadcasting, the cumulative number of broadcasts exceeded 300 million, and the network drama Cat's Eye was the hottest day for 3 consecutive days, with a Douban score of 8.2. A "theme dividend" is obviously difficult to explain the popularity of "Beginning". But in the midst of applause, we can't ignore the unobtrusive shots, the special effects of the five cents, Liu Tao's acting skills of the wooden man, the angry young police officer, the unnecessary plot of redundant procrastination... Let's say that the theme of the new sharp can not open the green light everywhere, the best dry abalone is not good as the big elbow has a chewy head!
Not surprisingly, our parents must have thought that this was CCTV-12's popular law column drama. Color grading is like a college student DV movie or a life Vlog, and the tense atmosphere is completely destroyed by the bright and moving picture quality. Although everyone doesn't like the green and lush like "The Knife In the Snow", the suspense drama is a bit of light and shadow beauty.
The good start of "The Beginning" is obviously only half open.
I cycled, but the officer didn't believe it
When Zhao Jinmai narrowed his eyes and said to Officer Zhang, "I had a dream in my dreams", Hard Candy Jun thought that he was strung across the stage to "Guarding the Liberation Of the West". The kind of girl who talks nonsense, when the state is not clear, the instinctive reaction will be like the director of Liu Taoyan: "Prepare for drug testing." ”
"The Beginning" did not have a good start. Relative to the performance of the subsequent episodes, episode 1 is definitely a laggard level. The explanation of the whole cycle is quite tedious, and it lacks the kind of surprise that the audience slaps the thigh and shouts "actually looped". As an urban life drama, the style is fine. To say that the sense of suspense and tension is completely insufficient.
Li Shiqing, played by Zhao Jinmai, inadvertently dragged Xiao Heyun, played by Bai Jingting, into the loop after experiencing the bus explosion cycle. The two fumbled for the timing of each cycle, checking the possibility of everyone in the car carrying a bomb, coping with police interrogation, and trying to reverse the outcome of the incident to save the lives of the whole car.
It's a wonderful story setting, but it lacks a sense of substitution at the beginning. From Zhao Jinmai pulling down Bai Jingting to the car accident into the hospital, the rhythm is not bad. The collapse is that in the face of Officer Zhang (Liu Yijun), she stutters everything she has experienced. Such a flat and direct suspense explanation not only violates the law of creation, but also looks down on the audience's appreciation level.
The explosion is repeated several times, there is no need to borrow the mouth of the character, the audience can naturally find the clues. To put it as directly as "The Beginning" is too much like the monolinear narrative of a popular French drama. The media attention to the incident, as well as the police investigation notice, are like a one-on-one-glance news in reality. The noonday sun's emphasis on the texture of realism undoubtedly kills the sense of science fiction and cinema.
Imagine a more common alternative shooting method, the opening heroine is interrogated by the police in the small dark room, and then montage flashback to the explosion scene and her dreams, will it be more flavorful? As the first episode, in addition to explaining the story setting, the more important role is to let the audience substitute and guide them to find and solve the problem, "The Beginning" is obviously not done well. But fortunately, the follow-up plot is smooth, and it is the kind of drama that survives the first two episodes and gradually gets better.
The way the two protagonists investigate the suspects is quite like the biography of urban characters. The old man with the snakeskin pocket was originally loaded with watermelon for his son to eat. Because he was imprisoned for a few years, he was actually estranged from his son. Zhao Jinmai pretended to be comforted by his old uncle's son colleagues, more like a templated drama structure, warm but not new.
Lu Di, a boy who owns a cat, carries his family to pick up a cat in a rented house, and has no friends because of asthma and his mother's excessive love. When he learned of the plan of the male and female masters, he regained the courage to be himself; the garage rented by the migrant workers was facing inspection, and when Zhao Jinmai asked his aunt if he had sanitary napkins, he was generous and reached out.
Seeing the righteous courage as a muscle man, a live brother who is enthusiastic to help people, a big mother with medicine in the handbag, the group portrait shaping purpose of "Beginning" is to illustrate social issues, but the degree is all scratched by the boots. It can only be said that everyone's life is not easy, and there is no deep analysis, let alone the cry of the soul.
The same title competition, "The Beginning" gains and losses
The ancient Greek philosopher Zeno said, "In the time frame of fate, all the universes were destroyed by fire, and then returned to the original order." If art can expand the imagination, then the narrative of the time loop is close to a kind of "thinking gymnastics", leading the viewer into the realm of the unbelievable.
The genre statement needs to be dialectical first, that is: is "The Beginning" an infinite stream? The official series has followed Shao Yanjun's definition of "infinite stream", believing that "Beginning" does not fully conform to the basic framework of infinite stream. The most critical criterion for judging is that the protagonist has not entered the other world nor has he swiped the dungeon to gain power. However, people play tai chi, and the audience can also include "Beginning" in the category of generalized infinite flow.
Hard Candy Jun believes that "Beginning" is accurately a time loop theme, and it is a kind of "turning end". After An's cycle and repetition, the event develops into a completely different state of affairs than before. In "Lola Run", Lola must raise 100,000 marks in 20 minutes to save her boyfriend. The event progressed 3 times, the first two failed, and the third time Lola won enough funds to successfully escape the loop.
There is also the "Source Code" that is close to the structure of "Beginning", in order to find the criminal who caused the train explosion, the male protagonist is constantly sent back to the 8 minutes before the train explosion to investigate the truth, and finally detains the criminal to save the train. Most of the time loops choose to turn the camera type ending (Korean "One Day", American "Happy Death Day", etc.), probably to give the audience a little hope.
"Turning the plane ending" is good at creating points of view in repetition, one is the butterfly effect produced by the space-time interconnection, any change will make the whole event change; the other is the subjectivity of people in the empowerment of time, because of advance prediction, the protagonist solves the problem in a clever way.
First, The Beginnings makes a diverse attempt. For example, Officer Zhang suddenly found that Zhao Jinmai had never seen himself, but he could call out his own name. The audience expects Lu Di to be pulled into the loop, after which the memory is washed away as a stranger. Even though Bai Jingting accidentally killed the passenger carrying the bomb, the bus still exploded, which means that there is more than one murderer... The variety of details changes is wonderful.
Second, "The Beginning" is obviously deviated by the documentary style. The cycle has been more than a dozen or twenty times, and the male and female protagonists have no surprising operations, which belongs to the step-by-step solution. Is noon meant to reflect the reaction of ordinary people in a crisis setting? But audiences may be more expecting some sort of brain-burning mind game.
Compared with "Groundhog Day" and "Happy Death Day", "The Beginning" does not have the cool feeling that the protagonist calmly copes with it because of "overly skilled plot", but is interrogated by the police every time. Nor is there any "Seven Days of Suddenness" that actively strives to persuade friends whose behavior is deviated, to redeem themselves and others. Zhao Jinmai and Bai Jingting obviously have the opportunity to get off the bus and not get off, close to the reality of seeing righteousness and courage, but lack of in-depth exploration of human nature and social issues.
Theme Bonus VS Company Filter
It is not difficult to imagine that for the sake of interrogation considerations, the "antisocial personality" of the passenger carrying the bomb will weaken the description, and it may be a tragic life. "Beginning" plays the mode of time looping, but does not go further in the core discussion, and it is half a good drama.
As far as creativity is concerned, the main reason why the time loop is brain-burning is that it shapes the figurative subject of multiple personalities. Based on the common sun and moon, this type of film can depict life as monotonous and repetitive, so the plot is inevitably dull and protracted; based on the constant renewal of the situation, life can be described as multiple perspectives, and the image of the protagonist is shaped into polymorphic and differentiated.
The heavier the perspective, the more tactile the image, and the more complex the look. In the case of "The Night the Comet Came", the relationship between the characters was simple at first, and then the multiple characters in multiple time and space began to diverge and reorganize. How to divide them into a puzzle fun. For example, in "Horror Cruise" and "Escape from the Loop", there are eerie scenes of "I" seeing "I" die.
"Beginning" is relatively flat in the setting of the two protagonists, and lacks real character tension. Zhao Jinmai, a sunny and happy female college student, saving people is her only highlight. Bai Jingting, a game designer who refused to compromise and wanted to retain the original setting, just began to retreat and join hands with the heroine. Not to mention the female director Liu Tao, who has a dull expression, is completely the existence of "tool people".
Obviously, there is room for 15 episodes to unfold a 2-hour story, but some of the details of "The Beginning" really can't stand up to scrutiny. The young police officer's posture of torturing confessions to extract confessions of passion crimes is a bit too much. Looking at the clerk who bought melatonin in Bai Jingting and immediately called the police, the Chaoyang masses were not so alert. The big mother who forced the asthmatic son not to keep a cat was a bit stereotyped. The copy-paste explosion and the shot of the male and female protagonists waking up are somewhat aesthetically tired, in fact, they can be presented from a different angle...
Some viewers laughed that liu dan (duan pot aunt) and Huang Jue (bus driver) with familiar faces directly buried spoilers to hide worries. In addition to the protagonist, the other passengers are among these two people I know, they have no problem who has a problem? This kind of slight flaw appears in the noon drama that has always been known as a fine product, although the flaw is not hidden, but it is always properly owed.
Visiting Weibo and Douban, "Beginning" and other noon dramas have the same paradoxical word-of-mouth trend, that is, it is always impossible to distinguish whether it is explosive or not, whether it is passionate tap water or deep marketing. I believe that those who "watch 8 episodes in one breath are very cool" praise is sincere, and there is no need to doubt that the message of "episode 1 abandonment" is a deliberate bad review.
There are more exaggerated praises, "The Beginning" if it is an American drama Korean drama, I don't know how much higher the score is. Seriously, if there is such a first episode of an American Korean drama, I will definitely abandon it and cannot give such patience to capitalism.
The polarized evaluation may represent two typical audiences of Chinese opera: the former is patient, can accept the laying out of low information density, and is willing to maintain tolerance and expectation for cutting-edge themes and big-name productions; the latter is instant, once it cannot catch their appetite in the early stage, it is easy to lose. For those plots that "say the last sentence and know the next sentence" and can be directly brain-supplemented, they prefer that the episode directly skip it and present higher-energy content.
Comparing drama to a child, a loving mother and a strict father, are just two modes of watching drama. But under the differentiation of reviews, if you want to know the taste of pears, you must try it yourself, and the more people watch it, the more the drama will be on fire.