I know that there is a kind of question that is very hot, but I can never argue the answer.
××× compare with Stephen Chow, how is it?
Whether it is Hong Kong film colleagues, mainland gods, or rising stars...
As long as it is related to "comedy", it is indispensable to compare it with Xingye.
Although these less rigorous and scientific comparisons have been corrected again and again.
Fans are still tireless.
In Sir's view, behind the strong desire for knowledge is a simple expectation:
Is it possible for us to wait for the next Stephen Chow?
Stop.
Recently, someone really did it, not only fought a draw with Xingye, but even surpassed.
Real data - this month, "I Still Think You Are the Best" starring Huang Zihua (Hong Kong translation: "Rice Play Attacking the Heart") exceeded 61.28 million at the box office in Hong Kong.
surpassed "Kung Fu" and became the No. 1 Hong Kong comedy in Hong Kong film history.
Of course, there are many restrictions on this "transcendence".
Limited to the local box office in Hong Kong - "Still Think You're the Best" was released in the mainland for 36 days, with a box office of less than 100 million, which is basically not ranked as the number one.
Only a single film surpasses - in the top 20 list of Hong Kong's box office, Stephen Chow also occupies 6 positions.
However, Sir was still in a trance when he saw the news.
Hong Kong movies are rich in comedy.
But after Stephen Chow appeared, the box office of comedy movies was almost monopolized by him.
Why is Huang Zihua?
If we jump out of the category of Hong Kong movies, we are not spectators.
Our need for comedy has never diminished.
There have been no phenomenal comedy blockbusters in the mainland for a while, but laughter is still a productivity that cannot be ignored in domestic entertainment, such as happy twists, talk shows, comedy competitions...
Even Stephen Chow & Huang Zihua.
Nor is it all media rendering, some kind of cool drama text in which the new god replaces the old one.
If you carefully review the comedy path of the two, you will find out.
Their "summit meeting" this time just proves - why we don't need the next Stephen Chow / Huang Zihua.
01
The story, Sir, wants to start with a photo.
The origin of the photograph cannot be verified.
But every face inside is still clear.
Zhou Xingchi, Wu Junru, Gu Dezhao, Zhang Daming, and Wu Zhenyu sat in front of the camera, and Huang Zihua leaned into the mirror ghostly.
It's like the shutter pressed by fate.
At first glance in the photo, the C position is by no means Huang Zihua, but the gang of "comedy hegemony" led by Stephen Chow who has monopolized the Hong Kong film market for more than 20 years.
According to Hong Kong box office statistics, from 1990 to 2001, almost the top ten highest-grossing movies at the box office, more or less, one to three were Stephen Chow's movies.
What's more excessive is that in 92, the top 5 were wrapped up by "Stephen Chow".
This year, Stephen Chow just reached the age of 30.
It can be said that the Hong Kong comedies of the 90s were Stephen Chow's world.
Even, for the sake of those who "had" the ancients before and those who did not come after.
Hong Kong comedy in 2010 is an era based on stagnation, except for "Mai Du", which scored 6 points, and can be strictly regarded as a comedy, really can't find a few.
Like us, Huang Zihua also looked up to the bigwigs at that time.
Huang Zihua came from a wireless screenwriting training class, thinking of using this method to enter the wireless TV station, which is somewhat closer to the actor's dream.
Things do not turn out the way you want.
After stepping into the entertainment industry, I found that dreams are still not so simple.
In Huang Zihua's first laughter "The History of Flesh and Blood in the Entertainment Industry", he specifically cued Stephen Chow.
He said that I used to not believe in God, until I saw Stephen Chow, I believed it.
This is an era full of Stephen Chow.
Because he's really everywhere
Everywhere
This year is also Huang Zihua's thirty years old.
He smiled bitterly and spat on himself:
Who do you not look at Stephen Chow now? Do you look at me?
Although they have not been able to stand on the same starting line, they all have the same dream, to be actors and engage in comedy.
It's a pity that Huang Zihua has never been able to enjoy the love of fate like Stephen Chow.
The box office of the movies participated in was lower than one.
The lowest one is "Life is Proud and Happy" written by Huang Zihua, even if there are Liu Qingyun and Li Lizhen sitting in it, it is only 50,000.
The first part, the writer and director of "A Mosquito Chicken Bodyguard", only 200,000 Hong Kong dollars at the box office.
This "poison" physique has also become a meme for scolding himself in Dong Du laughing.
Ten years after his debut, more than 30 movies, none of them can be at the box office, and even, I thought that if I didn't sign the name of "Huang Zihua", the box office might be better.
Until 2018 and 2020, Huang Zihua's "Agent Dongdu" and "Grandmaster of the Dynasty" were released.
Sweeping away the previous haze, the box office was 45 million and 29.6 million respectively.
Although it is on the spot, the reputation is not good.
It can be said that Huang Zihua is using his aura of "laughter" to renew his movie dream.
When "You're Best" topped the 60 million box office, Huang Zihua wrote a hazy sentence on Facebook - although he couldn't read the mystery, he also guessed a little about it:
"Mr. Box Office Poison" this raised eyebrow and exhaled.
Taking off the name of box office poison, he finally released the blood and tears accumulated over the years.
Say Huang Zihua won?
Win at the right time.
Today, one has become a "star master" and the other is a "Zihua God".
The appearance of the two of them is more like the myths and miracles of Hong Kong in the 90s, and the geniuses who came out when the comedy was not connected.
In recent years, "Mermaid" scored 6.7 points, "Journey to the West" 5.5 points, and "The King of New Comedy" scored 5.7 points.
Stephen Chow's comedy status is really precarious.
So.
The trend of "dark horse" also has opportunities to lay the foundation.
Previously, Sir also introduced the movie "You'd Better" in detail (you can poke the portal to watch back).
This movie, authentic Hong Kong film taste: story structure, is the short in parents; The relationship between the characters is to kill the three brothers; Dramatic conflict, in which brothers fall in love with the same woman; The warmth is at the table for three meals a day.
After Chen Yongsun learned that the box office of the movie surpassed Stephen Chow, he said, "Personal comedy creation is very influenced by Stephen Chow, and it is good to be able to obtain resources from their nourishment, and then use them to create new stories in this era and gain the support of the audience." ”
It can be said that "You Best" is a work that connects the upper and lower.
Audiences familiar with Hong Kong comedies will see many classic passages in "You'd Best".
For example, director Chen Yongsun puts the relationship between the three brothers under the same roof.
In 1992's "Family Happy Events", there is already a New Year comedy, which can be regarded as an old drama.
Use food to talk about the "wai of life" way.
Here too.
It's not that "You'd Best" is "borrowing a terrier" or "fried cold rice".
It is more like a collection of the advantages of Hong Kong comedies: grounding, small people, market gas...
It is a continuation of many excellent qualities of Hong Kong comedy films.
But.
If you want to say that Huang Zihua is an up-and-coming "little brother" under the protection of a group of bigwigs.
That's not accurate either.
02
Or back to that photo.
Pay attention to Huang Zihua's posture:
He is like this halfway leaning into the mirror in the picture, "squeezing" into the comedy world.
It's not fair to just look at the box office data.
With the box office of the movie in 2022, compared with "Kung Fu" in 2004, there is a sense of "the official feeling of the sword of the Ming Dynasty cutting off the Qing Dynasty".
Around 18 years ago, the level of consumption and prices were different, how could they be so compared.
The news has a "headline party" that deliberately attracts the attention of readers.
However, this ranking is not meaningless.
The ranking of Hong Kong film history also reflects the audience's preference for a certain film type, taste, and cast in different time periods.
It is a kind of gift to Huang Zihua's comedy piety.
In comedy creation, Huang Zihua did "surpass" Stephen Chow - in a way that "betrayed" Stephen Chow.
For example, a major feature of Huang Zihua's comedy:
Language.
Stand-up comedy is Huang Zihua's starting point, so whether in TV series or movies, the lines are the part he polishes the most.
For example, the "homophonic terrier", which is considered lazy, is often used more advanced in Huang Zihua's movies.
In "You Best", the meme "Gou Second Sister-in-law" appears twice.
Because the words "yi" and "er" in Cantonese are pronounced the same.
The first time it appears, it is a simple homonym - both Gou "Yi" sister-in-law (a friend's woman) and Gou "second" sister-in-law (second brother's woman).
Coincidentally?
Ha ha.
And when this stalk appears for the second time, it is tasted with an extra layer of taste.
The third brother's girlfriend Josephine (played by Wang Yunzhi) said: "You hook the 'second' sister-in-law! ”
The eldest brother was angry and corrupt: "Do you understand Chinese ah, it's righteous righteousness!" ”
This time the other party refuted it, and it was justified:
"This is obviously the girlfriend of the second brother, do you understand mathematics."
But Huang Zihua also fought back: At the beginning, it was he who first hooked up his sister-in-law!
This back and forth.
The "homophonic terrier" has become an "ethical meme" - out of the language game, it has become an allegory of chaotic relationships between families, and reflects the individual desires of the eldest brother who are bound by traditional concepts.
Likewise, there was that ridiculous breakup.
When the eldest brother and his ex-girlfriend "reviewed" the reasons for their previous breakup, it was because the two misunderstood the content of the text message.
Negligence on the keyboard.
It's like when most couples break up, those trivial mistakes.
The study of the text is just a skill.
In terms of understanding comedy, Huang Zihua also seems to be opposite to Stephen Chow.
Zhou's comedy, good at creating fairy tales.
This is also the reason why Stephen Chow's movies are always "family fun" - when I watched it as a child, it was like a dream.
There are cooks' dreams, actor's dreams, kung fu dreams, heroic dreams...
When I grew up, I was sad.
With a certain amount of experience, you can understand how many sharp blades are buried in Stephen Chow's surreal dreams.
At the end of each dream, Stephen Chow will always gently poke it in a place that is not easy to detect.
"Kung Fu" ending.
Each character has a different look, walking down the street as if nothing had happened.
The ending of "The King of Comedy".
Yin Tianqiu has never appeared on the big screen, returned to the neighborhood theater, and no longer emphasized that he was an actor.
The ending of "The New King of Comedy".
Like a dream of winning an award, the big screen is playing bits and pieces of pictures, not the information of the winning film, as if looking back at your past life.
The comedies of Stephen Chow and Huang Zihua are all "playing" the hedging and gap between fairy tales and reality, making you feel the absurdity of the real world, and there is a stinging feeling of surprise while laughing.
The division between them reminds Sir of a botanical phenomenon, there is a kind of canopy that towers into the clouds, but at the highest point of the top of the tree, it magically maintains a tacit understanding, leaving a "subtle" gap between the canopy and the canopy, if you look at the height of the clouds, it is infinitely close to the fine crack of fusion, so that the two sacred trees have their own wind and bones.
Yes, Stephen Chow and Huang Zihua are "harmonious and different", and their difference lies precisely in their attitude towards "fairy tales".
In essence, Stephen Chow still believes in fairy tales, otherwise he would not have created lollipops, seven boys, three hundred children's songs and other popular "terriers", and he couldn't ask for them, tossing and turning.
Huang Zihua, on the contrary, has a literary and cold heart for joining the world.
Absolute adulthood, dark fairy tale, is the path of his bitter expression, life is a cruel and lonely battle.
Perhaps many viewers forget after watching the movie that "I still think you are the best" opens with the first shot.
Arguing, getting angry, smashing things.
The second brother's favorite toy model was smashed in the first second of the movie.
Huang Zihua did not want to hide the direction of the movie - this is a family that is doomed to collapse.
Similar dark fables are also "cunningly" hidden in many details.
That big house full of fireworks.
Seems wonderful, right?
In the corner behind the gatekeeper, Super Mario and his brother Luigi, stand on the upper and lower floors of the bookcase.
Take a closer look?
Standing with the princess is not the protagonist Mario.
It's his younger brother...
This kind of adult-only puncture has always existed in Huang Zihua's comedy creation.
Stephen Chow said.
People can't live without dreams, otherwise there is no difference from salted fish.
Huang Zihua also said.
Being a person with dreams is quite important, because if you are a person without dreams, you will be driven to death by those who have dreams.
Both kinds of humor can make the audience laugh, resonate and reflect.
To put it bluntly, there is no difference between high and low.
The heart of a child, which is tried to conceal it, and the lonely poisonous tongue that tears through the disguise are all a way of living.
However, sometimes our most embarrassing failure to comedy and comedians is:
We want TAs to absolutely satisfy their expectations and be funny, again and again until they are reduced to routines.
03
Back to the beginning, the hot topic on Zhihu proves the power of stereotypes to some extent.
Stephen Chow has been brought out again and again and invited to compare with comedians of all ages.
It is a god-making and a god-killer.
"God" is not bad gold, and becoming a god also means losing human touch and growing and changing in relation to people.
The "nonsense" side alone is how much it has been crudely copied and how much it has been played badly.
A "Journey to the West" was derived in the hands of director Liu Zhenwei: "Journey to the West 3", "Heavenly Immortals", "Yueguang Treasure Box", "Love Crazy Saint"...
"Ouchi Secret Agent Zero Hair" spawned "Ouchi Secret Agent Spirit Dog"; "Family Happy Events" has become "Family Happy Events 2009" and "Family Happy Events 2020"; "Truant Veyron" was followed by "New Truant Veyron"...
Therefore, when Stephen Chow tries new ways to tell stories and load more expressions, it makes the audience feel strange and uncomfortable.
Frankly speaking, Sir does not think that his later works are so good, but the low Douban score is not a refraction of the answer, just say that he is not good and outdated.
In fact, these films can still feel his subversive thinking and attempts to surpass the convention.
The reinterpretation of "10,000 years" in "Journey to the West" contains deep regret in life.
The heartfelt boredom and even fear of the gold-worshipping society in "The Mermaid".
Compared with the previous work, "The King of New Comedy" has actually conveyed a little compassion and self-doubt, compared to the mediocre life of porridge and a meal, is such a dream worth it?
When Stephen Chow carefully expressed his emotions and value orientations in the past at the stage of his life, the generation of audiences who grew up with his works were intuitively uncomfortable and unfamiliar.
In the category of comedy.
Of course, we need brave people to lead us to ridicule, to satire, to puncture the numbness that we are accustomed to in reality, and to provide more diverse ways of looking at the world.
We don't need a uniform standard of humor.
Even comedy often exists because it dissolves authority.
Sir still remembers a story of Stephen Chow.
When he was invited to give a speech at Peking University, the students were very excited and regarded him as the god of comedy.
The host asked him a question on the spot:
Why are you not as lively in private as in the movies?
Stephen Chow sensed something.
So, he said a very "Stephen Chow" answer.
First of all, an apology:
"I'm sorry, but now you see me not as naughty and lively as in the movie."
He didn't want to be seen as a god of comedy, so he immediately apologized for showing humility.
But this humility is immediately dissolved:
"Actually, I'm not too joking, especially it's best not to joke with me, but it's okay for me to joke with others~"
Everyone laughed and the applause intensified.
The contrast gave birth to a true nonsensical spirit that eventually made its way into modern culture.
Trailblazer Stephen Chow certainly does not account for the emergence of "anti-bone boys" in the comedy world he started.
For example, Huang Zihua, who set a box office record in Hong Kong.
Whether it is Stephen Chow's self-doubt or Huang Zihua's ingenuity, it proves that making comedy and being a comedy person are highly condensed reflections of the world.
Sir has always had a "prejudice", laughing is harder than crying, and it is more complicated.
Crying is the result of emotion, while laughter is the starting point of expression.
After departure, there are fast and slow, curved and straight, accompanied by clouds and sunshine, so how can we ask for a kind of comedy and a person.
When we always compare Stephen Chow as a standard, we cut off the possibility of comedy deep down.
Even.
Many comedy blockbusters that have appeared in recent years originated in a folding world parallel to the mainstream.
"A Very (No) Necessary Spring Festival Gala" for the National Day long holiday.
Brush up the B station, the circle of friends, almost every meme in it is commonplace, there is not a familiar face inside, the story takes place even outside the internal entertainment...
But I feel that the people inside are close at hand and get along day and night, but it is intensified into a longer meaning in the film.
Why?
It's not because we have never put these memes on the stage of the Spring Festival Gala to "expose" and give them the opportunity to perform.
The summer hit variety show "Annual Comedy Competition".
The contestants can be called "mixed fish and dragons", there are old drama bones who have been in the drama circle for many years, there are youth academics who have just graduated and have not yet landed, as well as talk shows, Internet celebrities, and transferred the track to step on the comedy stage for the first time...
At this time, taste what Stephen Chow once said in the movie:
There is no god of food at all, or everyone is a god of food, as long as everyone is a god of food.
Give five minutes and everyone can do a talk show.
Give a chance, Huang Zihua can also fight Xingye's ring.
Give an inclusive, screen-brushed hardcore comedy outside the theaters.
At last.
Let's go back to the opening group photo - this time focus on everyone's face and magnify their expressions.
There is the calm and smiling Xingye, the elegant Wu Junru, the ghost horse Huang Zihua, the stinky face Wu Zhenyu, the relaxed Zhang Daming...
They represent an era.
It also represents each unique, non-replicable, themselves.
The picture in this article is from the Internet
Editorial assistant: Oda does not let cut