Although there are a wide variety of movies in this year's Spring Festival, "The Wandering Earth 2" has more than one million people who want to watch it on both ticketing platforms.
To be honest, my first choice is also The Wandering Earth 2. What I care about is not how big the investment is, how big the scene, how big the actor is. It's the design of the aircraft and other futuristic technologies in the movie - is it true, hard or not?
Because this is the most difficult part of science fiction films, either you don't have enough imagination, or you have imagination but can't make it, which is the main reason why there are very few qualified domestic hard science fiction films.
01 Where is Hard Sci-Fi Hard?
Hard science fiction is biased to be based on the basic laws and basic common sense of current science, based on more rigorous deduction and development prediction in the industry, describing a story of technical means and technological innovation that is very likely to be realized in the future.
For example, the elements in excellent sci-fi movies such as "The Martian" and "Gravity" are highly in line with the existing aerospace technology, and the laws of physics are worthy of research and "hard" enough. In other words, it shoots something that humans have, or are likely to achieve, can be achieved.
Soft science fiction, on the other hand, does not pay much attention to real physical laws and science and technology, but boldly describes a plausible, but not necessarily reasonable, future technology. But it should be emphasized that there is no absolute definition or criterion for soft and hard science fiction, just a popular reference for enthusiasts, and naturally many people do not recognize this statement, thinking that it is not necessary at all, and it is impossible to accurately classify it.
For example, in 1902, in director Georges Méliès's film "Journey to the Moon", it imagined that the way to reach the moon was to load a person into a huge cannonball and bombard the moon.
Méliès' sci-fi movies shot with handmade models and exaggerated techniques seemed very dreamy, unrealistic, and even absurd at the time. But just 67 years later, humans landed on the moon.
Just a year before humans landed on the moon, most people knew about spacecraft from "Discovery 1" in Kubrick's 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey", in which astronauts flew to Jupiter on this huge spacecraft.
The 16.46-meter-long solid model of Discovery 1 has a giant centrifuge used to generate artificial gravity, which is capable of rotating to form artificial gravity. The machine was built by a large munitions, ship and aircraft manufacturer called Vickers-Armstrongs Limited at a cost of $750,000. It can be seen that Kubrick attaches great importance to the scientific practicality of the spacecraft.
Although no one knew what the interior of a real spacecraft should look like at the time, Kubrick's requirement for realism brought the craft design to an extremely sophisticated level, which still seems amazing, and its interior design is said to have been used as a reference by the real spacecraft interior design. Even the poster was drawn by Robert McCall, a famous American space concept artist and NASA's royal painter.
Yes, when NASA was founded, it was officially decided that it was necessary to create an art department. Robert McCall and other painters have witnessed the development of all space programs at NASA, not only observing them up close, but also exploring the intricate structure of these huge machines from the inside with astronauts.
Later, director John Carpenter was stimulated by "2001: A Space Odyssey" and made the movie "Black Star" in 1974, in which Ron Cobb, the designer of the spacecraft "Black Star", is not only a scene designer who has participated in the exterior and interior design of the "Alien" series of spaceships, and the design of the time car in "Back to the Future", he is also the official art designer of NASA.
Obviously, the scenes and props in those great science fiction films were all by artists who really understood space technology, and they were hard enough to design, which originated from the development of the American film industry. Moreover, some of the technologies in science fiction films have been realized today, which is also the embodiment of comprehensive national strength. So today, it's China's turn to strike.
It is worth mentioning that the logo of the Chinese spacecraft appeared in "2001: A Space Odyssey". This is because the original author Clark himself admires Qian Xuesen, the father of Chinese aerospace, so the figure of China's aerospace also appears in the movie.
In the two movies "The Martian" and "Gravity", China's "Shenzhou" spacecraft and "Tiangong" space station also appeared. It is enough to prove the strength and influence of China's aerospace industry today. Unfortunately, we barely filmed our own space stories at the time.
Until the emergence of "The Wandering Earth", and as soon as it was shot, it was to push the top imagination of the earth moving.
Now that the second part is about to be released, can it not be expected? Let's take a look at it, is it hard enough?
02 From the exposed material, it is really hard
Our film industry started late, and may have missed many spectacles that first appeared on the big screen, but this time, "The Wandering Earth 2" will bring the "space elevator" that once shocked countless sci-fi enthusiasts in the form of text to the screen for the first time and appear in Chinese hard sci-fi movies.
In just a few minutes of trailers, the 90,000-kilometer-long, cross-heaven and earth "space elevator" was shown, which caused the amazement of netizens, and some people ridiculed director Guo Fan for making a big scene, such a big scene was hidden until the last moment before it was announced, calling it to meet everyone's imagination of the space elevator.
The concept of a space elevator was conceived by the famous rocket science pioneer Tsiolkovsky, and later science fiction writer Arthur Clark (original author of "2001: A Space Odyssey") wrote in 1978 "The Fountain of Heaven" in a detailed technical description of people who could take the space elevator to space sightseeing and transport goods.
In order to shoot a sci-fi concept to make everyone believe that it can really exist, it can be seen that the main creative team of "The Wandering Earth 2" has worked a lot harder for this elevator. The sense of volume, heavy industry texture, and reality of the space elevator have been deeply studied, allowing the audience to truly see the majestic momentum of the classic sci-fi concept of "space elevator" in front of their eyes.
Director Guo Fan said that the space elevator, as a new "wonder" of the movie, is the earliest scene to enter the design and lasts the longest. Therefore, he asked the design team to meet the audience's imagination of the "wonders" of science fiction movies, whether in terms of appearance or details.
Art director Gao Ang even compared the space elevator to a "cosmic highway", which shows the magnificence.
The space elevator in "The Wandering Earth 2" continues the realistic super heavy industrial design style of the planetary engine in the movie "The Wandering Earth".
Visual effects supervisor Xu Jian said that the space elevator in the film uses segmented power propulsion.
The first stage is engine injection, and the latter stage is through magnetic grabbing, and finally completes the docking with the space station.
Even more worth seeing is the ingenious design of the part of the space elevator that returns to the atmosphere from space.
When the elevator car returns to the atmosphere, it greatly saves the return cost by frictional heat combustion ice shield (freezing instantly when water is injected in space).
Director Guo Fan said the idea was inspired by the novels of science fiction giant Asimov, and also paid tribute to Márquez's "ice is the greatest invention in our world."
This series of painstaking preparation and production greatly reflects the degree of care of the film.
After watching the "Space Elevator" special, some netizens said: Director Guo Fan said after filming the elevator scene in "The Wandering Earth", "I won't shoot elevator scenes anymore", but I didn't expect that it was originally not to shoot a small elevator, but a space elevator that is more difficult than the previous planetary engine.
More visual wonders were also exposed in the "Go" trailer. Based on several trailers, we can also roughly infer the general plot of "The Wandering Earth 2". The time of the story is advanced to the Wandering Earth Project, which should be a prequel story of 1.
The "solar crisis" is coming, the world is in danger, and the continuation of human civilization will face great challenges. Huge waves rolling, meteorite attacks...
Mankind built the "tallest building in human history", a 90,000-kilometer-long space elevator. While the audience is still amazed by its sheer magnificence, the next shot in the trailer is the elevator car being blown up in an instant, and the International Space Station is falling.
The camp supporting the "Ark Project" and the camp supporting the "Moving Mountain Project" have diverged, and in 2044, the "space elevator crisis" breaks out, and in 2058, the fall of the moon leads to meteorite and tidal crises, the global ecology is destroyed, and the temperature drops sharply. Since then, humans have permanently moved to the dungeon. It also turned into the "month-by-month plan" and the "mountain moving plan" to continue to save itself, collectively known as the "Wandering Earth" plan.
In the next few decades, mankind will also face countless tests such as the "Jupiter gravitational crisis" in 2075 and the "solar helium flash crisis" in 2078. It is believed that these majestic and spectacular pictures are bound to bring a visual effects feast to fans.
From futuristic warfare to artificial intelligence, from heavy industry mecha to space elevators, from space station spacecraft to lunar bases... All kinds of sci-fi settings we have seen before are reflected in this movie. It is clear that the concept of "The Wandering Earth 2" is more complex, more diverse, and deeper than the first one.
03 Conclusion
The universe has always been mysterious and unknown for human beings, and the unknown is the charm of science fiction. Because of the unknown, we are free to imagine what kind of transportation we will take to explore, adventure, fight and discover.
In science fiction movies with a history of more than a hundred years, countless science fiction designs full of whimsy have appeared. Each idea carries the designer's unique spirit of adventure and romance.
As the classic line in Star Trek says, because of the desire to explore, we will constantly design new spaceships. We already know more about the universe than we did a hundred years ago. However, the universe is so vast, how small human beings are, and there are unknowns beyond the known. This means that we are always on the road to imagination and discovery. Whether in real life or in science fiction movies, there will always be the next spaceship that will take you to the enchanting expanse of the sky.
Even if the earth is going to wander, he is still our beloved home. Chinese unique romance combined with the progressive film industry to have such a hard Chinese science fiction movie, what reason not to watch it. I believe that "The Wandering Earth 2" is the first choice for many people during the Spring Festival.