Text/Shi Ruoxiao
In the Spring Festival file in 2022, the box office in the whole period was nearly 2 billion less than last year. However, as theaters have lowered the price of movie tickets, more people have watched movies, and the national box office every day is more than 200 million yuan.
And to boost the momentum of this "post-Spring Festival stall", there is a small slot: Valentine's Day stall.
In fact, days such as Valentine's Day, Tanabata Festival, "520" and so on, are not a serious schedule. It's just that every day, the number of couples watching movies has increased greatly, and they are insensitive to the price of movie tickets, and they can often violently rush the high plate, so it has become a must for love films.
Movies released on such days often have common characteristics: the quality of the film, the cost, and the card division are not high, and they can suck up 50% of the total box office on the day of the premiere.
This year, of course, is no exception.
The titles are longer than one
531 million, which is the total result of this year's Valentine's Day file.
There are three new movies released in this Valentine's Day file, all of course romance films.
The first place at the box office was "Ten Years of One Pin Wen Ru Yan", which won 145 million on the first day. According to the statistics of Maoyan Professional Edition, it has won nearly 100 million yuan at the box office as early as the pre-sale stage, surpassing the box office performance of "Philharmonic City" and becoming the single-day box office champion of the new drama film in the History of Chinese Film History Valentine's Day.
However, "Ten Years of A Pin Wen Ru Yan" has the blessing of the original work, the mass base is enough, plus the high schedule of films, it is not surprising to win the first place of the day.
Poster of "Ten Years of One Pint of Warmth"
It was followed by "Love You in a World I Want to Go To You", which came in second place in the pre-sale stage. However, after the release of the film, the gap gradually widened, and the box office on the same day only ranked fourth, falling behind the "Chosin Lake No Shumun Bridge" and "This Killer Is Not Calm" that had been released for many days, and finally received more than 59 million yuan on the first day.
The worst performer was "Don't Forget I Love You", which only reported more than 47 million at the box office. From the perspective of the lineup of Kasi, this is the best lineup of valentine's day files, and the leading actors are Gulinaza, Zhang Xinyi and Liu Yihao. However, the romance film still seems to depend on the story, and does not depend on the lineup.
If I had to find something in common with the three films, it would be that the titles are longer than the other. Originally, in order to facilitate memory and dissemination, movie titles often used three to five words as appropriate, but romance films did not abide by this law at all, and giving a long name has almost become the standard of the industry in recent years.
"Love You In Your World"
It is difficult to say exactly when this ethos began to spread, but retrospectively, it is still related to the long titles of many youth pain literature in the early 21st century, and the publishing industry has affected the film industry and gradually become the norm. For example, 2012's "Those Years, the Girl We Chased Together", 2013's "To the Youth We Will Eventually Pass Away", 2016's "My Best Friend's Wedding", "Passing Through Your World", 2020's Tanabata file "I Am Waiting for You at the End of Time" and so on. The creators and promoters probably feel that the longer the title, the more it can stimulate the female audience's desire to buy tickets, thus getting a good market response.
However, no matter how long the title is, it cannot save the bad content, and this time all three films have ushered in the collapse of word of mouth. As of now, the three movies on the Douban only "ten years a pin wen as the word" opened a score, only 2.9, overwhelming bad reviews also hit at the same time, the first short comment is impressively "the current movie can be really interesting, obviously you can grab money directly, you have to ask you to watch the movie."
Photo/Douban
As for the more pertinent comments, it is pointed out that the original work is already a 2009 novel, and both the story, the characters and the style are somewhat outdated now. Perhaps to avoid this problem, the screenwriter made a drastic revision of the script, but due to lack of ability, he could not jump out of the framework to write a new story, and the result was that both ends were not flattered. Not only are the fans of the original dissatisfied, but passers-by seem to have failed the movie.
Film critics' comments are also more than one vitriol: "The artistry of this film is zero, it is the most boring and empty PPT movie, and the first day of box office breaking 100 million is an insult to the Chinese film market", "This film is full of self-touching"...
However, this situation is actually quite normal. Because in recent years, such as Valentine's Day, Tanabata Festival, "520", "Singles Day" and other lonely "love slots", almost all have been operated into "catch a vote and go" days.
"Love file" history
In 2011, under the circumstances of not being optimistic about the outside world, "33 Days of Lost Love" used the "once-in-a-century Holy Singles' Day" as a selling point, and on November 11, it earned more than 47 million box office, and became the dark horse of the year with a total box office of 320 million yuan, ranking eighth in the total box office list of that year.
Even a shopping festival that is completely hyped up by e-commerce can reap such an effect, and the potential for recognized love days such as Valentine's Day and Tanabata cannot be ignored.
"33 Days of Lost Love"
Taking Valentine's Day as an example, due to its proximity to the Lunar New Year, it is often covered by the former. If the two are combined, the box office will soar to more than 1 billion, such as last year, which reached a staggering 1.345 billion.
If you do not superimpose the holidays, but also in a more awkward working day, such as Monday to Wednesday, the quality of the films released is not high, the performance will be relatively low. But even if it is low, it is still strong - in the case of Valentine's Day in 2015, the new films that were not released on the same day were also weekdays the next day, but in the end there was still a total box office of 220 million. In the two days before and after the day, the national daily box office did not exceed 100 million.
That is to say, if it is not affected by unconventional factors such as the epidemic, 200 million is the box office bottom line of this special day, and with the development of the times, this number will only go higher, not lower. The new films released on the same day, no matter how poor the quality, can get a piece of the pie in the large market of more than 200 million, which is nothing more than the difference between more and less. Assuming that three new films are released, and the money from the earlier films is cut away, each new film can win at least 40 to 60 million.
This alone constitutes a reason for many small-scale films to compete.
According to the statistics of the film and television vertical media "Poison Eye", from 2014 to 2016, the number of romance films competing on the same stage on the day of the Tanabata Festival every year was more than 5, of which 7 were in 2014, and in the total box office of 240 million yuan on the same day, nearly 200 million yuan was contributed by romance films.
Bride Wars
The 2015 Tanabata Festival was Thursday, but the total box office of the day reached 230 million yuan, 100 million yuan more than that Saturday. Among the many films, the love film "Bride Wars" released on the same day received 92 million, and the total box office of this film was only 173 million, accounting for more than 50% of the day of Tanabata; the third-place box office "City in Love" won 31 million, the total box office of this film was only 53 million, and the single-day box office at other times was only about 3 million.
On Valentine's Day in 2017, in addition to "Extreme Agent", the second, third and fourth places in the box office on that day were all occupied by romance films, namely "Philharmonic City", "Contract Men and Women" and "Crazy Yue Pry Lady". In addition to the good reputation of "City of Philharmonic Music" and the obvious long-term effect, the other two first-day box office accounts for more than 50%.
The 2019 Valentine's Day file is more special, just after the Spring Festival, the market is still under the aftermath of blockbusters such as "The Wandering Earth" and "Crazy Aliens", but a love film "A Kiss and a Promise" suddenly drilled out, grabbing more than 85 million, ranking third on the day, and the final total box office was 173 million, accounting for 50% of the box office on the first day.
"A Kiss and a Promise"
In the 2020 Tanabata file, the first in line is "I am waiting for you at the end of time", which won 250 million box office on the same day, but the total box office was only 500 million, the box office on the first day accounted for 50%, and the Douban score was only 5.3, which was obviously weak in the long term; another love film "Buckwheat Madness" won more than 34 million on the same day, the total box office was only more than 52 million, accounting for more than 65% on the first day, and the sense of weakness was more obvious.
It is worth mentioning that of all the above films, none of the Douban scores exceed 6 points.
To sum up, this "grab a vote and go" approach is mostly only applicable to small-cost films. For films with larger and more confident lineups, it is not worth it to put them in these days. Because Tanabata and Valentine's Day are not legal holidays, if you can't catch up with the weekend, you can hardly produce any long-term box office endurance. In order to go long-term, the filmmakers often choose to compete for the box office in the big slot, such as "The Predecessor 3" is placed in the New Year's Day file, and "Your Wedding" is selected in the May 1st file.
The confident romance films are gone, and the quality of the films that remain in these slots is almost all unable to withstand scrutiny, further forming a vicious circle.
Where are domestic romance films going
In fact, even if you look away from these specific days, there have been quite a few domestic love movies in recent years, but there are few works of particularly good quality.
Among small-budget commercial films, there are only three most common types of films: romance, comedy and crime. The first two can often be stacked up and turned into romantic comedies. There are also superimposed crime types, but due to the heavy atmosphere, the joy of love will inevitably be overshadowed by the haze of crime and become an accessory element of the latter. 2019's "Young You" is a rare successful compound, and it has achieved a love-based approach, so it has achieved great success at the box office.
"Young You"
Going back in time, over the years, there have been dazzling successes in business: 2011's "33 Days of Lost Love", 2012's "Those Years, the Girl We Chased Together", 2013's "To the Youth We Will Eventually Pass Away", 2014's "Beijing Love Story", "Hurry That Year", Tian Yusheng's "Predecessor" series, 2016's "Passing Through Your World", 2018's "Later Us", "Living Together in Time"...
In terms of quantity alone, there are many films, but from the perspective of artistry and other points of view, there are few excellent works. Most of the above-mentioned films are born from online literature, and the quality of the text is not high, either it is the gag of urban youth, or the youth memories of "skipping class and fighting abortion", and the theme naturally lacks imagination and space to play.
In addition to the subject matter, the bigger problem lies in the sense of fragmentation caused by the cliché of the narrative. Taking youth memories as an example, its essence is aimed at the nostalgia of different generational groups (post-80s, post-85s, post-90s, etc.). Because each generation has to face different life propositions, the post-80s and post-85s are facing the great changes in society and the subversion of the concept of love life, and the post-90s are facing the intertwining of complex propositions such as campus bullying, wealth division, and elite education. A good youth romance film not only assists the audience to complete the memories of love and studies, but also reveals and inspires a specific social proposition. But most films not only fail to do this, but the experience for the audience is like traveling to another era.
Last year, "Your Wedding" greatly exposed this flaw: the protagonists of the film went to high school in 2006, and by extrapolation, the target audience group happened to be the end of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s, but the story direction of the film was almost the same as that of "Those Years, the Girls We Chased Together" ten years ago. Coupled with the cultural differences between the mainland and Taiwan, the whole film looks seriously out of touch with reality. The character and behavior of the characters are also quite distorted, let alone sublimated into some social propositions.
"Your Wedding"
However, due to the large number of popularity accumulated by the lead actor Xu Guanghan in "Want to See You", the film still achieved commercial success. Last year's May Day, it won the first place in the box office in the melee of more than a dozen films, until the end of the schedule, it was gradually surpassed by Zhang Yimou's "On the Cliff".
Due to the fragmentation of the sense of the times, the audience can not enjoy much substitution when watching such romance films, and can only find a little empathy about "love" from the character interactions and lines - after all, no matter how outrageous the plot is, there is always a man and a woman in the film. This kind of thing is OK to see it over and over again, but if it becomes a creative formula in the industry and appears in batches, it will soon be impossible to see.
On the surface, romance is nothing more than that little thing between men and women, and it is very well written. But it is precisely because it is too common that it can only extract the essence from the daily chai rice oil and salt, and the trivialities of life to see the big picture. This point seems simple, but it is quite complicated, requiring a lot of life experience to lay the foundation, and non-simple screenwriting skills can be mastered.
At the end of last year, "Love Myth" was good in restoring a sense of chai rice oil and salt for ordinary residents in Shanghai, coupled with the "golden sentences" and gags that ran through the whole film, which was very popular in the industry. But its success can only be attributed to filling a part of the industry's type gap, achieving niche joy, and not making much waves at the mass level.
"Sweet Honey"
Looking back at the past, Chinese commercial romance films are probably still chen Kexin's "Sweet Honey" as the leader. Its success is not only because of love, but also reflects the life encounters of small people in the change of the big times, and the pattern is naturally several positions higher than those small family films that talk about love. But now the love film does not say that it has reached the level of "Sweet Honey", the screenwriter obviously lives in the new century, but the idea is still stuck in the era of "Meteor Garden". This is a creative format that should have been eliminated by history a long time ago, but it not only did not withdraw from the stage, but also greatly extended its life with the emergence of the so-called "sweet pet drama". The creators have found that, like online dramas, even if the content is poor, as long as you find two male and female actors with their own traffic, pick a good day to release, and seize the viewing needs of couples in the festival, they can always attract some box office, so why bother to cut the script?
However, if everyone is not good at doing content, always thinking of speculating through the rubbing period, and cheating the audience, this kind of money will inevitably not be earned for long.