After "Man Jiang Hong", is the "script killing movie" reliable?

The box office of "Manjiang Hong" has just reached 4.51 billion, coming to the seventh position in mainland film history, and there is only a gap of about 13 million from the sixth "Detective Chinatown 3", and there is still room for improvement. At the post-screening meeting of "Man Jiang Hong", director Zhang Yimou once admitted that "Man Jiang Hong" added the current fashionable script killing style.

A trend of "script killing movies" is quietly surging in the industry. From 2021's "Rise to Fame" first mentioned the concept of "script killing movies" and became one of the biggest box office dark horses of that year, to "Manjiang Hong" setting off a movie-watching boom in this year's Spring Festival, to "Welcome to Log in Again" starring Jia Jingwen and Bai Ke in the 2023 film list to be screened, bluntly saying in the trailer that "welcome to participate in the live-action online script killing", the concept of "script killing movies" is gradually moving from the marketing level to the creative level.

Some film screenwriters told Poison Eye that many film companies have recently proposed to do "script killing movies" plans, and the benchmark films are "Fame and Fame" and "Manjiang Hong". It is not uncommon for box office success precedents to lead to follow-up creations, the key is, what is the core reason why "script killing movies" are popular in the market?

Released almost at the same time as "Fame and Fame" in 2021, "Uninvited Guest" starring Fan Wei, Zhang Songwen, Dou Xiao and others is also very script-killing movie, but in the end it only achieved 67.33 million box office. It can be seen that "like a script kill" can become a box office password, and the test behind it is the content quality of the movie itself.

It's just that under the shell frame of "like a script killing", it is not easy to write a script that can stand the test of the market.

What is a "script kill movie"?

In the traditional classification of film genres, of course, there is no concept of "script killing movies", which can be counted as a sub-branch of suspense films. If the specific characteristics of this concept are summarized according to successful predecessors such as "Rise to Fame" and "Manjiang Hong", Wei Ran (pseudonym), who has served as a screenwriter of suspense films for many times, told Poison Eyes that it is roughly three points: closed space, group portraits of characters, and layer by layer reversal.

Closed space is one of the most favored advantages of "script killing movies", because it can save a lot of production costs, so as to realize the possibility of fighting big with small. The online transmission cost of "Rise to Fame" was only 50 million, but it finally received 926 million box office, which is an example of small fights.

The group portrait of characters is the biggest difference between "script killing movies" and traditional reasoning films. In traditional reasoning films, there are often detectives as the core characters, and the largest protagonists are basically concentrated in two or three people, and the remaining "suspects" appear more as functional characters. The "script killing movie" requires a relatively average "group portrait play", each character has a richer and unfoldable history, and creates dramatic tension through the continuous reversal of character identities and the constant changes in relationships.

As for the layer of reversal, it is also common in traditional reasoning films. However, reversal needs to grasp the scale, and excessive use of reversal is sometimes not beautiful.

In Wei Ran's view, the common point of the commercial success of "Rise to Fame" and "Manjiang Hong" as "script killing movies" is that although the plot of suspense reversal is not solid, it is very eye-catching, "can lead the audience to look for an answer." ”

The "hook" that pulls the audience is set well, but it is repeatedly reversed to the last moment, and whether the "bottom" launched can satisfy the audience is the key to success or failure.

Although "Manjiang Red" and "Fame and Fame" are both successful works at the box office, there is a gap in word of mouth. "Manjiang Hong" has fallen from 8.0 when Douban opened the score to 7.2 now, and it can be seen from the proportion of ratings that the proportion of five-star and below two stars is higher than that of "Fame and Fame", and the word-of-mouth polarization is serious.

To understand the bad reviews from the difference in content, the core is that the last reversal at the end of "Manjiang Red" caused great controversy - after the protagonist group finally managed to approach Qin Juniper with great effort, they did not choose to assassinate Qin Juniper, but "let the tiger return to the mountain". In the view of several screenwriters, this is the limitation of the historical IP adaptation to "Manjiang Hong", "It is necessary to meet part of the authenticity of history and the aesthetic taste of the audience, but it is difficult to adjust, so it presents a very twisted tone." ”

Therefore, layer by layer reversal is not only a weapon to attract the audience, but also to avoid the harm caused by excessive reversal. To grasp this scale is a test of the screenwriter's ability.

"Script kills movie" is not so simple

In essence, "script kills the movie" is to transfer the risks and costs of the film production stage to the early stage of script creation, so the biggest test of its success is whether it can write a good script.

For traditional film and television screenwriters, this is not an easy task. Jin Jin, who used to be a screenwriter for film and television dramas and is now the head of the screenwriters' gang script game creation alliance, told Poison Eyes, "Script killing is not a kind of literature, it is essentially more biased towards games, and movies and film and television dramas are still a logic similar to literary works." ”

Therefore, script killing can bring players a rich experience through interactive design, but "script killing movie", when the scene is already very simple, it is very difficult to maintain richness. In Wei Ran's view, most companies did not do single-scene films in the past not because they did not know that it saved money, but because the film is a visual medium, and the single-scene script is difficult to continue to stimulate the audience, "If the films adapted from the early Agatha novels, the story that takes place on a ship or train can still make people feel a little fresh, now after so many similar film baptisms, it is difficult to have any new ideas in a closed space." ”

Not only is the design of the case easy to be similar to the predecessors, some common creative laws have been understood even for the audience, making the suspense film lose the most important mystery, "For example, the reversal is bound to have, then it means that the first thing that looks most like the murderer, the probability that he is not the murderer in the end." ”

Therefore, many "script killing movies" need to find increments beyond suspense in their creation. For example, adding the era spectacle to the setting, "Fame and Fame" is set in the Republic of China, while "Manjiang Hong" is set in the Song Dynasty. This is also what a considerable number of script kills will do, in order to give the audience an immersive atmosphere that is divorced from daily life.

In addition to the background setting, the genre is often made into a composite genre, like "Fame and Fame" and "Manjiang Red" with a little comedy, or add some fantasy, science fiction, horror elements, can make the two-hour movie seem less monotonous in addition to reasoning.

But the composite genre puts forward higher requirements for the play. For example, "Uninvited Guest", which has poor market feedback, has a short review on Douban that mentions, "Grafting such a heavy theme as child trafficking to the comedy effect forms an extremely strange feeling." ”

Wei Ran also made it clear in the project he contacted that he refused to add comedy elements, "On the one hand, it is a feeling that I can't accept when suddenly inserting comedy jokes when talking about serious social issues, and comedy itself also depends on the performance of comedians, and the salary of good comedians is not low, and if you want to add comedy elements, you have to rely on the amount of investment." ”

In addition, in the establishment of character group portraits, it is actually difficult to portray impressive group portraits in a movie with a volume of only about two hours. Jin Jin mentioned, "In fact, the script killing style is more common in today's drama market, and in recent years, suspense dramas have more or less borrowed the shadow of script killing." Because the episode is longer, there is more spare power to do a good group portrait. ”

Therefore, a well-written "script kills movie" may indeed sell, but its own many limitations also make it more difficult to write a good script.

Just a marketing concept?

At the time of the release of "Rise to Fame", "script killing movie" was actually only a concept at the marketing level, not a concept at the creative level. Poison Eye once learned in a conversation with director Liu Xunzimo, "When I was creating, I didn't think about 'script killing', but we think it's very interesting when the screenwriter opens the script meeting, so we want to make a movie to present the state of various people at the script meeting." ”

If only from the perspective of marketing, can the concept of "script kill movie" help the film to circle more audiences and thus achieve market success? Hard.

First of all, the overall development degree and public discussion of the script killing industry are not as good as in previous years. According to the "China Immersive Scripted Entertainment Industry Research Report (2021-2022)", the annual operating income of the industry in 2022 will shrink from nearly 20 billion yuan in 2021 to 17 billion yuan. Therefore, at the point of the release of "Rise to Fame" in 2021, it may still rub some of the popularity of "script killing", and the "script killing movie" project that began to be planned only this year, whether "script killing" is still fashionable when it is released in the future, it is not yet known.

Source: China Culture and Entertainment Association & Meituan Research Institute

Beichen, who used to be one of the screenwriters of the "Detective Chinatown" series and the founder of the script killing of Sky Demon City, told Poison Eye that the script killing players have also changed compared to the beginning, "Old players told me that now I can't stick to the script killing for more than 6 hours." However, the industry is becoming more and more 'involuted', in order to pursue the so-called 'sense of cost', so that the book time is generally longer, and more and more books need multiple DMs to bring, and actors need to perform the whole process. "This has become more demanding for stores, especially in terms of cost and staffing, which has created a huge pressure and challenge. The store will invisibly pass on this part of the cost to the player, resulting in the cost of playing the script killing higher and higher.

The script killing industry that has transformed into a heavy experience means that higher customer unit prices and more layered player groups will be difficult to further popularize in the direction of popularization in the future.

"There are fewer and fewer players who like to simply play reasoning, and now players need more to socialize." Beichen added, "The core experience of the movie is the pursuit of visual stimulation, and the other is to talk about the plot together after watching it and provide a talking point." This shows that the appeal of the script to kill the player is not very consistent with the appeal of the audience of the suspense movie.

Even lovers of hardcore books, in Jin Jin's opinion, may be difficult to be interested in suspense movies, "From the perspective of a script killing player, the reasoning part of these movies is actually a little too simple, and the movie basically knows what is going on at the beginning." Therefore, from a marketing point of view, the current "script killing movies" are still difficult to attract people who really love to play script killing to become audiences.

But in Beichen's view, the concept of "script killing movies" is at least a very efficient propaganda method. It can quickly answer the general audience's doubts about "what is this film really about", and is more likely to establish associations with previous "script killing movies" such as "Rise to Fame" and "Man Jiang Hong".

Blake Snyder emphasized in "Save the Cat", "On any given weekend, even an avid movie fan only has about thirty seconds to decide what to watch." So, being able to describe 'what it's about' is the key. ”

Although the success of a single film is unpredictable, and it is not rational to blindly follow the trend, in Jin Jin's view, the overall supply of suspense genre films in the current domestic film market is still not enough, and if you want to have high-quality products, you must first form a creative atmosphere. According to Maoyan's "2022 China Film Market Data Insights", from 2017 to 2022, the box office proportion of suspense genre films continued to be below 10%, except for 2021.

According to the "2021 Chinese Film Audience Survey Report", the number of crime genre films among the 481 newly released domestic films in theaters in 2021 accounted for only 3%, but the audience was most interested in films that were precisely "case/crime themes", accounting for 49.4%. This fully shows that there is still a lot of market space for this type to be explored.

Therefore, more and more film and television companies invest in "script killing movies", which may not be able to find the "wealth code" at the box office, but for the entire market, it is at least a supplement to the supply gap.

The combination of film and other media forms or entertainment methods is itself one of the normal development trends in the era of media integration. In Beichen's view, no matter what form it is, the logic of good content is consistent, "Whether it is a movie, series or game, or even crosstalk and talk shows, it is all about reversal, and the template of good content creation is similar, and bad creation is strange." ”

Learning from each other's strengths is an important way for entertainment products to maintain their vitality, and movies are no exception.