Leaving aside the wave of public opinion set off by "squinting", "The Lion Boy" itself is also controversial.
Just like a lot of people go to the massage, it's for that moment of sourness. The massage master's bone joints press into the sore spot, sore, painful, numb, three tastes and one mix, that kind of comfort can not be said. "The Lion Boy" found such a sore point, and a blow sent off the yawning caused by the cheesy plot of the first half of the movie.
Therefore, after the release of the film, the response showed a rare "three polarization": on the one hand, it was a slightly dismal box office, on the other hand, it was a lively and lively high reputation, mostly based on the high score of Douban 8.3 and the praise of the people on the platform of cat's eye and ticket sales; but a closer look, this high reputation also has a strange look, and the audience's emotions and the affirmation of the industry are different, and the proportion of film critics expresses dissatisfaction with the film, and even reveals a trace of anger.
The dismal box office has objective factors that have nothing to do with the quality of the film itself, such as the overall coldness of the film market in 2021, and there are also reasons why producer Zhang Miao described "no IP, no stars, no traffic", at the same time, the realistic style of animated films has not yet cultivated a fixed audience, and the vagueness of the genre also prevents people from entering the cinema.
However, the other "two poles" come from the movie itself: one side exclaims and moves, high burning, and bursts of crying, and the other side denounces clichés, falsehoods, and ugly eyes - so is "Lion Boy" in the audience's heart "popular", or is it the "kitsch" written by film critics?
01
Waste and the treasures of a young hero
The story of "Lion Boy" is not complicated, always bullied, self-proclaimed "waste" of the small town teenager Ah Juan has a lion dance dream, he experienced many difficulties in the process of winning the championship, and finally successfully won the championship.
This is a story of "waste" making expensive heroic dreams, but dreams are things that only rich children deserve to think; poor and chasing dreams are the most painful, and good dreams are born with morality - the production team found a Chinese-style empathy point, which is hidden under the calm faces of ordinary people. This tension with dreams is different from the traditional sense of "it is not easy to pursue dreams", it comes from a lower place.
The variety show "Annual Comedy Competition" became popular with the original combination of "chasing dreams and runners-up" composed of Jiang Long and Zhang Chi, and their series of works "This Killer Does Not Fight Cold", "The Last Lesson", "Ten Years of Work Offstage" and so on are in line with this traditional sense of "chasing dreams is not easy".
▲ Jiang Long and Zhang Chi in "Annual Comedy Competition"
If the side of their seesaw suppresses life, ability and the environment, what suppresses the protagonist of "Lion Boy" Is Juan is the sense of shame and deprivation. This is a kind of more sympathetic, but also because of the bottom, so more hidden "dream is not easy".
Therefore, such a plot can not only touch the few people who are still chasing dreams, after all, who has not been constrained by the objective environment and the bitter experience of grievances, and bitterness has become more and more a frequent but unspeakable emotion; the most important thing in "The Lion Boy" is to empathize with some individuals who have given up chasing dreams, or empathize with the one who gave up their dreams; it expresses a deep understanding of all this helplessness. It is this kind of pain point that can make hundreds of spectators in the cinema return to the original place.
Finding the pain points of the audience, "burning" will be both inexplicable and logical.
Inexplicably because the audience probably remembers the cheesy plot of the previous hour to make people doze off, so they can't help but feel inexplicable that they are finally ignited; it is logical that once a dilemma makes the audience deeply empathize, it is very easy to substitute for it, so the solution of the dilemma in the movie is as if it is the solution of the dilemma in reality, you hope that things are like this, things really become like this, and the emotions of "burning" will be fully mobilized.
▲ Stills of "Lion Boy"
With a delicate visual spectacle and just the right pop rock soundtrack (Yi Shui'er's Le Xia Band), the audience and Ah Juan embark on a ridiculous counterattack road: the waste wood teenager who did not think about himself came to life with a magnificent dream.
02
Expensive dreams and mournful realities
"The Lion Boy" has a dark line of the story, that is, the transmutation of Ah Juan's lion dance dream.
At the beginning, although it was very insufficient, the movie still explained that the reason why Ah Juan danced the lion was for the beautiful girl with the same name, in order to meet her parents who could not return from working in Guangzhou, and also for herself to no longer be bullied. But as the second part of the film unfolds, these motives are gone.
Father was injured at the construction site, became a vegetative person, "in order to go to Guangzhou to meet his parents" This motivation disappeared, and Ah Juan chose to work in Shanghai in order to accumulate her father's medical expenses and other expenses, met a girl with the same name as herself and inspired herself to dance the lion, the other party's wealthy family situation made Ah Juan realize the absurdity of her dream of lion dance, at this time, the motivation for pursuing a beautiful lion dance girl also disappeared.
This is precisely the key moment for Ah Juan to truly understand what the lion dance really means to herself - if it is only for the girl, in order to meet her parents, then he can now give up the lion dance - should he stop? Why can't you stop? Why stick with it?
At this point, the answer really emerged: the lion dance is only to give yourself an explanation, which is the fulfillment of yourself. At this point, the lion dance has completely become a thing that is only related to oneself.
Putting the foundation of the pursuit on the individual will is a narrative that is quite modern and popular. One of the reasons why Tang Danian directed and starring Ren Suxi, Li Baotian and Wang Zichuan in the movie "Looking for Han Ji" hit the street is that some audiences think that the concept of love and values it presents are old and old-fashioned, not new enough, not enough self, not independent enough, and failed to grasp the pulse of the times.
However, just as although everyone shouts feminism and women's independence, the fundamentals of Chinese marriage and the relationship between men and women have not come out of the fundamental pattern of "male outside the male and female outside", this "new" is both a new and a custom, a "custom" in the sense of universal values that has sprouted and is waiting to be developed. From this point of view, the transmutation of Ah Juan's dream of lion dance is essentially a successful completion of the expression of "popular". This kind of "popular" expression has also been done in "The Demon Boy of Nezha".
However, the problem also arises at this point.
If you only look at this dream story for self-actualization purposes in isolation, there is no problem, but once you combine the way the contradictions are handled at the end of the film and the second stage of the film, you will be full of doubts. In the Easter egg at the end of the film, Ah Juan did not change her life by relying on the lion dance, and after gao guang, he returned to Shanghai, repeating the fate of his parents going to the city to work.
Originally, after the film reached the second stage, that is, after Ah Juan's lion dance team won the preliminary round, the producer could introduce an internal contradiction to let the film develop deeper, but the production team chose an external contradiction, that is, because her father became a vegetative person, Ah Juan had to temporarily give up the lion dance and turn to Shanghai to work to support the family.
Because the film points the contradiction to fate and chance, it almost loses the advantage of external contradictions - evil no longer has a specific direction, but a fate that is powerless to resist, and the plot gradually becomes a powerless thing. The teenager trapped by fate does his best not to change his fate, but to have expensive and useless dreams, which makes the whole story seem neither sufficient nor reasonable.
03
There are good sentences, no ends
The brave leap from mythical IP to realism, the uplifting teenage spirit, the animated rendering that is slender to the hair, and the right rock score... "The Lion Boy" is not a perfunctory work, but it is precisely because of this that it is given greater expectations.
In terms of story structure and comedy method, the film draws heavily on Stephen Chow's 2001 self-written and self-directed action comedy Shaolin Soccer, which is a prominent feature of the latter being a complete narrative with consistent logic. "Shaolin Soccer" is a story of "the return of the gods", and the beginning and end of its story are based on this core. Rushing to imitate the story structure of "Shaolin Soccer" to tell a low-level story has to be said to be suspected of laziness.
No wonder some people say that every penny earned by "The Lion Boy" should be given half to Zhou Xingchi, 20% to Xu Ke and Jet Li, and half to Ma Dong.
The film inherits some routines, but does not follow these routines to the end, so it cannot justify itself and become a complete expression, so it falls into the embarrassment of being a little confused. The dream story of the protagonist Ah Juan presents this split. He was inspired to decide to dance the lion, encounter obstacles, overcome obstacles, succeed, and then reality didn't change at all. The expression of dream chasing and the expression of cruel reality are like two parallel lines that do not intersect, existing separately in the film.
In terms of supporting roles, "The Lion Boy" has not exempted itself from introducing a female character to guide Ah Juan to the road of lion dance, and creatively clarifies the social identities of the two Ah Juan, and finally, it cannot be solved.
In contrast to the female character in Kung Fu Soccer who finally solves the protagonist's dilemma, she is an artistic interpretation of the philosophical concept of "Juke Gang", not to mention the vividness of this interpretation, at least her presence is an indispensable part of the story.
However, because the arm provoked everyone to watch, Rodin smashed the sculptures, which is really a failed work of art. But this story may also have an unknown trick, the abrupt arm is the small bud that emerges from the volume, as a kind of stage result, the creator who grasped the Yoshimitsu Kataba can start from this, creating limbs, torso, head, and facial features that can match this arm - so that the real work can be born.
But obviously, "The Lion Boy" is still far from the real work.
Author | Yu sweets
Edit | Hu Zhanjia
Caption | Movie "The Lion Boy"
Produced by | Zero LT(ID:LingTai_LT)