Text | Ling Hu Boguang
Who is the biggest winner in the 2020 Spring Festival stall? Chinese science fiction, and Liu Cixin. Before there was a disappointing animated version of "The Three-Body Problem", who expected that it would be followed by the critically acclaimed first Chinese hard sci-fi drama "The Three-Body Problem", and the movie "The Wandering Earth 2" raised the Chinese sci-fi blockbuster to the world's top.
Liu Cixin's sci-fi film and television works worth looking forward to in the future include the officially announced drama version of "Three-Body 2", "The Wandering Earth 3", the TV series version "Ball Lightning" that is being filmed, as well as "Micro Era", "Supporting God", "Full Screen with Blocking Interference", "Supernova Era" and so on that have not been much advanced in planned projects.
As we all know, there were many problems with Chinese film and television dramas in the past, especially in the "traffic economy" period in previous years. In 2019, "The Wandering Earth" appeared to see the situation better, but immediately after the arrival of the "epidemic" disrupted this rhythm, and now the emergence of "The Wandering Earth 2" and "The Three-Body Problem" can be said to sweep away the trend of decadence of Chinese film and television culture.
I think the success of two successive Liu Cixin's works not only means the rise of Liu Cixin's works, but it also means that Chinese science fiction will become the main direction of Chinese popular culture. I even feel that starting in 2023, Liu Cixin will replace Jin Yong, who has been popular for half a century, and become the source of repeated remakes of Chinese pop culture.
Liu Cixin will become an important part of Chinese pop culture in the next decade, twenty, or even forty or fifty years, just as martial arts was to Hong Kong movies, and science fiction culture will lead the entire Chinese culture to rise again and stand on top of the world.
"Three-Body Problem" and "The Wandering Earth 2" are gods? But not everyone likes Liu Cixin
There is no need to talk about Liu Cixin being the first person in science fiction, and I don't mention how popular many of his works are. But Liu Cixin's domestic public opinion is actually controversial, we exclude those who "have a problem with the ass" and say that Western science fiction is okay, and Chinese science fiction is not that kind of person.
Even in many ordinary audiences, I believe you should often see many people expressing dislike.
"The Three-Body Problem" can't watch it at all? What's wrong with which setting? Or what "dark forest" does not hold, etc. does not count. After all, a book has likes and dislikes, and this complaining is a normal behavior. However, the most common way for us to attack a literary and artistic work is to start from its "values".
"The Three-Body Problem" and Liu Cixin's science fiction novels are not uncommon, and Liu Cixin's female stereotypes are nothing. The most powerful thing is that Liu Cixin's works are too social, too realistic and have no humanistic care, too pessimistic about human beings, worship elites and ridicule the people, and so on.
I think this is indeed a challenge for Liu Cixin's science fiction works, at least when it comes to popularization.
Most of Liu's science fiction novels use his work to discuss a theme: In extreme circumstances, are the universal values and moral standards that we now believe in in our daily lives (protection of the vulnerable, truth, goodness and beauty) still absolutely correct?
In such an extremely dark environment, Luo Ji, Zhang Beihai, and Vader of "The Three-Body Problem" who dare to bear charges against humanity have been portrayed as heroes, representing absolute rationality and coldness, moving forward by any means for the sake of goals. As their opposite, humans and Cheng Xin represent sensibility and kindness, and most of the time this sensibility and kindness invite destruction in the cruel cosmic environment.
But at the end of the story, what can be made to return the small universe to the big universe is love and kindness, and the story seems to go to the other side. Looking closely at the story, there are still many such reversals, in order to deal with the threat of the three bodies, the global forces developed in large quantities, and as a result, a big trough occurred, when the concentration of forces began to develop people's livelihood, technology began to develop rapidly, thus giving birth to "give civilization to the years, not to civilization to years".
It is thus understandable why man was so naïve and kind when he first faced the three-body problem, because he did succeed.
Liu Cixin is not singing about anything, many times he just coldly throws questions to the reader and the characters, is what you think is right really absolutely correct? When you think that rational calculation is correct, he tells you that humanistic care is more appropriate, and when you are convinced of humanistic care, he points out the need for rational calculation.
He doesn't offer any standard solution to this (it's not the task of literature), he just shows us another possibility. Losing humanity loses a lot, losing animal nature and losing everything is an abnormal extreme situation, there is no need to take this sentence as a guideline everywhere.
In addition, the collective and the individual are not contradictory, you first love specific people, with selfish desires, it is possible to pay for an abstract collective, everyone just has a phased overlap in interests. In "The Wandering Earth 2", Liu Peiqiang became a navigator to make his family eligible to live in the dungeon, and Tu Hengyu invested in research and development in order to extend the digital life of his children.
Poor writing and problematic values? Why Liu Cixin's science fiction makes people "can't stop"
However, even if Liu Cixin's novels are complained about the writing and what values are wrong, they have become the first person in Chinese science fiction, and it seems to be becoming more and more popular over time. The reason is that Liu Cixin's writing of science fiction is really too hard, and the setting of various hardcore science fiction is not mentioned.
He has always had a very romantic, whimsical idea, such as taking the earth to wander, and then wrote it in a science fiction style. And all the plots and characters in it serve this idea.
Liu Cixin's science fiction works are powerful, as well as the romance of ideas and the depth of social thinking, I believe that everyone who has read his science fiction novels is shocked, don't just watch "The Three-Body Problem", although the "Three-Body Problem" series has so many powerful sci-fi ideas that you can watch it to refresh your outlook on life.
Other works such as "Supporting God" on old age and civilization aging, "Supporting Mankind" thinking on the ultimate capitalism and wealth differentiation, and then "Mountain" is a civilizational epic born of an underground machine civilization.
China's coal digging and geological disasters in "The Center of the Earth", "Full Band Blocking Interference" and "China Sun" are a hundred times the main theme of "Wolf Warrior 2", how the former confronts powerful Western forces, and the latter tells the story of a Chinese village baby who goes to the world and flies to the universe.
Too much, really too much, Liu Cixin's excellent science fiction is really too much. I believe that as long as you have read a few of his science fiction novels, you will be impressed by these brain-opening science fiction ideas and romantic imagination, and then to the keen and sharp social observation of people, the display of human nature, and the philosophy of thought.
However, because of the relationship between the core expression of Liu Cixin's works, coupled with the theme of science fiction, it is still relatively a bit of a threshold. This time, the TV series "Crazy" and "Three-Body Problem" that also have a good reputation, and the movies "The Wandering Earth 2" and "Manjiang Red" can be said to be the best foil.
Therefore, no matter what award Liu Cixin won and how popular "The Three-Body Problem" was before, science fiction literature is a niche market after all.
"The Three-Body Problem" and "The Wandering Earth 2" proved? Liu Cixin's value is underestimated
What is the experience of science fiction literature? Many story structures will subvert your cognitive mode of daily life, but not all of them are pleasant experiences, but there is a bad feeling that the reading scene at that time is divorced from reality, and returning to the real world of the intuitive layer can find the logical and "real" feeling.
In short, many science fiction cultural works will make you have bad emotional feelings and even doubt the reality of the everyday world. When I personally read the novel "The Three-Body Problem", the suspense and horror at the beginning, to the depression and despair later.
Science fiction movies are a mass market, and most of the highest-grossing movies in the United States in the world are science fiction, why? The audience's experience is different. Science fiction movies look cool, obviously the information expressed is more three-dimensional and more intuitive, a new experience and cognition (in order to make money, you must consider the audience's thinking mode).
For example, after the release of "2012", the American people called the relevant departments, is it really the end of the world in 2012; 20 years after the release of "The Matrix", more than half of the people still can't tell that the world outside the mother body is virtual and real, and even some people have concluded that the human world outside the movie is also virtual.
The rich and intuitive expression of the movie limits the audience's own imagination, and after seeing it, after watching a lot of negative things, there is also a certain mental immunity. Human beings are afraid of what they can't see or imagined threats, and written works retain the reader's own elastic imagination and amplify negative experiences, which is why the science fiction literary market is niche!
"The Wandering Earth 2" and "The Three-Body Problem", although neither surpassed another work in the same period, has been very successful. "The Wandering Earth 2" and "The Three-Body Problem" prove that Chinese filmmakers can master the mature industrial film process and produce masterpieces full of Chinese values, which is unprecedented.
This point extends to Liu Cixin's science fiction novels after the successful filmization of television, although the results have not surpassed the works of the same period. But it is already the hottest film and television drama in China at the same time, and I believe that this must be temporary. Liu Cixin's science fiction works still have huge room for improvement in film and television.
In the next decade, I believe that Liu Cixin's science fiction novels will be more filmed, animated and gamified.
The future has not come, only imagination, in fact, the simplest is to look at the present. I still remember the indescribable shock and excitement after watching "The Wandering Earth 2", this is really one of the most shocking sci-fi epic movies I have ever seen, not only surpassing the quality of the first one, I think even Nolan's "Interstellar" and Cameron's "Avatar" are inferior to some levels, I don't know if it comes with the filter of the rise of Chinese science fiction so there are extra points.
The pattern of this movie is too big, it really means that we must unite in the face of disaster, while most European and American films are personal heroism and always lack a larger heart-chest pattern. The plot is not dragged at all, the love scenes are almost passed, and there are also places that pay tribute to the previous work, but there are also very few appearances, and the character shaping and lines are too moving.
The drama version of "The Three-Body Problem" is not so hard because of too slow updates and insufficient investment in TV series, but restoring the original work is shocking enough.
Let's think about it, as long as Liu Cixin's sci-fi works are widely filmed and television in the future, there will definitely be bad filming, but as long as there are a few successes, such as the much-anticipated "The Wandering Earth 3" and the drama version of "Three-Body 2", then what is the extent of Chinese science fiction culture, Chinese film and television dramas and Chinese popularity?
Liu Cixin cannot be said to lead the rise of Chinese pop culture in the new era, but he is indeed an important part of Chinese popular culture in this era. And the last era was Jin Yong and his derivative culture, that is, martial arts, and this era was Liu Cixin and his derivative culture, that is, science fiction.