This year's Spring Festival file 8 new films, the overall quality is the highest in the past ten years of the Spring Festival file, but the market is cold.
The box office from the first to the third day of the new year last year was 1.692 billion, 1.379 billion and 1.472 billion, respectively;
The box office from the first to the third day of the first year of this year was 1.452 billion, 1.048 billion and 980 million, respectively;
Behind this cliff-like decline, there are the "three major grievances" of the public.
A complaint about the recurrence of the epidemic, cinemas in many areas are not open;
The era of 9.9 yuan to watch a movie has passed, and the average pre-sale price of the First Day of the New Year has reached 57.8 yuan, which is 50% more expensive than in the past few years.
The three grievances are the chaos of the schedule, and some excellent films cannot get a good schedule, of which Zhang Yimou's "Sniper" has become the biggest victim.
"Sniper" Douban scored 7.7 points, which is the best reputation in the Spring Festival file, but it encountered "Hades Film".
Pigo bought a ticket for "Sniper" on the first day of the New Year, waited for two hours and was told by the theater that the number of "Sniper" scenes was temporarily cancelled due to equipment reasons, and then I checked it out and was surprised to find that my city either did not have a "Sniper" schedule, or the time was arranged after 23:00 or even in the early morning.
And the online complaints about the "hades row" of "Sniper" are also endless, so that Zhang Yimou, who is busy with the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games, has to lower his posture and ask the theater to increase the schedule.
"Hades" makes "Sniper" at the bottom of the attendance rate, and then the theater line continues to reduce the scheduling according to the attendance rate, this vicious circle has continued until the third year of the first year, even if the "Sniper" online reputation is bursting, even if countless people shout injustice for it, it is still impossible to reverse the decline.
Zhang Yimou was once a box office guarantee, and in 2000, his "Hero" sold 250 million yuan, accounting for a quarter of the annual box office that year, a record that no one can break now.
Now that 20 years have passed, Zhang Yimou can't do it?
Pigo found the answer after watching the film.
First, Zhang Yimou's sniper movie, "sniping" is the stubborn disease of domestic films
To put it simply, "Sniper" is a bold attempt by Zhang Yimou, who has a brave sniper attack on the stubborn disease of domestic films.
It all started 20 years ago.
In 2000, Zhang Yimou filmed "Hero" and opened the era of domestic blockbusters.
After the domestic blockbuster almost followed the routine of "Hero": stacking stars, engaging in marketing, people tactics, story fake big air, how high the box office, how bad the reputation is.
This situation has reached the extreme in "Full of Golden Armor", so that even Jia Zhangke lamented that who still needs good people in the era of advocating gold!
Zhang Yimou realized this, and then filmed "A Thousand Miles to Ride Alone", "The Love of hawthorn trees", "Jinling Thirteen Chao", "Return", etc. are all filmed as much as possible, using the stories of small people to reflect the big times.
However, other domestic films have been infected with this "blockbuster disease", the main theme of these years of films are all "tall" and "Guangweizheng", such films are easy to harvest the box office, high box office makes this trend difficult to return, waiting for them must be the abyss.
Zhang Yimou had originally opened the Pandora box, and now he had to close it himself.
So over the years, he has successively filmed "genre films" such as "One Second", "Rock Solid", and "On the Cliff", including of course, this "Sniper".
"Sniper" is zhang Yimou's first pure war film in the past 40 years, if he had filmed 20 years ago, he would have made big scenes and piled stars.
This time, however, he did the opposite, capturing the tiniest story in the grand proposition and showing the greatness of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea in a small and big way.
Second, Zhang Yimou filmed "Sniper", used 4 moves, cured the "disease" of domestic movies
There are so many heroic deeds emerging in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, and the background of "Sniper" shooting is the low-profile "cold gun and cold cannon" movement, which is located in the late stage of the entire war, characterized by high density and low intensity, and lack of famous scenes, but this is in line with the characteristics of the movie.
"Sniper" is about a local battle that takes place on an unknown hillside: a scene, two waves of people, a North Korean child, and several guns firing back and forth.
Under this kind of minimalism, on the contrary, it can stimulate the artistic creation and true expression of emotions in the film, and Zhang Yimou and his daughter cooperate for the first time to play flowers.
Throughout the movie, Zhang Yimou used a total of 4 magic tricks.
The first trick is to learn from the SKETCH structure.
The so-called SKETCH is a sketch comedy.
Compared with traditional sketches, its story background and characters are simpler, quickly entering the plot, and repeatedly reinforcing and superimposing on a laugh point to produce a strong laugh result.
Last year's "Annual Comedy Contest" made SKETCH prosperous, and Zhang Yimou is a fan of the show, saying that he paid attention to the show before it was even on fire.
The impression is that Zhang Yimou is not a comedy lover, and his attention to this show is most likely that the form of SKETCH attracted him.
In "Sniper", Zhang Yimou is not only a director but also a screenwriter, and he adopts this SKETCH creative method.
A single scene, after a simple preparation, quickly enters the turn-based game of two-sided shooting, and then continuously strengthens the point of the confrontation, creating a one-, two, three- or even quadruple effect.
The same is the shooting, we see the iteration and escalation of tactics, from pretending to dig trenches, to rolling in the snow to shoot, to exchanging squad leaders, and finally using spoons to hook fire, sound east and west to complete a fatal blow.
The application of SKETCH makes the repetitive narrative no longer bored the audience, but greatly increases the audience's sense of expectation.
The second move, the MacGuffin technique.
After all, SKETCH is only suitable for short dramas, and cannot support the length of a movie, so Zhang Yimou adopted the MacGuffin method.
The MacGuffin method is a method invented by Hitchcock, which is simply a person and object representing "suspense", which may not appear much in the whole film, but it is to pull the audience to the end.
The MacGuffin in Sniper is the light that delivers intelligence.
He is almost lying down in the whole film, and there are not many scenes, but because he has intelligence on his body, he suddenly attracts the attention of the audience.
His every movement and expression pulls the plot:
Whether it is the wound on the body that hides the intelligence, or the injection of air with the needle, or the blood book, the bland plot suddenly becomes steep, breeding dense and prosperous, and finally he completes the transmission of the information in the narrow space.
When the mystery of the end of the film is revealed, the audience actually has a sense of pleasure in watching spy movies.
The third trick is to borrow "a cow".
In mathematics there is a classic "cattle-splitting dilemma":
The peasants gave 17 head of cattle to 3 sons, the eldest son got half, the second son got one-third, the third son got one-ninth, and could not kill the cattle, but could only divide the whole head.
At first glance, this problem has no solution, but as long as you "borrow 1 cow", it is easy to calculate that the eldest son is divided into 9 cows, the second son is divided into 6 cows, and the third son is divided into 2 cows.
After the three men divided up 17 cattle, the borrowed cow could also be returned to its original owner.
When shooting films on the theme of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, we will also face the "dilemma of dividing cattle" --
The participants in this war include China, the United States, North Korea, South Korea and many other countries, and if they are all accounted for, it is easy to cause chaos, so the past films on resisting THE United States and aiding Korea will automatically ignore the Koreans and reduce the war to a direct and powerful dialogue between China and the United States.
But "Sniper" cleverly borrows a cow, which is the North Korean kid in the film.
Watching the film, we will find that China and the United States are fiercely fighting, but the North Korean children are freely shuttling through the battlefield, obviously stupid and stupid, but they are stunned to live to the end, and they are still unharmed.
However, because of his presence, the situation of a backwater was stirred up, and he acted like a catalyst to make the contest between the two sides not to watch the fire from the other side but to be immersive, and he himself had symbolic significance, representing the complex international situation at that time.
This cow, it's wonderful to borrow!
The fourth trick is to cut off the edges and corners.
Zhang Yimou this piece is to praise the ordinary heroes who are not remembered by history, in order to strengthen this theme, he even "self-destruct martial arts", cutting off all the edges and corners of the film, so that we can no longer see the familiar Zhang Yimou.
In the title of the film, he directly changed "The Coldest Gun" to the most popular "Sniper";
In terms of actors, in addition to Zhang Yu and Zhang Yi, he uses almost all "vegetarian" actors;
On the scene, he condenses all the stories into a single scene as much as possible;
In terms of painting style, he also abandoned the color beauty that he was good at, and pursued extreme realism, and the scene of the soldier being shot made many people look at it and scratch their hearts.
Narratively, he also deliberately made "degeneration", quoting a lot of the protagonist's narration, which should have been a big taboo in filmmaking.
Even in the promotion of the movie, this film is extremely low-key, and many people did not even know that this movie existed before the Spring Festival was released.
Zhang Yimou, like a clumsy newcomer, made a film without characteristics, but the lack of characteristics is precisely the biggest feature of this film, because it praises the group of "non-characteristic" people, just like the narrator of the film said: "My comrades-in-arms were sacrificed on that nameless hillside, leaving only ordinary names." ”
At the end of the film, the fifth class was left with only Dayong after the fierce battle, and he cried bitterly, at this time, the company commander played by Zhang Yi told him that the fifth class was still there, and the hope was still there.
He began to name: "Liu Xinwu, Mi Lao'er, Fat Dun, Sun Xi, Xiao Xu..."
He read out the names of the dead warriors, and soon the new warriors responded, "Arrival! "To!" "To!"
This is the biggest tear in the film, and it also tells us that the real snipers are not just individual names written in the newspapers, everyone in our volunteer army is a heroic sniper, even if history has forgotten them, but some people will remember that they have come.
Of course, Zhang Yimou also paid a price for his courage, "Sniper" is difficult to see because of the carving on sesame seeds, and it is cold in the Spring Festival file because of crazy subtraction.
But in turn, it is also like a cold bullet, giving a sniper attack to the Spring Festival stalls with exaggerated ticket prices, exaggerated publicity, and exaggerated film quality.
This is not a praying arm as a car, but the spark of the stars can burn the plains, with the Spring Festival stall plate cold, with Zhang Yimou's initiative to change, we should be able to wrap around the Chinese film for many years the "blockbuster disease" should be alleviated.
However, the wine is not afraid of the deep alley, in today's word of mouth is king, we believe that "Sniper" will definitely complete the remake counterattack after the Spring Festival holiday, borrowing a sentence from the audience: Zhang Yimou, don't worry, we still have time!
Let's wait and see!
Text/Pippi Film Editorial Department: A Chicken
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