Before the Spring Festival file opened, major platforms predicted that "The Wandering Earth 2" would be the most popular cub of this year, and the seven episodes were no exception, and everyone was looking forward to the second part of the original team Ma Guo Fan, Wu Jing + Andy Lau's small broken ball.
But objectively speaking, there are also worries.
Four years ago, "The Wandering Earth" was so amazing, it not only allowed the audience to be conquered by domestic science fiction for the first time, but also made domestic science fiction enter the world-class promotion road with the power of a piece, and officially drew a line with the five-Mao special effects divine film.
But the audience's pride from "The Wandering Earth" did not last long, and a classic joke was born: "The Wandering Earth" just opened the door to Chinese science fiction, and as a result, it closed again...
The fuse is well known, however, the root cause is not caused by a single film.
It is that the original foundation accumulation of our sci-fi films is too weak, even Guo Fan, who has been pushed to the altar by the audience, can only helplessly say that after shooting sci-fi, he found that our special effects and production level are 20 years behind Hollywood.
Without strong industry level support, not only will the door be closed soon, but the first part of "The Wandering Earth", which once opened the door to Chinese science fiction, seems to be a little unexpected and accidental in the eyes of many people.
Can its success be replicated? Can "The Wandering Earth 2" maintain the word-of-mouth myth of the first part? Are you sure that "The Wandering Earth 2" will not enter the strange circle of sequels getting worse and worse? Potential concerns also exist.
The production team also seems to have this pressure, and the promotion period is quite restrained, even the theme of the premiere is "a little better than one", which looks a lot like playing the conservative card of "as long as you don't smash the word-of-mouth", which makes people can't help but giggle.
However, after watching the second feature film, Seven Episodes found that "a little better than one" is not the production team's weakness but self-modesty, because "The Wandering Earth 2" is by no means "a little" better than 1, but "a hundred million points".
Technology sublimation, shocking visual experience
If old sci-fi fans can still find the shortcomings in special effects from the first part of "The Wandering Earth", then the technical presentation of the second part is absolutely only amazing, and in the new story, the whole process is a visual award.
Powerful drone swarms, thrilling disaster scenes, tense confrontation battles, these are all small dishes contributed by the movie, secret weapons, is the "big guy" that Guo Fan has been headache in interviews: space elevators.
A space device that allows humans to travel between the Earth and the space station, conceived from the elevator we take every day, relies on the nanomaterials studied by Professor Wang Miao in "The Three-Body Problem" (Liu Cixin's science fiction universe interconnection).
When this concept appeared in words, Seven Words had a lot of imagination about its specific form, and also worried about whether the existing technology and the brain hole of the producer could give a shocking and reasonable space elevator.
In fact, in front of sufficiently professional and attentive people, many of our concerns are often superfluous.
When the space elevator ignites in the movie and takes the astronauts back and forth between the earth and space, the visual drive, the brain hole in the design, and the rigor of the technical framework all step on the audience's ignition dance in all directions.
Our sci-fi filmmakers turned out to be so imaginative, our sci-fi technology could be so silky, they not only achieved the restoration and breakthrough of the text brain hole, but also gave the space elevator visual beauty and real sense of substitution.
Almost the moment the space elevator appears, it can make the audience have a feeling that this guy is something that human beings will definitely have in the future, and then slow down, and can't help but further surprise Chinese science fiction, and instantly recognize the new story.
When Liu Peiqiang, Han Duoduo and others conducted elevator training, the audience seemed to be immersed in the beauty of the sci-fi industry from their perspective.
In addition to the "big guys", the ingenuity of "The Wandering Earth" on the "little guys" is also an important plus.
The flexible little robot police dog is impressive, it may not require much technical production, but it is particularly humane, it seems to make people emotionally bound with technology, rendering the theme of the dark line of the movie.
The door-shaped robot that can be used as a security check and can be interconnected by man and machine for fine operation is extremely simple in shape and extremely interesting in creativity, which is not only practical, but also allows the audience to have the persuasive power of these robots.
I believe everyone can also see that the progress of "The Wandering Earth 2" in special effects is not only the visual shock, but also the real sense of substitution of all sci-fi products, from large to small, from macro to detail, all run through it.
The story goes back in time and opens the earth before the wandering
Before the filming of "The Wandering Earth 2" began, the most curious thing for netizens was how Guo Fan brought the first sacrificed Liu Peiqiang back to life, and the trailer gave the answer early: go back in time and shoot a prequel story.
In the prequel story, the name Han Duoduo is not the stubborn girl played by Zhao Jinmai, and Han Duoduo played by Wang Zhi, a sassy astronaut who makes the young Liu Peiqiang think of the name of the future child at first sight.
At this time, Han Ziang is not the elderly post-90s grandfather, but the middle-aged father with a serious face when his daughter is married, "The Wandering Earth 2" uses technology to restore Wu Mengda's image, and no one can escape this tear point.
The first story takes place in the escape era of the second phase of the Wandering Earth Project, Liu Peiqiang enters the space station after the death of his wife, and his father-in-law Han Ziang takes his grandson Liu Qi and adopted girl Han Duoduo to live in the dungeon.
The second story takes place around the time of the brakes, and mankind has just experienced the debate between the digital life plan and the mountain moving plan, and finally the coalition government completely abandoned the concept of digital life and implemented the mountain moving plan.
While building a generator on the moon to banish the moon, and building a generator on the earth to let the earth escape from the solar system, in this background, human beings are everywhere playing out the story of "small family" and "everyone".
With Liu Peiqiang and architect Tu Hengyu (Andy Lau) as the core, Xiaojia expounds many story lines of love, family affection, and friendship, and the emotions between the characters are quite moving, and the tears are more than a little more than the first part.
Through the persistence and efforts of these characters, you will find that in the face of cosmic-level disasters, human beings are so small, so small that they even have to make trade-offs in the lives of their families, and they have to weigh between lives and numbers.
But small human beings, but so great, always full of hope, always make people tear.
"Everyone" is buried in a "small family", Liu Peiqiang's fight for space opportunities is for the small family, but in front of "everyone", he has never retreated, and the senior astronaut Zhang Peng played by Sha Yi brings the biggest tears in the film.
"Everyone", also from the perspective of Chinese representatives Zhou Zhezhi (played by Li Xuejian) and Hao Xiaoxi (played by Zhu Yanmanzi) did another dimension of discussion, in the face of the cosmic crisis, human beings are unprecedentedly united, but divergence, and always exist.
Groups obsessed with the digital life plan continue to sabotage the mountain-moving plan, launching attacks in hundreds of millions, and even the space elevator disaster, and the people who insist on the mountain-moving plan also have their own thoughts.
In some countries, their thinking is still stuck in the stage of competition, in some regions, they are still shirking their slack, and some people are jumping between questioning and believing, how can the whole world unify confidence? How to execute the plan with determination?
This is the problem that "everyone" needs to face, in this regard, the seven sentences do not spoil the details, just want to use Zhou Zhezhi's "in crisis, only responsibility" to answer, Chinese's responsibility and protection, not understood, but never absent.
Worldview, a breakthrough that makes people's scalp tingle
Like the first one, the basic worldview of "The Wandering Earth 2" is also based on Liu Cixin's original novel, but what this series of movies does the most praise in terms of adaptation is that it does not focus on appearance, but on the essence.
Most of the content of the first story is actually original, but the original part still has the taste of Liu Cixin's science fiction, and the second part is the same, but while fleshing out the story texture, it also extends the world view.
On the surface, this is a self-help plan for all mankind in the face of cosmic disaster, but in fact, there is a deeper bond between human beings and life, and the "enemy" we have to face is not only the sun that is about to get out of control.
Also, the "little red dot" in the dark.
The whole movie uses rich details foreshadowing to hint at the existence of "Little Red Dot", in the space elevator crisis and the moonfall crisis, sensitive audiences will definitely find the prying eyes hidden in the third perspective.
If it is not found, then the driving force behind Tu Hengyu's plan, Zhou Zhezhi's lines with deep meaning, have basically shown the card, if you feel that some plots are very mysterious, then believe me, you must have missed the details hint.
It is no exaggeration to say that "The Wandering Earth 2" is not only the most logical movie in the Spring Festival file, but also the most self-consistent work in science fiction films, all "wrong" has causes, and all causes point to the truth.
These clues attract the audience to constantly brainstorm and can't wait to solve the puzzle, but when the answer appears, it will still make the audience feel that the brain hole has been overturned, and can't help but sigh: Good guy, really good guy!
Guo Fan found Andy Lau to play Tu Hengyu, and sure enough, his ambition was not only to let him interpret the moving father-daughter relationship, the screenwriter gave a perfect answer to all the puzzles in the second part, but at the same time opened the lid of more puzzles.
The breakthrough of the world view, so that the audience will still be excited by the final Easter egg after watching the 3-hour urine-free story, and want to brush the foreshadowing, in the Wandering Earth plan, we have more "enemies" and "friends".
For specific answers, you can go to the feature film to find it.
"The Wandering Earth 2" is not only a perfect continuation of the previous work, but also a new breakthrough in Chinese science fiction, it is a blockbuster worth the ticket price during the Spring Festival, and it is also the best proof that the success of "The Wandering Earth 1" is not an accident and accident.