February 5, 2023 issue | Issue 3138
Three weeks have passed since the last "film and television seven-day thought". The past three weeks have been three weeks of hard work in the film market and three weeks in which the drama market has stolen attention. Over the past three weeks, the good news has outweighed the bad news, with new projects trumping old ones.
"Seven days of thinking" not only looks back at the past, but also looks forward to the future. Just like Ye Wenjie in "The Three-Body Problem", the signal sent to the universe 38 years ago is the result today; Everything that happens in the industry today will also affect the ebb and flow of the coming period. Practitioners can calculate the market situation for the whole year of 2023 through the performance of the Spring Festival film market; It can also predict the direction of the next wave of works in the short-term broadcast data of the drama market.
The battle between the two films: angry netizens and the box office that reversed
In the Spring Festival file in 2023, the biggest hustle and bustle is not from the recovery of the market - although this is the fastest breakthrough of 10 billion yuan in the mainland market in history, and although the box office of 6.7 billion yuan is enough to rank second in the same file in film history, but the unpredictable public opinion: the audience's emotions are becoming more and more unpredictable, especially in "Manjiang Hong".
Before the release of "Manjiang Red", few people expected that it would be the highest-grossing film in this year's Spring Festival, with a cumulative box office of 3.873 billion in 15 days of release, and Maoyan Professional predicted its final box office of 4.422 billion. No one would have thought that it would become the most violently attacked film in this year's Spring Festival, and this work that gathered actors such as Shen Teng, Lei Jiayin, Zhang Yi and other popular actors should have ended successfully in its happiness.
But it just ignited the anger of some netizens. The specific reason, in addition to a few jokes made by the official micro, is also related to the sensitive attributes of the work itself and the high box office.
Are Yue Fei and Qin Hui a sensitive subject? Logically, it is not. In the history books, who is who and who has not been clearly recorded, "Manjiang Hong" did not insist on overturning the case for history, nor did it change the background of Yue Fei and Qin Huan's loyalty, but it still attracted the hat of "historical nothingness". Fiction is the soul of creation, the real history is told by historians, and the responsibility of the screenwriter is to tell the story well.
In "Manjiang Red", it also shows a phenomenon that has not been seen for a long time: the silent majority.
There has been a lot of criticism on the Internet, but the box office is still high. If it were not for the resumption of work in these two days, the box office of "The Wandering Earth 2" would have reversed, and "Manjiang Red" would still be able to firmly occupy the top of the daily box office. Angry netizens claimed that it was "moving" and "stealing" the box office, but no movie has ever been able to rush to 4 billion by trickery.
In fact, what it achieves is the emotional catharsis of the audience. Whether you look back with joy or annoyance, at least most people in a dark theater will be more moved than angry when they see a group of people reciting "Manjiang Red". Invisibly, it completes a resonance with history for the audience.
"The Wandering Earth 2" is actually the same, the most touching famous scene in the film is the sentence shouted by Zhang Peng, played by Sha Yi: those over 50 years old.
This is a romantic brushwork that is detached from the context of reality, satisfying only a brief "top" emotional catharsis, which is the same as the whole army's recitation of "Manjiang Hong".
"Manjiang Red" can rank first at the box office of the Spring Festival file, which is also related to the proportion of male and female audiences and the proportion of box warehouses in large and small cities. Since February 4, the box office of "The Wandering Earth 2" has reversed, surpassing "Manjiang Red" by more than 20 million yesterday, and Maoyan Professional Edition predicts that it can exceed 30 million today. One reason is that returnees have returned.
Every year during the Spring Festival, ticket prices of cinemas in fourth- and fifth-tier cities will increase. Because there are more people returning home, there are not many ways to entertain in my hometown, so I can only go to the movies. And these theaters can be equipped with IMAX halls very few. In a visual effects blockbuster like "The Wandering Earth 2", many people have the idea of returning to work and watching it again. "Manjiang Hong" does not need such hardware conditions, whether it is watching IMAX or ordinary halls, it has little impact on the story.
The two-piece dispute also shows another phenomenon, online public opinion and public interest have almost separated.
If the box office is really decided according to the vote of netizens, the box office of "The Wandering Earth 2" should be the sum of other movies, but this is not the case. Who is watching "Manjiang Red"? It is the group of "ordinary netizens" who do not pay attention to hot searches and public opinion.
They may not know Zhang Yi and Lei Jiayin, but they definitely know Yue Fei and Qin Huan; They may not focus on the future of Chinese science fiction films, but they have their own judgments about simple emotions.
The Wandering Earth 2
For industry practitioners, this is a problem that should be paid more attention to than how to let propaganda "go to the countryside".
The activity of social media has largely liberated expression. However, the deformed pursuit of KPIs by social media has seriously torn social consensus and damaged the spirit of rationality. Not standing in line, not speaking, not complaining, can not open the mouth, has become the habit of many people to express online. In the field of national economy and people's livelihood, these noises and commotions are guided, while in the "marginal" areas of entertainment and sports, public opinion is flooded and out of control. These voices do not represent the voice of the public, but they can confuse right and wrong, obscure the truth, inspire anger, and affect the normal thinking and work of creators.
Literature and art are not small roads, literature and art are related to spiritual construction, and the governance of public opinion rather than evasion should become an important issue for literary and art managers.
The Victory of Double Drama: Emotionalism and Patriarchy
In the past three weeks, the biggest winner has been the TV series. As the title suggests, "Crazy" really took off. Personal experience, the last film that can be "detonated" at the same time on the circle of friends, family group, and long and short platforms is still "Yanxi Raiders". At the time, my friends were borrowing members and looking for resources; Today, they started borrowing membership again.
For a long time in the past, the industry has been unable to answer a question, that is, how to define the criteria for evaluating a drama as a "hit"? The platform has its own algorithm, for example, iQiyi breaking 9000 belongs to a small explosion, and breaking 10,000 belongs to a large explosion. However, there are also such netizens who do not agree with this rule, and they believe in the dehydration data of third-party platforms, such as the effective playback of Yunhe's feature films. Others only recognize ratings and advertising, in short, opinions vary.
"Crazy" answers this question well. In terms of platform, it is the hottest drama since iQiyi adopted the popularity value algorithm, with the highest popularity of 11,800 points. According to third-party data, "Crazy" was launched for 18 days, and the Yunhe feature film was effectively played 2.72 billion, higher than all works in the same period in 2021 and 2022, and more than "Son-in-law" and "The World". The advertising of the entire drama of "Crazy" is also scary.
More importantly, it really brings everyone together as it was written earlier. Since then, "Brother Qiang" has not only been used to describe "Xu Wenqiang" and "Liu Huaqiang", but "sister-in-law" is no longer Xu Dongdong's exclusive noun. Zhang Songwen and Gao Ye's fan growth speed exceeded the audience's imagination, and they were on fire.
Why can "Crazy" be popular? For the audience, the show satisfies a primitive emotional impulse. In the play, some people see a history of breakthrough of the people at the bottom, a blackening road of "honest people"; Some people see the victory of simple justice, and An Xin (played by Zhang Yi) has become another "good person" who looks distressed after Jiang Yang (played by Bai Yu) in "The Silent Truth"; Some people also saw the endless charm of "sister-in-law" and "Sister Lan" and called on the industry to shoot more such women
At the same time, "Crazy" also satisfies a kind of "institutional imagination" of the audience. Just as when "County Committee Compound" was broadcast, many graduates learned how to deal with the world. This time, someone learned the art of speaking in "Crazy" - learning from "Secretary Wang". And this institutional imagination reveals another truth: no matter how feminism is popular in film and television dramas, the mainstream culture of this industry is still the essence of male power.
The film and television industry in the Internet age is essentially a derivative of consumerism. The core characteristic of consumers is often referred to as femininity. Therefore, there is a golden rule in the film and television industry: those who win women win the world. However, we must also realize that our literary and artistic works, from the day of their birth, must assume a missionary role. The literary and artistic front is an important front, and in the main theme drama and pan-main theme drama, male dominance of historical change and social operation is the basic pattern, and positive value output is carried out on this basis.
In other words, the imagination of the system in film and television dramas is still patriarchal, and the imagination of consumerism is feminine. In popular culture, women have gained some symbolic rights in the form of redemption, but it is still difficult to shake the patriarchal background of mainstream culture. In fact, consumerism was born to strengthen patriarchal authority.
At the same time as "Crazy", it was broadcast on CCTV eight sets is the sci-fi drama "Three-Body Problem". Science fiction has a threshold, it is more popular with young people, and it is contrary to traditional TV series audiences. In terms of popularity alone, it is far inferior to the former, but it is still not to be underestimated. At least judging from the number of ads that appear in the show, there is not much difference between the two.
The discussion of "The Three-Body Problem" is more focused on the secondary creation of the original book and the play. Objectively speaking, "The Three-Body Problem" is a drama that is almost 100% restored to the original. Restoring the original means that there will be no mistakes, and Liu Cixin's text has long been examined by countless readers and can effectively attract the favor of original fans.
But it also means stripping the screenwriter of the fun of re-creation. Anyone who has read "The Three-Body Problem" knows that the story of the original work is not strong, it is more like using the mouth of the person in the book to explain Liu Cixin's logic and concepts. Therefore, few characters in the play have a complete character arc, even Ye Wenjie is more like a bearer of history.
For the first time to do the adaptation of a live-action drama, it is a safe idea to be faithful to the original work, the so-called "the first skill of the whole dragon from beginning to end". The screenwriter added an original character Mu Xing, which immediately caused a lot of controversy.
This edition focuses on atmosphere creation and visual transformation, and the effect is excellent. If you are more ambitious, and write the plot more ups and downs on the basis of following the laws of drama, the score will definitely be higher.
【Text/Ma II】