Table tennis fans don't recognize "Chinese Table Tennis"?

The story of "Chinese Table Tennis Jedi Strikes Back" is full of drama from the beginning of the "fixed time".

On January 6, "Chinese Table Tennis: Jedi Strikes Back" announced that it would be set for the first day of the Chinese New Year, which became the latest officially announced work in the 2023 Spring Festival movie at that time. 10 days later, the film was rarely rescheduled to the third day of the Lunar New Year.

What's even more strange is that two days after its release, the film issued a statement saying that "due to the major decision-making errors and serious deficiencies in our publicity and distribution team in decision-making, preparation, and promotion, the film fell into a particularly passive situation in the Spring Festival file." The film has since been announced to be screened on a small scale until its official release on February 17.

Sports movies in the past three years have had similar ups and downs. Released in 2020, "Winning the Championship", which tells the story of the Chinese women's volleyball team, has undergone a process of finalization, name change, file promotion, withdrawal, re-setting, and file promotion before its release. "My Heart Soars", which tells the story of the Chinese short track speed skating national team, has also undergone a withdrawal due to the scandal of starring Meng Meiqi, and the change of file with almost 0 publicity was released.

Sports movies not only have a bumpy road to release, but also have excellent box office performance. Compared with foreign sports films, the final box office of "Winning the Championship" is less than 900 million, but it is already the box office champion of "Chinese sports" movies outside the top 100 box office in Chinese film history.

The stories told in these films are often characters with real prototypes, standing at the pinnacle of the competitive sense after hardships; And these movies themselves often experience many tribulations - in addition to the audience's explicit doubts, they always seem to encounter some hidden moments that require "Jedi to fight back".

"It's better to watch a movie than to watch a game"

"Chinese Table Tennis Jedi Counterattack" tells the story of five national table tennis players who fought back at the Tianjin World Championships between 1992 and 1995 under the leadership of coach Cai Zhenhua, who returned from abroad. Since last September, the first trailer of "Chinese Table Tennis Jedi Strikes Back" was released, some "ping silk" doubts about this movie have not stopped.

The first is the "original sin" of the combination of "Deng Chao + Yu Baimei". The two have collaborated on "Breakup Master" with 5.1 points and "Villain Angel" with 4.4 points, and the highest rating is "Galaxy Cram School" with 6.2 points. Such a story of a director with a "bad film record" coming to handle Chinese table tennis has caused dissatisfaction among many "ping pong".

Fan Zhendong fans mentioned Deng Chao's performance during two promotional periods: in 2015, the Chinese table tennis team went to promote the movie "Villain Angel", but the photos sent by the official blog cut Fan Zhendong standing on the side. By the time of promoting "Chinese Table Tennis Jedi Strikes Back" this year, the official account of the movie Douyin sent out a complete version of this group photo, and brought Fan Zhendong's name in the text.

In addition, many "ping pong" controversies over "Chinese Table Tennis Jedi Strikes Back" are also difficult to bypass in other sports movies. Since the protagonist of the story is the world's top sports player, fans will naturally have high requirements for the accumulation of sports knowledge of the entire main creative team. Fans want creators to really understand the event, and that actors should be as close to the pros as possible, while not consuming their favorite players.

For "Ping Si", these points "Chinese Ping Pong Jedi Strikes Back" have not done too well.

In an interview, the reporter asked Deng Chao: "You have also been cheering for the Chinese team during the World Table Tennis Championships, which game is your deepest impression?" He replied categorically: "It must still be the final, it's very exciting." ”

This puzzled the "table silk": in the semifinals of last year's Chengdu World Table Tennis Championships, the Chinese men's team encountered a huge impact from the Japanese men's team in the semifinals, and the game once played 2-2, and finally advanced to the final with a thrilling aggregate score of 3-2. But Deng Chao's "very exciting" finals, the Chinese team swept the German team 3-0.

The taunts began to appear: "Here I recommend watching a few more games, at least the next interview will not say that it must be the most exciting final." This also makes the film's creators' dedication to table tennis events questioned: "I didn't feel their intentions for table tennis, I only felt the promotion of commercial films." ”

Once the audience had doubts in their hearts, several announcements of subsequent movies caused controversy, such as the hot search "Deng Chao said that Chinese table tennis actors practice ball rolls powerful". On January 9, the official release of "Chinese Table Tennis Actor Training Special", in the video Deng Chao and Yu Baimei mentioned that the crew has a table tennis table at any time, but the table has to be robbed, the actors spontaneously launched a competition in the crew, and there were still people playing at three o'clock in the morning.

The original intention of the video was to show the serious attitude of the actors, but after the hot search, the public opinion in Weibo Square was not optimistic. Some people think that this is what actors should do, training hard is right, and some fans say that athletes usually train more hard, "Don't say that you guys train rolls, let's see how many rolls our national table tennis athletes have!" ”

After several publicities, "Ping Si" should continue to question, and firmed up the original idea: "It's better to watch a movie than to watch a game." "The deviation in the understanding of the art of film, and the gap between some old things, seems to have arisen from the beginning.

"It's really hard to make sports movies"

Perhaps hearing everyone's doubts, the two main creators are also clear about their past reputation, from February 1, "Chinese Table Tennis Jedi Strikes Back" launched a "picking" special viewing activity across the country, welcoming audiences who are not optimistic about the movie, come to the cinema to watch and make suggestions.

Yu Baimei and Deng Chao, who cooperated for the fourth time, were holding their breath this time. Deng Chao once told the Qianjiang Evening News that this film integrates his and Yu Baimei's personal experience as a director in recent years.

"When I first changed my role as a director, I also experienced being questioned, lost, and had various ideas. I think the best way to do that is to face it... I will collect a lot of reviews, I used to choose not to look at it, crossed over, which is my original relatively big shortcoming. But then I was able to face myself more honestly and objectively because I wanted to improve. Deng Chao said.

The promotional slogan extracted by the movie is not only in line with the athletes of "Jedi Strikes Back" in the movie, but also in line with Deng Chao and Yu Baimei, who want to prove themselves outside the play. When the first day of the Lunar New Year was set, the tagline of the film was "For everyone who is not favored", and after the change to the third day of the Lunar New Year, the slogan was changed to "May you turn against the wind", full of blessings to the people in the play, the film team and the audience.

An industry insider noted this precise refinement. After observing the hot search words, poster materials, and related videos planned along the way of the movie, he said to Poison Eyes: "The marketing methods and planned materials used this time are still quite interesting, and it is really untenable to say that it was a mistake in marketing decision-making when withdrawing the file." ”

According to the statistics of marketing events of Lighthouse Professional Edition, the number of marketing events of "Chinese Table Tennis Jedi Strikes Back" is even higher than that of the Spring Festival box office champion and runner-up "Manjiang Red" and "The Wandering Earth 2".

From the perspective of the public opinion monitoring of the whole network of Lighthouse Professional Edition, the boycott of the "big group building" style of ping silk silk did not bring too much negativity, the positive comments of the whole network exceeded 93%, and the hot words basically did not deviate from the direction of marketing and publicity, such as "Deng Chao", "inspirational", "moving", "bloody" and so on.

Marketing means and effects aside, sports movies do face many practical problems when making dramatic adaptations because they involve real people and national sporting events.

When "Winning the Championship" was still called "Chinese Women's Volleyball", there was a character controversy. The film should present the growth story of the Chinese women's volleyball team spanning nearly 40 years, among which the growth, confrontation and cooperation of the two coaches of the women's volleyball team, Lang Ping and Chen Zhonghe, have a large space. Before the filming of the movie, Chen Zhonghe and Lang Ping also led Chen Kexin to visit the Zhangzhou training base of the Chinese women's volleyball team at the opening ceremony.

But after the trailer of the movie was released, according to the Yangtze Evening News, in the trailer, Chen Zhonghe grabbed chicken legs, was violently buckled, smashed, and was taught by the team members that he had no ambition. Chen Zhonghe wrote to the General Administration of Sports, asking the "Chinese Women's Volleyball" movie to delete all footage about herself, and said: "No matter how I modify it, I will not agree... Today, we will never allow such a film and television company to carry out commercial operations under the banner of promoting women's volleyball, seeking utilitarian benefits, and money first! ”

A few days later, the official Weibo of the Chinese Women's Volleyball Association respectively released the "solemn statement" of the Chinese Volleyball Association, saying that in the name of promoting the Chinese women's volleyball team ("Chinese women's volleyball"), a few enterprises and businesses used the collective portrait of the Chinese women's volleyball team, the personal image of the Chinese women's volleyball team members or the relevant logos and words of the Chinese women's volleyball team for commercial publicity without the authorization of the Chinese Volleyball Association, which seriously infringed the legitimate rights and interests of the Chinese women's volleyball team and the individual members of the Chinese women's volleyball team.

Shortly after the statement was issued, the "Chinese Women's Volleyball Team" announced that it had changed its name to "Winning the Championship".

Yu Baimei also said in a recent interview with Lazy Bear Sports that the twists and turns encountered by "Chinese Table Tennis Jedi Strikes Back" are greater than the difficulty of doing everything else in his more than 20 years in the industry. "The schedule was changed ten days before the release of the movie, and we were originally going to release it during the November holiday last year, and we revised it many times. At that time, I felt that the biggest bad luck was that this movie would never meet the audience, and I felt that after so many years of work, it was really a chicken flying egg. ”

This has made people who have made sports movies give birth to some "comradeship". Actor Huang Bo, who played Chen Zhonghe in "Winning the Championship", once appeared at the screening scene of "Chinese Table Tennis Jedi Strikes Back". "I also know that it's really hard to make sports movies in the current situation." After speaking, he couldn't help but smile bitterly, "I also know, it's really ... Thank you again for such a good movie. ”

After watching the movie, Huang Bo's emotion seemed to have something to say.

Commercial sports and commercial films

In China, sports and film, two cultural industries that should have bright business prospects, seem to have never been erased; However, in Hollywood, sports movies have long been popular and popular genre films.

In 1976, "Rocky" starring Stallone won the Oscar for Best Picture while receiving $117 million at the global box office; in 2003, "The Pentium Age" received 7 Oscar nominations and a box office of $148 million; and the 2004 Oscar for Best Picture "Million Dollar Baby" also had a box office of $216 million.

But China's current best-grossing sports movie "Winning the Championship", with a box office of less than 900 million and a Douban score of 7.1, is still a certain distance from "applauding and applauding".

The focus of Chinese and foreign sports movies is also different. Hollywood's sports movies focus more on the awakening and growth of individuals, and will cover social issues such as racial discrimination and sexism. Chinese sports movies depict more national athletes than on individuals.

When it comes to athletes in China, it is difficult to leave the "national system". Before the filming of "Winning the Championship", the project that Chen Kexin had been polishing for many years was also a sports movie, that is, the movie "Li Na" about tennis player Li Na. What made Chen Kexin determined to shoot was Li Na's characteristics that were different from many Chinese athletes.

In 2005, Li Na was eliminated in the semifinals of the National Games. After the game, Li Na said that the coach of the national team did not help her very much: "The national team has a lot of systems that are not very good, and it should be better if the results of the players can be linked to the bonus." ”

Sun Jinfang, then director of the Tennis Sports Management Center, immediately responded: "Li Na's remarks are because her moral standards and sense of responsibility are too poor, and with Li Na's quality, it is impossible to represent China in the 2008 Olympic Games." ”

After 2009, the network management center decided to allow Li Na to "fly solo". Since then, she has competed in international tennis tournaments, winning the first Grand Slam singles trophy in China and Asia at the 2011 French Open.

In her speech after winning the French Open, Li Na thanked her team, audience and sponsors, but did not "thank the country" first like ordinary Chinese athletes, which caused an uproar on the Internet.

The difference in sports system determines the way sports movies are presented. The lack of commercialization and professionalism of sports has also made Chinese sports movies naturally a subject with a limited audience. Yu Baimei said that there are two most important themes for making sports movies in China, women's volleyball and table tennis, which shows the influence and status of these two sports in China. But the commercialization of both sports was not a success.

Table tennis is already a sport with a high popularity rate in China. Yu Baimei once said that whenever they went to a place, they would gather local folk masters to fight. The crew's table tennis guide can't help but sigh that an amateur table tennis master who has never played professionally in his life has the strength to defeat the current Top5 players in the United States.

However, the high penetration rate has not been well fed back into the commercialization of table tennis. "In professional sports, there are more people watching than playing the ball, but table tennis is the other way around." Niu Gang, president of China Sports, once said. People who love to play table tennis do not necessarily consume table tennis peripheral products, such as related movies.

After the 2016 Rio Olympics, the "rice circle" swept the sports circle, and the "table silk" group also grew during this period.

The influx of young people has also made the industry's call for the "separation of management and management" of table tennis. If table tennis can establish a table tennis company like the Chinese Super League and CBA, the club will give more consideration to the development of the league, make the table top league professional, and pay attention to cultivating fans. In 2019, the General Administration of Sports is already carrying out the reform of decoupling the association, and it is planned to let the association separate from the General Administration of Sports, independently take responsibility for its own profits and losses, and actively think about commercialization and professionalization. However, so far, the decoupling has not been officially completed.

In China, whether it is a popular project around the world or its own advantageous project, the beautiful vision of the "sports industry" that is fully close to the market and inspires the crowd is faltering for various reasons; Correspondingly, as a link in the "sports industry" that may not be important but can be managed, sports movies have been scrutinized and misunderstood in China, which has become an echo.