I don't know if it's luck or misfortune, this year, I saw the same phenomenon in many Korean movies - remaking Chinese films.
First, "Ghost" remake "The Wind", which was released on January 18.
Then came the "Goodbye, My Soul Mate" remake of "July and Ansheng", which was released on March 15.
Then there is the well-known "Secrets That Cannot Be Said", the release date is undecided (but I went to Berlin the other day to sell the film, and I think I will meet you soon).
Chinese films ushered in the era of export?
Uncle Meat was also looking forward to this.
After all, the industrial system of Korean films is complete, and good stories thrown into this assembly line can guarantee that they will not be too rotten.
Especially a production like "Ghost".
I want to buy the remake rights at a high price that year, starring Xue Jingqiu, the male protagonist of "Mints", and Park Sudan, the younger sister in "Parasite", and distributed by CJ ENM, the production company of "Parasite" and "Determination to Break Up".
It can be regarded as a medium-to-high scale.
But.
This time, the Korean version is completely overturned.
Why?
It may save effort and effort.
But after taking it in a hurry, he only knew to take its waste and remove its essence.
In this regard, China and South Korea are really hot and cold.
01
Simply put, "Ghost" is a story of "catching ghosts inside".
It's just that this "inner ghost" is a member of an anti-Japanese organization, codenamed "ghost", lurking inside the official residence of the Japanese colonialists, the Korean Governor-General's Office.
The story takes place in 1933, the Korean Peninsula during the Japanese occupation.
The new governor of Joseon was assassinated on his first day in the capital (present-day Seoul).
What gives the Japanese a headache even more.
In the process of tracking down the killers, they discovered that the anti-Japanese organization had obtained accurate information about the inauguration of the governor so that another assassination operation could be carried out on the same day.
How did it flow out?
The captain of the guard team in charge of security work, Kohara Haedou (played by Park Hae-so), locked five people, because of such top-secret information, only these five people have handled it:
Intelligence Commissioner Park Jijing (played by Lee Ha-ni), intelligence management supervisor Junji Murayama (played by Xue Jingqiu), intelligence director secretary Yuriko (played by Park So-dan), the head of the decryption department Qian Yin Butter (played by Seo Xin-woo), and the communications staff member Lee Baek-hu (played by Kim Dong-hee).
One wolf out of five will come out
The day before the inauguration.
He took the five to a closed hotel in an attempt to catch the ghost within the time limit.
Thereupon.
In the trailer, everyone identifies each other.
Eavesdropping, suspicion, deception...
Plus hand-to-hand combat, explosions, gunfights...
The script kills the story, which makes Uncle Meat think that the film will be particularly exciting.
Who knows, it's not like that!
02
"Ghost" is adapted from the first part of Mai's novel "The Voice of the Wind", "East Wind".
There is a Gao Qunshu version of "The Wind" pearl jade in front.
It seems that it is easy to "remove the essence" and make a work that is at least "qualified".
But "Ghost" goes the opposite way.
It discards the acclaimed virtues and joins in some unknown scenes.
For example, the most stressful point of the novel or the original - suspense.
In contrast, the biggest change in "Ghost" is to tell the audience who is a "ghost" from the first time.
Park Jijing.
And Gao Qun's book version of "The Wind" did not reveal its identities until the last minute.
It is also in the second part, "West Wind", that the truth is told in the novel.
The audience and the protagonist hold a string throughout the whole process, solving the mystery step by step in a highly tense reasoning way.
Until the last moment, anyone can be an old ghost.
The intelligence agency five-man group in "The Wind"
It is not undesirable to reveal the mystery at the outset.
What matters is what happens after that?
You know, the suspense is gone, then only work on character shaping.
But on the other hand.
"Ghost" is so careless in terms of character building.
In terms of group portraits, "Ghost" can be said to be a mess.
A contrast.
In "The Wind", the five people are set up to take into the "Blizzard Villa", pressing everyone's limit in a depressive closed environment.
If you don't catch the "old ghost", no one will want to get out alive.
In the novel, the five are also brought into Qiuzhuang together.
When I arrived at "Blizzard Villa", the car was crowded, and Gu Xiaomeng, played by Zhou Xun, vomited with a hangover, full of dangers, and the people in the car had their own thoughts.
They were spied on by Wang Zhiwen in the opposite building and fell into endless fear.
And "Ghost".
On the way to Blizzard Villa, the characters set off alone, in the hotel, and also complete their own side quests.
The confession of confession, and the battle of old colleagues, the past is staged here.
So much so that in the end, Junji Murayama and Captain Takahara fought against each other, and did not catch the ghost, and the two heroines escaped successfully.
More obvious is the role of Bai Xiaonian.
The films "The Wind" and "Ghost" also adapted this character.
The difference is that in order to highlight the suspense, "The Voice of the Wind" enriches Bai Xiaonian's image.
Four other people are suspected in the original novel, and Bai Xiaonian plays a role in assisting the interrogation.
But in "The Wind", you can see this character, with softness in the yin and a sharp edge hidden in the softness.
He has a lot of people's handles hidden in his mouth.
In the words of director Chen Guofu, "Which character is a good person, which character is a bad person, and who is an innocent bystander, this identity is changing all the time." ”
In "Ghost", the image of Bai Xiaonian is weakened.
So the role of Li Baihu (that is, Bai Xiaonian) is more instrumental, confessing to Park Cijing, showing the pure love of his younger brother, for the sake of his family's survival, revealing Park Cijing's identity as a "ghost".
In general, in the movie "The Voice of the Wind", there is no face-painted image, each character is complex and full, each character changes with the development of the story, everyone is hiding themselves, and as the plot progresses, the real identity begins to surface.
In the movie "Ghost", there are too many small roles, cinema conductors, projectionists, assassin sisters, etc., many meaninglessly displayed, making people unable to focus on the advancement of the story, and unable to empathize with the protagonist's dilemma.
Not only that.
In some places where it was time to absorb the adaptation of "The Wind", "Ghost" was also abandoned.
For example, torture scenes.
The torture scenes in the original novel are weak.
But in "The Wind", Chen Guofu, who has filmed "Double Eyes", designed a series of "torture" bridges, combining extreme suspense and extreme cruelty to extract confessions through torture.
Su Youpeng's Bai Xiaonian was punished by the chair, Zhou Xun was roped, Zhang Hanyu was shocked, Wu Gang's ghost gate thirteen needles, weird choir...
So far, it is the "shadow" of Uncle Meat.
Wu Zhiguo in "The Wind" was tortured
The torture of "The Wind" captures the weaknesses of each character.
Li Ningyu, played by Li Bingbing, her parents are both Kochi, and she is also a high-quality student, and Takedaju's tailor-made "sentencing" for her completely trampled on her dignity and will.
By the time "Ghost", there were some eye-catching psychological tortures left, and it took only two minutes to survive.
So where does it take a long time?
In the movie theater, Park Jijing and the assassin sister looked at each other in front of the movie poster wall, and after the head, there was still kung fu to look at each other.
Farewell before the mission.
Under the umbrella, falling water droplets, a slow motion.
Slow-motion red-lip smoking, paired with BGM played by a vinyl turntable, time freezes.
During the dinner, the assassin sister assassinated the Japanese governor, and the heroine sneaked out and met the assassin sister for the last time.
It seems that you can put a BGM of a Korean drama at any time.
Even the second half of the movie.
The original spy war became an "escape room", adding a large number of "running map" methods.
Blasting, gunfights, cornices walking.
Yuriko suddenly jumps on the dining table after Li Baihu is killed, and the dagger is pointed straight at Captain Takahara.
In order to escape the hotel and send the intelligence out, Park Jijing came to challenge the limit.
The movie came to that.
It has changed from a suspense film to a chaotic action movie.
Why?
It's actually about the audience.
It is true that Korean films have many great directors like Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho, who go abroad and shine all over the world.
But as far as China is concerned, obviously, these big directors cannot meet the market demand.
So what is Korea's largest and most popular type of medium production?
Action movies.
In 2022 alone, you can see "Crime City 2", "Blood is Thicker than Water", "Blood", "Special Delivery", "Very Killer", "Help 2", "Wolf Hunt", "Witch 2" and many other well-known and unknown action movies.
It is also these action movies that fill the domestic market in large quantities.
It can be said that this is a purely commercial consideration.
Didn't the director struggle? There are also.
He extracted some elements of collective memory from the Joseon Dynasty, such as the Joseon Governor's Palace, Namsan Shrine, and Japanese-speaking elements with historical basis.
He will add some symbolic metaphors at the right time.
For example, the cinema of the joint, which shows von Stenburg's "Shanghai Express", reveals the background of the two cities.
For example, at the end of the film, the poster of "The Legend of the Rose Red Lotus" pasted on the wall points out the theme of female revenge.
But all these efforts have been in vain under the shattered adaptation.
In the end, the movie was not only several notches worse than "The Wind".
Even in the same genre.
It is not as good as the South Korean action light comedy "Once Upon a Time in Beijing" released in 2008.
Not to mention Jun Ji-hyun's "Assassination" in 2015.
03
However, the abacus of "Ghost" did not start.
Not only Chinese audiences don't buy it, but Korean audiences don't buy it either.
As of March 2, 2023, the cumulative number of moviegoers of "Ghost" in South Korea is 663,877, and the score is only around 6 points.
What is the concept?
For example, director Li Haijian's previous work "Poison War" (2018), a remake of To Qifeng's "Poison War", has an average reputation, but it has at least 5,181,580 good results.
The original "Wind Sound" has a comprehensive score of 8.84.
It's several notches worse.
Over the years, there have been many Korean remakes of Chinese films, but most of them are not satisfactory.
For example, "Hostage", a remake of "Rescue Mr. Wu", was released in 2021 and achieved 1,638,439 viewers.
The remake of the film "Silence" of "Witness by the Whole People" only had 494,097 viewers in the end.
The above data is from naver movie/CGV app/나무위키
So to speak.
The common cultural background has led to a large number of film and television remakes between China and South Korea in the past 20 years.
But it's a pity.
Whether it is a Korean film remake of Chinese IP, or a Chinese film remake of Korean IP, nine out of ten end in failure.
Take the past two or three years, there are 8 points of "When a Man is in Love" was filmed 6.3, 8.3 "Sunshine Sisters" was filmed 4.4, 7.3 "My Wedding" was filmed 4.7, and 8.4 "The Most Beautiful Parting in the World" was filmed 6.3 "All About My Mother" and so on, plus 8.4 "Wind" was filmed into 4.7 "Ghost", the two sides have "contacts" with each other.
Why?
In fact, it is nothing more than two problems: localization, and the direction of adaptation that is good at, both of which are rarely done well.
Localization is easy to understand.
But it's also easy to get into misunderstandings.
A few years ago, China and South Korea had a "one book, two shots" project, telling the story of an anti-drug squad undercover food store, and the two teams respectively localized the creation of "food stores", so in the Korean version of "Extreme Occupation", the police went undercover in a fried chicken shop, the standard "national food", and the Chinese version?
Turned into a lobster shop.
Not to mention that the script itself is messy, will the lobster shop really attract the public to watch it?
And what about the direction of excellence?
Let's not talk about Chinese movies.
After all, "Great Wishes" can be turned into "Little Wishes", and everyone is familiar with the twists and turns.
Looking at Korea alone, what are the strengths of Korean movies?
The film industry system is guaranteed.
And the phrase we often say "dare to shoot".
Take "New World" (2013), which has worked well in recent years.
It is a remake of Infernal Affairs.
But at the same time, it has made a lot of adaptations of the film, the most obvious of which is "one black to the end".
As a result, the film not only had a good reputation, but even exceeded the 4 million viewing mark in only 26 days, and finally received 4,689,161 people.
But alas.
Such "achievements" stayed ten years ago.
When some famous directors continue to withdraw from the "remake" battlefield, all that is left on the market can only be mediocre works.
Their only role is to fill the increasingly homogenous local mid-market.
without stirring up any valuable splashes.
Uncle Meat is not against a remake.
But if the remake only becomes "taking shortcuts".
and "do what you like".
Well, this kind of "translation" work is not as good as not doing it.
So, worry about the next Korean versions of "July and Ansheng" and "Secrets That Cannot Be Said".
Also for Zhang Xiaofei's "Saving the Suspect" and Leung Ka Fai's "I Love You! 》Worried.
Worker of the day: saury flavor