Just 2 months have passed in 2023, and there has been a box office tragedy in domestic theaters.
I have seen movies sell poorly, but it is rare to see such a "bad" sale like the following theatrical film.
A few days ago, the movie "Wukong" starring actor Wang Ning landed in theaters.
After the first day of release, the film only won 139 yuan at the box office.
Yes, you heard it right.
The unit is yuan, not ten thousand.
The data is even more exaggerated, on the first day of release, only 4 people across the country have been to the cinema to see the film.
The film has been released for 9 days now, and the box office is still dismal, only selling 20,000 yuan at the box office.
Accustomed to watching movies with a box office of hundreds of millions, now when encountering this film with a box office of tens of thousands of incomprehensible, the audience can't help but "shine in front of their eyes".
Strictly speaking, this theatrical film featuring Westward Journey IP is not a new film.
As early as last year, it landed on NetU in the form of a "condensed version".
In addition to being 10 minutes less than the theatrical version, the plot of this online drama broadcast last year is basically the same as "Wukong".
In other words, "Wukong" is a re-edited, re-shelled, and theatrical online movie.
Although the lineup has former happy twist member Wang Ning pressing the formation, and also invited Zhu Longguang and other old "Journey to the West" crew members to make cameos, the work is quite bad both at the box office and in word of mouth.
In the comment area, many netizens who have seen the film have left angry comments:
This is a bad film worse than "Chasing Dreams Showbiz"!
This is an insult to the Journey to the West movie!
After watching it for 5 minutes, I was already like a cattle in my throat, like sitting on pins and needles, like a thorn in the back
So, how rotten is this work?
Next, let me, who has watched the 70-minute film like a needle felt, talk to you about the aftermath.
Before we talk, let's go through the main plot.
From the main line, this is a Westward Journey fanwork.
It is actually not directly related to the master-apprentice foursome, and tells the story of 1,000 years after the Western Heavenly Scriptures.
The protagonist of the story is named Sun Xiaosheng (played by Wang Ning), he is a monkey demon, and he claims to be a descendant of Sun Wukong.
Although he is a little monkey demon, Sun Xiaosheng does not share the sky with evil forces, and often hunts evil demons with his friends namelessly.
Successful demon hunting again and again also made him a famous monster hunter in ten miles and eight towns.
As his demon hunting level gradually increased, he was entrusted to hunt the Great Demon Heavenly Evil who was a scourge in the world.
In the process of finding Tianxie, the male protagonist went through various adventures and found that his friend's nameless is actually Tianxie.
Outrageously, the latter turned out to be Jin Xiaopeng, the son of the Dapeng Demon King who was defeated by Sun Wukong 1,000 years ago...
So, after forcibly connecting the elements of the journey to the west here, Sun Xiaoshen, the "descendant of Wukong", and Jin Xiaopeng, the "descendant of the Dapeng Demon King", fought for the predecessors...
From the main line frame alone, this film is full of thunderous temperament.
But if you really click on the film, you will find that the slots are much more than that...
01. The plot is thunderous and full of flaws
Looking at the entire 70-minute work, bluestone is mixed.
Quoting the barrage of netizens, the journey of watching the movie is six words:
Persistence is victory
After watching the 70-minute Shocking Story, we need a lot of courage.
Originally, the "descendant derby" surrounding Sun Wukong and Dapeng was already speechless.
And behind this main line, the thunderous plots are even more complaining.
For example, the inexplicable "divine power" of Goku's descendants;
During the demon hunting process, the male protagonist of the monkey demon directly shouted "Huaguo Mountain",
As a result, in the next second, the character inexplicably teleported to Huaguo Mountain, thousands of miles away.
Immediately afterwards, he teleported back with the golden hoop rod to join the battle, without delaying his efforts at all.
Good fellow, back then, Sun Wukong occasionally went back to Huaguo Mountain on the way to get the scriptures, and he still had to sit on the somersaults.
This Wukong's descendant shouted, commuting back and forth with voice control, which was really too shocking.
Moreover, it is the "descendants of Goku" who quickly form feelings;
In the process of pursuing Tianxie, the male protagonist meets the daughter of the Dapeng Demon King, the sister of the villain Jin Xiaopeng of this film - Little Phoenix.
In just a few simple scenes, Little Goku developed feelings with each other...
There was not much emotional foreshadowing, and the two who had only met a few times chatted there with teary eyes.
Even, even the kiss scene was arranged...
The skipping emotional progression also makes the comment area question:
How did they get this feeling?
The patience of the audience is not only tested.
The most shocking is the self-indulgence festival of the real Goku at the end of the film;
In the ending plot, the male protagonist and the descendants of Dapeng officially duel, and the real monkey king Sun Wukong solves the problem.
But this real Goku's solution to the problem is not "Goku" at all.
In the face of the monsters who were in trouble, he didn't want to make a move.
Instead, he asked the other party to "commit suicide in exchange for world peace."
As soon as the words fell, regardless of whether the other party agreed or not, Zhen Wukong sat on the ground like porcelain and passed away...
After daring to get the Heavenly Court preparation, Brother Monkey changed into a Buddha all over the place?
And Brother Monkey's operation is even useless.
With such a turn of the head, the villain blackened and started fighting without saying a word...
The "death" of Qi Tian Great Sage can be said to be quite humiliating.
And what is even more outrageous is that the screenwriter even forgot that Sun Wukong had been "given death" by him.
In the finale, Goku "came back to life" and stood with Tang Monk.
In this regard, the screenwriter did not bring any supplementary shots, and did not even give a narration explanation.
Looking down at the 70-minute thunder point, Qingshi really almost saw the internal injury.
02, inside and outside the play are all slots, special effects acting skills are all crotch-pulling
It's not just the plot that's frustrating.
The non-plot part of "Goku" is also full of slots.
In terms of special effects, it is full of perfunctory;
The far and near scenes in the plot are visible to the naked eye in the P picture style.
And the character's "fairy aura" and "moves" also look like a random point of light, how sloppy the picture quality is.
The ending battle is even more perfunctory to the extreme.
The confrontation between good and evil between Xiao Wukong and Xiao Peng did not even let the actors come up to film, but directly gave the whole animation...
A live-action movie, the most exciting "action scenes" are made into animations at a cost of money, which is really eye-opening.
In addition to special effects, acting is also a super minefield.
In this episode of the villager's poisoning, the actor's performance of "having a seizure before swallowing" is speechless.
And the starring Wang Ning of this film is also very dramatic.
At the end of the film, in the face of the sacrifice of his lover, "Little Goku" wailed because of reluctance.
But Wang Ning's interpretation of hurting his lover went off.
This so-called wail was not only powerless, but upon closer inspection, Wang Ning even faintly laughed.
And regardless of whether the actor is really laughing or lacking in acting skills, in short, his performance is "worthy" this result.
There are slots in the play, and you can also find slots outside the play.
For example, the supporting role of this film has caused "relationship households" to question.
The male second Wang Liang, who plays the villain, is also the director of the film.
Self-directed and acting, he often close-ups of himself in the film, but his unsupportable appearance and crotch-pulling expression are really difficult to say.
Piggyback mention, Wang Liang's previous directing works were all 2-point bad films, and the crotch pulling of "Wukong" this time can also be regarded as his regular operation.
And the actor Liu Shuhan, who plays the female one, is also the producer of the film.
The actor's equally embarrassing acting skills also deepened the outside world's doubts about "related households".
In general, no matter from any angle, the whole film is full of slots.
And the film that made this texture, but dared to go to theaters, can be regarded as the courage of the film party.
03, 7 years after quitting Twist, Wang Ning finally became the king of bad films
After this "Wukong" was widely complained, the starring Wang Ning was undoubtedly the largest.
In "Wukong", his performance of squeezing his eyebrows is extremely embarrassing, and the faint laughter is even more speechless.
And successively participating in bad movies, becoming the king of bad films that is getting worse and worse, has also become the epitome of him in the past few years.
Since he terminated his contract with Happy Twist in 2016 and went it alone, his career development has been unbearable to look at.
Originally, he performed well as a supporting role, as long as he was a good green leaf in his comedy, his career development prospects were acceptable.
But unfortunately, he seems to have the wrong positioning and planning for himself.
With the forced sending of himself to the starring C position, and with the unlimited theme of the script after indiscriminately receiving the script, his reputation after leaving Twist has deteriorated.
In 2017, he released his first work after leaving Twist, collaborating with Liu Xiang's ex-wife Ge Tian on the film "The Legend of Salted Fish".
Originally, it was very stressful to interpret the male protagonist in the image, and his strong greasy feeling was even more speechless.
In the end, this work with an extremely pompous look and feel, with a rating of only 2.9 points.
2 years later, Wang Ning continued his dream of being the protagonist and handed over another "Little Powerful Alien" with a bad title.
With the cooperation of comedy peer Xiu Rui, the two did not play the effect of "1+1>2", but received bad reviews for their pompous performances and embarrassing plots, with a score of only 3.3 points.
And after participating in a series of low-scoring works such as "New Oolong" and "Bottomless Laughter", Wang Ning, a former regular at the Spring Festival Gala, eventually became a frequent guest of bad movies.
In fact, at this point, the outside world is still only sorry for the "wrong positioning" of this Spring Festival Gala regular.
However, some operations in the past two years have made the outside world's perception of Wang Ning escalate from regret to dissatisfaction.
What to do?
Now he has actually fallen into joining the army of online set shooting, vulgarly consuming the ironclad IP of "Journey to the West"...
04, Wang Ning's "degeneration" unveiled the situation of "chaotic development" of Westward Journey IP
In the past 2 years, Wang Ning has successively taken over 2 Westward Journey IPs as a starring actor.
And he also used the method of overdraft national IP to refresh his lower limit.
In the movie "Bottomless Pit of Laughter", which was launched last year, he played a Tang monk.
In the plot, he strayed into the bottomless pit and had a special emotional relationship with the mouse spirit.
The bells and whistles, and some bad line plots, are really speechless.
And in today's "Wukong", he changed to the "Wukong" character.
The same thunderous plot and embarrassing performance made him once again trample the Westward Journey IP.
Adaptation is not random editing, jokes are not nonsense.
Behind Wang Ning's repeated consumption of Westward Journey IP and scolding, there are reasons for the actor's own self-depravity, but it also reflects the current situation of domestic film and television's chaotic development of Westward Journey IP.
As a national IP written in the Ming Dynasty, "Journey to the West" has always been a treasure of traditional Chinese literature and has a far-reaching cultural influence.
But from a film perspective, this "literary treasure" is also a material library for film and television workers to be lazy and clever.
There is no need to pay copyright fees, and the IP can bring its own popularity, which makes Westward Journey film and television works have been being developed disorderly.
Under the vigorous development of the film and television market in recent years, "Journey to the West" has suffered an old sin.
A group of film and television practitioners tossed and turned, and also tossed out the three major chaos of the current Westward Journey remake;
Chaos one, unstoppable love brain;
In the past 10 years of Journey to the West, under the screenwriter's various brain holes, Tang monks and apprentices are "busy" falling in love.
In different works, love objects are also strange.
In the Internet University "Great Saint Wushuang", Sun Wukong fell in love with the fox spirit and staged a cross-racial love.
In "Fighting to Defeat the Buddha's Great Sage Tears", Sun Wukong, played by Zhou Baihao, came to a Qiong Yao-style sadomasochistic relationship.
The biggest villain in the film is directly Wukong's ex-girlfriend, and the love-hate entanglement between the two even broke away from the core of Journey to the West and pulled it into Qiong Yao's drama.
Even more exaggerated is the online drama "Lingyunzhi" that has not yet been broadcast.
Brother Monkey, played by Lin Feng, also fell in love with the Three Virgins, the mother of agarwood.
The emotional line of the whole character has changed, and it is not Huashan who dares to split the agarwood in the future, but the Five Finger Mountain?
Chaos two, the "monkey brother" who can't support the aura;
As the soul of "Journey to the West", Sun Wukong is not easy to play.
It is actually difficult to perform the vividness of a six-year-old child, or to perform Stephen Chow's version of "Handsome in Monkey Nature".
But although we don't require latecomers to surpass the classics, they at least don't act blindly!
With the remake of "Journey to the West" IP on the shelves of various ducks in recent years, some "monkey brothers" that have to be sprayed have also been released.
First, there is the elderly version of Brother Monkey;
Middle-aged Hong Kong stars such as Chen Haomin and Fan Shaohuang frequently play Wukong in the Westward Journey IP.
The wrinkles that can't be hidden and the slightly blessed figure make people wonder that Brother Monkey also has a midlife crisis?
Then there is the scruffy version of Brother Monkey;
In "Great Sage Wushuang", Sun Wukong, played by Chen Handian, is a typical one.
This bells and whistles hairstyle, and the homeless man-like costume, are not so much playing Goku as playing Sharp Brother...
There are also monkey brothers with heavy makeup and smoky makeup;
In "Tears of the Great Sage", Wukong, played by Zhou Baihao, turned into a camouflage mode, and his pompous appearance was scary to look at.
In another online big "Qi Tian Great Saint Wushuang", this monkey brother with a pleated face but all kinds of smoke, how to see how to make people respond.
The third chaos is a magic change that makes people's jaws drop;
In addition to making Westward Journey characters fall in love, there are more magic adaptations of Westward Journey IP adaptations.
Only you can't think of it, there is no such thing that these screenwriters can't do.
In "Journey to the West" starring Semyon, the screenwriter responded to the words of the six-year-old children's teacher.
In the film, Sun Wukong and the white bone spirit hand in hand through the modern era and become a domineering president in the city.
In the "Monkey King vs. Pansi Cave", the Monkey King was even weakened by the version.
In the film, he directly can't beat the spider spirit, and the end is even a battle that Tang Monk Kai solved...
In the film "Marshal of the Canopy: The Great Trouble in the Heavenly Palace", there was even a "emotional scene" between Taishang Laojun and the Iron Fan Princess, which once triggered protests from the Taoist Association.
Even the animation has magic changes, and in the cartoon "Little Goku", there is also a spectacle of Goku coming to New York City.
A series of bizarre plots have made the Westward Journey IP tossed to perfection, and the external disgust is increasing day by day.
In fact, the adaptation of the Westward Journey IP is not completely unacceptable to the outside world.
Similar to works such as "Journey to the West" and "Spring Splendid Pig Bajie", they also apply the shell of Journey to the West for bold adaptation, but their inner story logic can not only be self-consistent, but the plot adaptation also has its own novelty,
Although these classic adaptations have also caused controversy, their excellence as "independent film and television works" has also been recognized by the industry and beyond.
It's just a pity that these new practitioners all want to shoot "Journey to the West", but they are not Stephen Chow.
Many practitioners pay more attention to how to set up feelings, but ignore how to think carefully in their works.
Under the flood and brainless adaptation, the emergence of one bad film after another has made the Westward Journey IP experience its own 9981 difficulties.
Now, with Wang Ning's "Wukong" on the street, the Westward Journey Demon Reform has finally been put on the table again.
This time, audiences who have watched too many bad films of Journey to the West obviously can't help it.
The data of 139 yuan at the box office on the first day of "Wukong", in addition to being a warning to Wang Ning, who refreshed the lower limit, is also a positive spit for these "Westward Journey Demon Reformers":
Dear benefactors of magic change IP, quickly collect the "magical power"!
Bluestone Films|Lelede
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