This year's Spring Festival sequel movie crazy circle money, "Detective Chinatown 2", "Catch the Demon 2", "Journey to the West's Daughter Country" ... One of them, the box office has now exceeded 500 million yuan, but there are not too many people mentioned, that is, the animated movie "Bear Haunting Metamorphosis".
Come to think of it, this is already the fifth time that the bear has appeared in the Spring Festival slot of the Chinese Film Market. In 2013, the "Bear Haunting", which was originally just an animated series, was adapted into a big movie "Bear Haunting Treasure Hunter", which appeared in the 2014 Spring Festival file as a dark horse. Subsequently, the film earned nearly 250 million yuan at the box office, becoming the first domestic animation film in China to exceed 200 million yuan at the box office.
Since then, every year during the Spring Festival, "Bear Haunting" must be haunted, and the box office has repeatedly reached new highs. In 2015, "Bear Haunting Snow Ridge Bear Wind" earned 295 million yuan at the box office, 2016's "Bear Haunted Bear Heart Returned" earned 287 million yuan, and 2017's "Bear Haunted Fantasy Space" jumped to 520 million box office, until this year's latest "Bear Haunting Metamorphosis", which has grossed 525 million so far.
The story of "Metamorphosis" continues the theme of protecting the environment that has always been in previous "Bear Haunting" movies, "Fantasy Space" is to protect deer, "Snow Ridge Bear Wind" is to protect Dog Bear Ridge, and in this story is to protect salmon. Fuyuan County in Jiamusi City, Heilongjiang Province, China, is known as the "Hometown of Salmon", so the story is also quite grounded.
In addition to environmental protection, the film especially adds a father-son relationship line between bald and strong fathers. At first, the relationship between Qiang Dad and Bald Qiang was tense, because of his childhood, Bald Qiang always had a grudge against his father. Qiang Dad came to Bear Ridge, not only did not ease the relationship, but made the contradiction between the two aggravate. Of course, the plot is not difficult to guess, and in the end, after experiencing hardships, the father-son relationship is rebuilt.
From conflict to reconciliation, the plot, while cheesy, is also sensational.
The most noteworthy place of this film is also here, it does the simplest and most positive theme: environmental protection, father-son affection. Now too many animated films want to learn Hollywood, want to complicate the story, but also want to make themselves more social, adult, and as a result, they have made themselves into four different at the same time, but also always ignore their most fundamental audience group: children and teenagers.
It's not necessarily bad to be simple.
In addition, it must be affirmed that the "Bear Haunting" series is progressing. The "true 3D cartoon animation" played when "Bear Haunting Treasure Hunter" was released was a joke, but its visual effects have really improved little by little over the years. 5 cents, 5 bucks, 50 bucks, anyway, is trying to improve.
"Bear Haunting Metamorphosis" also has many problems, you take rationality, logic to deliberate on the story, characters in the film, basically equivalent to knocking on your own head shell. Some designs say that it is not too much to say that it is a million years old, such as in order to make the story more watchable, the setting of the protagonist of "Bear Haunting Metamorphosis" is reduced by the shrink machine, which has been too old-fashioned in Hollywood to be able to do it, and as early as the early 1990s, there was already a set of movies, "Dear, I Made the Child Smaller", "Dear, I Enlarged the Child". Matt Damon also acted in a similar movie last year called "Shrinking Life", the story setting is very interesting, the husband in order to save money to make himself smaller, the wife who originally promised to be together with the battle with the retreat, the result is a big one small, the relationship between husband and wife can be tense...
Therefore, the market positioning of "bear infestation" is very clear: focusing on young groups. The audience that came to see this film is basically children, and parents who are pulled by them. As a result, the child is very happy to see, and the parents who do not have expectations at all also find that... Can you still watch it?
Judging by this momentum, this series should continue to be done, whether you like to admit it or not, the film market needs movies like "Bear Haunting". Conversely, the Bear Haunts still have a lot of room for improvement. In contrast, the 500 million box office on the market is far from the upper limit.