When it comes to the white moonlight in the hearts of the audience of the Chinese drama, spy war dramas are indispensable.
From 2002's "Oath is Silent" to the birth of Liu Yunlong, "Dark Calculation" raised the ceiling of spy war dramas in one fell swoop.
Then to "Lurking", "Before Dawn", "Red", "Kite" and so on, which successively exploded the ratings reputation. Spy war dramas once became a genre with a very high hit rate and eagerly awaited by audiences across the country.
But in the past three years, there have been only a handful of excellent spy war dramas, except for "Rebel" and "Opponent" last year, which were well received, most of the rest pounced miserably.
Especially in 2022, Sun Honglei's "Shocking Strings", Liu Yunlong's "The City of Might", Jin Dong's "Infernal", and Huang Xiaoming's "Lurkers" will all be triggered.
In the end, only Chen Kun and Bai Yu's costume spy war "Fengqi Longxi" and Qin Junjie's "Faith", one failed in high ratings with high reputation, and the other left spy war fans with nothing to say.
Entering 2023, the original "Thin Ice" of Wang Jinsong and Fu Dalong of Hunan Tai has been ready to go, and "Infernal" led by Jin Dong was released by Jiangsu Satellite TV.
But these spy war dramas, after all, still hold the pipa half-covered.
Can you quench your thirst? Finally, a 42-episode Republic of China spy war drama that has been played for eight years has been launched on three major video platforms-
"Butterfly Shadow".
It is not difficult to see that the drama is about the spy war of the Republic of China from a female perspective, which is somewhat new compared with the past spy war dramas with male protagonists.
From the perspective of the main creative team, producer Zhang Jian and director Wang Lixing hold "Snow Leopard", "Blue Wolf", "Black Fox", "Wind Shadow" and other anti-war and spy war dramas, which can be called experts.
From the perspective of the cast, in addition to Zhang Jian's royal heroine and wife Feng Yue and Wei Daxun, the main supporting roles are Zhang Chenguang, He Ziming, Huang Weide, Ren Siyang, Lu Peng and so on.
Looks like something?
However, the series released 12 episodes in one breath, and the popularity of cat's eye did not exceed the top 10. As the premiere spy war drama in the opening year, is this popular?
Could it be that the audience does not recognize the goods?
There is only one way to verify it: chase!
However, since opening the video of the series, my eyes have suffered more than 10,000 critical hits.
To be honest, the show is currently premiering and updating 12 episodes, but before I finished watching the first episode, I wanted to turn off the video. Gritting my teeth and insisting on watching episode 2, but episode 2 has not been watched for 10 minutes, I really can't hold on, after resting, I mustered up the courage to continue, this time, one breath to the end.
At this moment, I am in mixed mood to write this article. The feeling is as some netizens commented: "Spy war drama, fake can't watch it." ”
Why is the first spy war drama at the beginning of the year? A female spy war drama, why was it made into a spy war drama? Is this the fall of spy warfare or the distortion of divine drama?
01, the beginning: the female version of Yan Shuangying, spy war becomes a drama
The plot of "Butterfly Shadow" revolves around the core characters on the poster -
Lin Qiuyan played by Feng Yue.
After chasing 12 episodes, I can say with certainty that a few years after Yan Shuangying said goodbye to the divine drama rivers and lakes, there was finally someone to follow.
However, at the beginning of the story, the first person who babbled blood on the street was Zhang Chenguang as Xu Fanfan, and the subtitle introduction was: the head of the secret resistance organization of the people.
This title and this name must be said to have a very Marvel DC superhero flavor.
In Shanghai, Republic of China in 1938, the night was deep and the rain was pouring, Xu Weiwei opened his extraordinary secret ammunition depot and carefully selected a handful of point 38 from it.
Although I don't know what the same standard weapon hides so much for, he is Xu Extraordinary after all, and the extraordinary person naturally acts extraordinary.
Another member of the secret resistance group played by Huang Weide, who looks like Alfred, says that he wants to go with him, and Xu Weiwei smiled slightly, asked him to make a few special dishes, and waited for him to return.
Sure enough, there is a warm wine to cut the heroic spirit, worthy of Xu extraordinary.
Then the next shot is Xu Weiwei being chased and killed by a group of Japanese spies on the street in the middle of the night.
What I am curious about here is that as the head of a secret civil resistance organization, how many people are in this organization, even if the people are tight, I can understand that even the people who answer them are not there.
But Huang Weide's character said to help, why must he go it alone?
But don't care about these details, because this opening drama task is to lead to the key characters of the whole play - Yan Shuangying, ah no, Lin Qiuyan.
At the moment of life and death, the eyes of the two met.
Xu Extraordinary is worthy of Xu Extraordinary, a revolver seems to have endless bullets, not only turn around and kill several people, but also find cover to confront the other party in the case of being shot.
Although people are still calm and unhurried to assassinate alone in middle age, there are many people on the other side, and they can't resist it.
The heroine appeared - directly opened the cover of the underground manhole across the street, and said hello to Xu Weiwei to come and take refuge
The dozens of chasing and killing personnel on the other side rushed over just right after the two finished hiding and pulled the manhole cover, and then chased forward without hesitation.
This opening, thrilling, exciting, as soon as the opening is full of rhythm, can be said to be very refreshing.
However, it was also from here that the whole drama showed the momentum of collapse.
The action scenes unfold quickly, and the characters in the play flash, but it highlights the most prominent hard wound of the entire show - the rhythm is out of control.
This is first reflected in the explanation of the plot.
Between the plot, there is only a simple and crude splicing, without the slightest beginning and turn.
Let's talk about the opening, the screenwriter spent a lot of effort to create the mysterious hero Xu Fanfan, and let him have a wonderful chance encounter with the heroine, according to reason, this character, must have a big article, should have a huge relationship with the heroine's life or growth, right?
No, in fact, throughout the first 12 episodes, this mysterious character did not appear except for the day after he escaped and invited the heroine to eat a Western meal.
In the next second, the picture has cut to the scene of the heroine's house being broken.
After the fall of Shanghai, Ichiro Aoki, a high-ranking Japanese spy, took a fancy to the heroine's "Choqin Map" and half a hand-drawn map, so he found the Lin family and was willing to buy these two treasures at a heavy price.
Of course, Father Lin refused sternly, and said that he regarded the other party as a hater.
I can still understand this plot, but I can't understand the next plot.
Zhou Tianhao, a military instructor played by He Ziming, applied to his boss to go to Tokyo to assassinate the Japanese emperor, and the audience was probably as stunned as his boss here.
In the end, his boss gave him the task of protecting the Lin family.
On the day that the Lin family and the villain tore their faces, he rushed to the Lin family, and the Lin family also agreed to transfer, and then, there was no then.
Friend, you are here to protect the Lin family, but at the moment of a hundred thousand anxious, you came to meet and left, and you almost wrote the two words of military unification on your face, this is to force the Japanese spies to speed up the progress and do things!
Sure enough, the picture was caught off guard that night and turned again - a Japanese spy dressed as a ninja came to the Lin family to rob the national treasure!
Although, I don't know too much, why on earth do you want to dress up as a ninja, especially the leading big brother, Ichiro Aoki, do you think I don't know you wearing a bronze mask?
And the Lin family is actually defenseless, the only thing that the whole family can fight - Lin Qiuyan, the eldest miss of the Lin family.
Really, it's so good to fight.
Facing a well-trained Japanese ninja, he flew up and down with his bare hands, and directly beat the opponent all over the ground to find his teeth.
I don't believe that the heroine has not obtained martial arts secrets under the cliff.
If it weren't for the villain taking down the heroine's parents, such a lady of a scholarly family might have taken down the entire team of Japanese ninjas. But father of the Lin family, is your falling posture too contrived?
In the end, the Lin family's parents were killed by the Japanese, and "Choqin Map" and half of the hand-drawn map also unfortunately fell into the hands of the Japanese, and the director's use of quick editing of this segment of the shot is also quite thoughtful, and there is a feeling that Wong Kar-wai suddenly took over the shooting.
After the heroine's house was destroyed, the military commander agent in charge of the defense task arrived in a hurry.
Although I don't really understand how the dying heroine was let go by Japanese spies, probably, for the overall situation of the plot.
However, in this short episode, 4 major events have happened:
The heroine saved Xu extraordinary, the heroine was destroyed, the heroine was rescued by the military commander and joined the military command, and the male protagonist played by Wei Daxun rushed to Yan'an.
At this pace, 40 episodes can be performed until the Japanese army announces its surrender.
The fast pace is not a problem, the problem is that all the plots are carried by as fast as if they were driving 2 times, without reasonable ups and downs, pauses. The audience can feel that the plot is unreasonable, but the plot is quickly carried to the next paragraph.
This feeling is like a thorn in the back, like sitting on pins and needles, like a crow in the throat.
But, after so many years of tenacious chasing dramas, what winds and waves have I never seen?
In order to open the first spy war drama of the year, I endured.
02, divine drama: the heroine opens and hangs, and the plot is down
Although the whole drama is 42 episodes long, after chasing 12 episodes, I really didn't find a main story line.
This may be one reason for the rhythm chaos.
But I dare say that even if you shoehorn a main line, it's hard for the audience to buy it.
Because its most fundamental problem is that the plot is dramatic.
Looking at the plot, it seems to be very interesting, the heroine who joined the military commander codenamed Gray Goose soon stood out among the trainees and began to perform a series of tasks, which seems to be in a different tone from the past male spy war dramas.
It's a pity that these novelties are eventually drowned in the nonsensical drama atmosphere of the whole play.
I want to focus on the choreographer's portrayal of the heroine.
This character is not simple, from the orphan girl of the Lin family to the military commander trump card all the way, and finally invested in our side, making miraculous achievements along the way.
However, such a big heroine has been shaped into a female version of Yan Shuangying.
The most typical feature is that all the men she meets are inexplicably obsessed with her beauty. And nothing can stop it, the heroine's yearning for the opening.
On her first mission, she gently shook the wine glass, which made the target person swoon, and immediately asked her to come forward to greet her.
And the heroine instantly burst out divine power and turned into a goddess of war.
One started left and right, firing two guns in unison, shooting the guards.
The muzzle of the gun was pointed directly at the traitor, but in the face of the traitor's clumsy plea for mercy, he was moved by the sentence "My family has a daughter".
What is even more outrageous is the following dialogue at the assassination scene -
Heroine: "There is no daughter in your information." Traitor: "That's my illegitimate daughter!" ”
Sorry, I couldn't help but laugh at such a tense moment.
So is this how this show portrays the softness of the brave female agent?
Unfortunately, this series of efforts to sensationalize is not the strong point of spy war dramas. The effect is very stiff.
If that's all, forget it.
However, at the beginning of the second episode, as the heroine was ordered to destroy the Japanese army's "Scorpion Beauty Plan", the high-energy plot struck, one by one, shocking one by one.
A prison assassination subverted my IQ again.
The target person, in a heavily guarded prison of the Japanese army, completed the assassination like this?
The heroine's method is: put on a Chinese costume and drive a car to pretend to be drunk, and directly hit the prison fence.
Is it really not possible to shoot indiscriminately?
The answer is that not only will it not, but it will also be taken to prison by the Japanese army, and the infiltration plan will be perfectly realized.
As soon as she entered the prison, the heroine quickly found the target location as if she was open, killed the target silently, and came out after changing into a Japanese military uniform.
Then, the more powerful plot came - when the Japanese army officer patrolled, he turned his head and glanced at the heroine disguised as a Japanese army.
Then, as if nothing happened, move on.
My inner OS: You're blind!
Just when the heroine thought she was out of danger, the Japanese officer suddenly stopped her, and I sighed softly: Finally, the screenwriter is not so outrageous.
But the next plot made me freeze: I saw the Japanese officer walk over with a serious face, approach the heroine, carefully scrutinize, stretch out his hands, and button a button for her!
I really please!
The heroine's "male pretending to be a woman" is such a curly long eyelash and such a pink makeup! No one in the prison found out that she was a woman! So forget it, why don't you know what's going on after looking at it face to face for a few seconds?
How did such a blind army last until the end of the War of Resistance?
The logic of the story collapsed, and the actors' acting skills were not spared.
The heroine is really a strange woman who kills men and women.
The screenwriter only cares about writing how she is full of fire and has repeatedly achieved miracles. But the most important point is ignored - the logic of the characters and the logic of the story.
Completing the task at every turn depends on coincidence to facilitate it, the key is to reduce wisdom like a summer evening breeze, inadvertently filling my mind.
For example, the heroine is under siege and surrounded by the Japanese army, how to get out of danger?
The answer was that the Japanese army officer asked to be caught alive, a group of Japanese spies took a knife and the heroine hard, and finally the officer personally went up, was cut by the heroine and fell to the ground, and the heroine took advantage of the situation to break through. Then he was rescued by a group of quacks.
A series of divine drama plots that completely fail to reflect her intelligence.
Turning decay into magic depends on a magical plot.
And Feng Yue had a stubborn face from beginning to end.
Always take it for granted, as if you know that you have the victory, and it is difficult to arouse empathy.
And Wei Daxun is the feeling of letting people travel to the "Great Detective" variety show in minutes.
His public identity is the director of the Japanese Fake Economic Bureau and the president of the East Asian Reserve Bank, but he is actually an undercover agent of our side. It is precisely because of this layer of identity that Zhang Zimo is on Lin Qiuyan's assassination list.
But Wei Daxun put this character close to Ming Lou in "The Pretender" and performed an idol drama-like texture. The performance of the role professional is a line "The foundation of finance is credit, without credit, there is no finance." Then everyone was deeply shocked by this sentence.
8 years ago, Wei Daxun's acting skills were also simple and direct, sadness, self-blame, helplessness, anger, contemplation... There was only one manifestation of various emotions on his face -
Frow, purse your lips, empty your eyes.
Handsome is handsome and has no soul.
Zhang Chenguang, who has the most online acting skills in the whole drama, starred in action scenes at an advanced age, and he will never cheat the scene in person, and he played a mysterious task in a few scenes, but unfortunately disappeared after the opening.
03, dilemma: spy war drama, is a divine drama, not a spy war drama
Spit and complain, I still feel sorry for "Butterfly Shadow".
It's really blind to the name of the first spy war drama in the opening year.
It can't be said that the crew did not work hard, but the three major flaws are too obvious.
First, the plot is dull, the sense of spy warfare is weak, and the excitement is lacking.
As we all know, the script creation of spy war dramas is difficult, and the difficulty lies in how to make the story brain-burning and thrilling.
And this drama looks very rich from the female protagonist incarnating as a female killer god and reuniting with the male protagonist, to being close to our camp, forming an anti-Japanese secret group, and smashing the conspiracy of the Japanese invaders one after another.
But in addition to action scenes, most of the time is meaningless plot transitions and cutscenes, but it makes the spy part of this drama very little, and many plots are synthesized into synopsis.
For example, other characters other than the heroine basically completed their scenes with dialogue scenes, of course, they were not enjoyable.
Second, the meticulousness of the plot logic is not high, and it is full of loopholes.
Spy war dramas are high-IQ intelligence duels and tense games of good and evil, once there are loopholes in logic, there is no point to watch.
And this play fails in this regard.
For example, the heroine performs an extremely difficult assassination mission, and the target is hidden in a heavily protected villa, according to reason, it is extremely difficult to break the game.
But the heroine held a sniper rifle and could directly aim at the target's room, and then let her companion shoot away the guards, and the defense force of the entire villa was instantly empty. Anyway, the entire drama is like this from beginning to end, and the villain's IQ is like this.
Then the heroine looked at the sky with both eyes and confirmed that it was Liangchenji who did it, then put down the sniper rifle, approached the villa with two guns, and shot the only two guards with two shots.
The next second, he rushed into the room of the target person with cool steps and completed the task with a few shots.
After watching it, I just want to say that I feel sorry for the protagonists of classic spy war dramas such as "The Pretender", "Lurking" and "Kite", they are all engaged in spy warfare, why is your opponent's IQ so online?
Although the heroine of this drama takes the growth route of the big heroine, many of her behaviors are in other spy war dramas, and she has to receive a box lunch in just one episode.
Third, the protagonist's aura is too powerful, and the action scenes are dramatic.
It can be seen that the main creator of "Butterfly Shadow" is not taking an unusual path, completely abandoning the character shaping and plot setting of classic spy war dramas.
Turn a cliff dance like "spy war" into a large-scale action show.
I thought that the heroine was exaggerated enough, but the result was even more exaggerated is the "four wild berries" of the military commander in the play, yes, I didn't make it up, the four sisters in the play are called this codename.
Even the Japanese spies knew their name, and it can be said that "Four Wild Berries" has become a well-known brand of the military system.
And their assassination scene is also stunning, under the public, assassinate the Japanese soldiers on the street, sniping, blasting, hacking, all in one go.
Completely contrary to the laws of physics, exaggerated and outrageous, bloody and cult, this mixture of distorted looks and feel is a masterpiece. The screenwriter of domestic spy war dramas has proved himself, and the popular elements of genre films around the world can be stewed into a pot by them.
And the scene of "four wild berries" leaving the scene with six relatives leaving the scene after completing the task is even more classic.
But it was such an arrogant "four wild berries" that was destroyed by a Japanese spy team that night, and the Japanese army was not damaged, it can only be said that the sense of positive and negative combat effectiveness jumping is too great.
In the passage where the other heroine escapes after completing the assassination, the main creator uses drifting stunts to the extreme.
Faced with the desperate pursuit of several Japanese military vehicles and motorcycles, the heroine drove a motorcycle all the way and finally completed the counterattack in front of a bridge-
I saw the heroine driving a motorcycle in the air, and then reversed 180 degrees on the volley motorcycle, sideways to complete the combo against the Japanese military vehicle behind her.
People can only sigh that gravity has long been invalid in front of the heroine of the spy war drama.
So in the following paragraphs, I saw the heroine in ambush and her companions completing the slow-motion strafing in the drift of the car, and I was already used to it - probably, this is the regular shooting action of the military commander.
The problem is that the excessive divine drama action scenes, watching too much only aesthetic fatigue.
We don't require TV shows to be real, but at least we should follow the basic laws of physics.
In fact, I have been looking forward to the revival of the spy war theme in domestic dramas.
After all, throughout the genre of Chinese dramas, it is rare to see a genre as wonderful as a spy war drama and at the same time for a national audience.
It can even be said that the level of domestic spy warfare has long been unique in Asia and even the world, and no country's spy war drama can reach the level of Liu Yunlong's spy war drama.
Unfortunately, when the spy war drama disappears, what the audience can see is such a spy war drama.
But a qualified spy war drama does not actually need a protagonist who is open and hung throughout the whole process, nor does it need a low-minded and incompetent villain.
What it needs is a wonderful group portrait, portraying flesh-and-blood characters.
Only when the intelligence of the enemy and friend is equal to the opponent can a truly gripping plot of intellectual fighting be created, and the victory and sacrifice paid can make the audience empathize.
But now, spy war dramas that can tell good stories are on the verge of disappearing.
What's more frightening is that the only spy war drama that has been left is full of the charm of the anti-Japanese drama of the past.
Originally are all dramas that inspire everyone's patriotic feelings, shoddy not to mention, famous scenes out of the circle are also everywhere, don't believe it to compare, the action scenes of the heroine in this play, is it similar to the following famous scenes of the anti-Japanese drama -
Playing cards kill devils.
Birthday cake bomb kills devils.
"Hidden thunder in the crotch".
The bow and arrow are shot at the enemy, and the bow and arrow will turn.
Of course, in "Black Fox", the male protagonist Fang Tianyi and the other four quietly buried in the devil's airport in the middle of the night, and finally sprinkled the airport with gasoline, and the moment the airport was ignited, the four people walked out of the airport with leisurely steps without hurry.
From the anti-war drama to the spy war drama, it is worthy of the same team, the same divine drama.
Some people say that some look good, but also pick and choose?
The problem is that such a spy war drama is a blow to the audience and the industry.
To talk about the spectacle of spy warfare, the most powerful is actually Liu Yunlong, from Qian Zhijiang to the tasks completed by "Sixth Brother", all of them can be called legendary. But whether it is "Dark Calculation" or "Kite", the premise is that the script is reasonable, the story is intertwined, and the character behavior is tightly knit. It is such a solid story that gives the spy war drama an excellent background and gives the audience an immersive look.
What can move people's hearts in spy war dramas is never the spectacle, but the content.
Today's domestic spy war, only see the loneliness, not Liu Yunlong.
But the more time comes, the more it is necessary to guard the bottom line of spy war dramas.
Instead of a spy war drama, it is released with the style, in addition to the god scene, there is also a collapsed plot.
The characters become thin, the story becomes impoverished, and the emotions become suspended.
Defeating villains actually relies on breaking away from gravity.
When such spy war dramas quietly destroy the patience and confidence of the audience and the industry in spy war dramas, can spy war dramas still have tomorrow?
The more you are at the low ebb of spy war dramas, the more you can't lower your standards——
The spy war drama is just a divine drama, not a spy war drama.