With the development of film industry technology and the maturity of the market, a large number of myths rely on the advantages of IP and are reinterpreted on the big screen.
"The Return of the Great Sage", "White Snake: Origins", "Nezha's Demon Boy Descending", "Jiang Ziya"... The rewriting of myths has become a routine operation in the entertainment market. Although these films have mixed reviews and box office, they have aroused a lot of attention and discussion.
The domestic game AAA masterpiece "Black Myth: Wukong" has also attracted countless lights, and the dark interpretation of the myth exudes a charming temperament that is not the same as the previous adaptation, and people have applauded such a rewrite.
How should mythological adaptations strike a balance between pleasing the masses and respecting tradition? Should myths have an immutable core? That's something we're thinking about together today.
The recreation of traditional myths has always been a hot topic in the field of literature, film and television, and game creation. Beloved by European and American fantasy enthusiasts, British novelist Neil Gaiman's American Gods, which depicts the life of ancient gods in contemporary American society, won the 2002 Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, and the American drama of the same name was also widely popular. The Fate series by Nasu Mushroom and Takashi Takeuchi, which is familiar to Japanese ACG enthusiasts, tells the story of ancient heroes from all over the world who are once again summoned to fight for the Holy Grail.
American Gods [American] by Neil Gaiman, translated by Qi Lin, Beijing United Publishing Company, 2017-4
Traditional mythology is never short of fans, the hero characters in traditional mythology are known to everyone, and everyone can take screenshots of fairy monsters to make a few memes. As the strongest IP that has undergone the baptism of thousands of years, the re-creation of traditional myths seems to be a simple and high-yielding thing.
However, if you look back at the animation, film, television, and game works with the theme of traditional Chinese mythology in recent years, you will find that this does not seem to be the case.
Inexplicable myths
There are not many works on traditional mythological themes that have received praise. "The Return of the Great Sage" and "The Magic Boy Descending" received more than 8 points in Douban for their subversive characters and plot development that fully conformed to the commercial film model. "White Snake Origins" and its sequel "White Snake 2: Green Snake Robbery" also maintained a rating of more than 7 points in Douban, but the plot was different.
In addition, it is difficult to think of other more brilliant works of traditional Chinese mythology. Including "Jiang Ziya", which attracted much attention last year, it only received a large number of "inexplicable plot" reviews. As for the domestic AAA game masterpiece "Black Myth: Wukong", which just released a real machine demonstration clip not long ago, the video caused a hot discussion as soon as it came out, and the praises were all called excellent graphics, gorgeous skills, and the voices of criticism were various, thinking that "a lot of elements that have nothing to do with Wukong are piled up, and it is only one of the categories to replace Goku with any other name".
Screenshot of the game Black Myth: Goku.
Perhaps it is precisely because everyone knows the heroes of mythology that it is not so easy to recreate traditional myths.
Admittedly, the saying that "there are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand hearts" is certainly true, but Hamlet is Hamlet after all and will not become any other role. He may not have to be an ancient Dane, he doesn't have to be a prince, he may even be a lion cub, but he must be an heir, he must have a sinister uncle, and the uncle must kill Hamlet's father, who may not necessarily die at the end of the story, but a duel with the wicked is also necessary. Without these necessary points, there would be only a thousand people in their hearts who no one knew.
In fact, that's the point – everything has to conform to its paradigm.
For example, if you write a letter, if you do not write "so-and-so respectfully" at the beginning and do not write the date of payment at the end, it is not a letter, at most it is an essay.
For example, a mermaid, if she does not have a beautiful fishtail person plus a beautiful song that lures passing sailors to ship destruction, it is just an ordinary dugong.
This is especially true of the heroes and deities in classical works. They have to conform to a certain paradigm to be "that role." If the characters of heroes, gods, or monsters lose the elements that must belong to them, the characters themselves cease to exist. The most obvious example is that Nezha must have a hot wheel, a Qiankun circle and a mixed heavenly aya, and even the subversive "Magic Boy Descending" has to match these things to him.
Poster of "Nezha's Demon Boy Descending".
But the success of "The Magic Boy Descending" masks a very important problem - it eliminates the original characteristics and deeds of traditional hero characters, leaving only a name, relying on a wonderful original plot, successfully rewriting the myth.
In "The Demon Boy Descends", the plot begins by showing that Nezha is not a spirit bead, but a magic pill. So much so that all the Lou Zi in the subsequent plot of Nezha was attributed to "innate evil". It completely negates the statement of Taiyi Zhenren in the "Fengshen Yanyi": he is the pioneer of cutting, and it is a righteous act to get rid of a few monsters and dragons, Li Jing admits that he does not agree with this child, and the immortals do not care at all.
Then perhaps it is believed that the plot of Nezha's analysis of flesh and mother, and the analysis of bones and fathers is too extreme, and this section has never appeared at all - it is very regrettable that in fact, Nezha, as a Buddhist deity of Indian origin, this paragraph actually describes his use of mana to preach for his parents, and the plot of identifying all the flesh as only imaginary images, which are recorded in Buddhist texts such as "Five Lantern Society" and "The Legend of the Zen Forest Monk". By the Ming Dynasty, this legend was secularized as an apology, but the rebirth of the lotus flower still implicitly retained his characteristics as a Buddhist god. Of course, since Nezha was born as a "magic pill" in "The Demon Boy Descends", there is no need for preaching, apologizing, and being reborn.
Although in the subsequent animation plot, he still did acts such as harming the Dragon King, but the whole person is summarized with a direction similar to the British comedy "Good Omens": Adam Young, the son of the great demon Satan, was born in a church of demon worship, and the forces in heaven and hell were ready to destroy the world. But because of his good nurture and warm friendship and affection, Satan's son Adam Yang finally chose to continue to be an upright human being when the end came, protecting friends and small towns, and keeping the world as it was - this is exactly "my fate is up to me".
Good Omen movie poster.
Fortunately, the original plot of "The Magic Boy Descending" is very successful, and there is no need to investigate how much the protagonist resembles Nezha. In contrast, "Jiang Ziya", whose plot is not so successful, completely highlights the flaws of the creative method of "abandoning the existing characteristics of the gods and blindly subverting". The audience was not moved by the speculation of "saving one person or saving the life", but complained that "this Jiang Ziya is like Keanu Levis" and "is the protagonist actually Jesus" became the majority - because the audience did not see Jiang Ziya, only saw a less successful original character.
The core of the myth
In the process of deconstructing mythological stories, it is also extremely important to keep in mind the iconic deeds of mythological characters as part of the paradigm, and can even be considered a kind of "statue" in a broad sense.
Hercules of ancient Greece had to go through twelve difficult trials to become the great hero.
Wu Song must also fight a tiger to be considered a real Wu Song.
The monkeys who did not carry the medicine mountain and did not lead the monkey army to attack Lenga Island were not Hanuman.
On the other hand, just a monkey with a miraculous ability holding a stick to fight and kill, he is not Sun Wukong.
Unfortunately, however, this is a major misunderstanding of Sun Wukong and the related themes of "Journey to the West" today - blindly grasping the fragments of "Journey to the West" that are not the focus (for example, Sun Wukong once said to Tang Monk that the monster will change into a victim to murder passers-by, "If we want to eat people when we are a demon...") desperately exaggerate the "evil" side of him, create a grumpy and arrogant demon monkey image, subvert tradition in the name of subverting tradition, and create an "anti-hero" image.
As everyone knows, this is precisely the illusion that insufficient understanding of "Journey to the West" will produce.
In "Journey to the West", "Journey to the West" was also subversively adapted.
The popular Hundred Returns to the West always signed the author Wu Cheng'en, so much so that the public thought that a Ming Dynasty literati named Wu Cheng'en carefully and carefully conceived to complete this masterpiece. Since the author is a literati with a name and a surname, every sentence in it must have been deliberated, and some seemingly contradictory sentences must also have great meaning.
Unfortunately, this is not the case.
Journey to the West is a work edited, arranged, and proofread by an anonymous author named "Huayang Dongtian Master" in the middle and late Ming Dynasty. Later generations have found that the master of Huayang Cave may be—only possible—that Wu Cheng'en was already a matter during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty.
Before "Journey to the West" was edited and integrated, there were a large number of stories of similar themes. In the Song Dynasty's "Poetry of the Three Tibetan Classics of the Tang Dynasty", there are already stories of the Flame Mountain and the Tongtian River, and because the Buddhist people during the Tang and Song Dynasties worshiped Vishamon Tian, there were few Guanyin Bodhisattvas in the story. It was not until the "Journey to the West Miscellaneous Drama" of the Yuan Dynasty that there was a section of Guanyin Bodhisattva rescue that people are familiar with today.
In the old days, Sichuan, Fujian, Guangdong, Taiwan and other places have local dramas that tell the deeds of monkey spirits and monkey immortals, there are stories of monkey spirits being subdued by gods, there are also stories of monkey immortals helping the poor, Fujian area calls monkey immortals various "great saints", and temples dedicated to the great saints of Tongtian, Qitian and Danxia are also common.
Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en People's Literature Publishing House, 2018-1
All these materials were integrated by generations of literati to form the adventure novel "Journey to the West" with Buddhist content as the main clue and Taoist thought as the main clue, supplemented by Taoist thought. Readers find some "strange foreshadowing" in "Journey to the West", such as Bodhi Grandmaster's prediction that Sun Wukong will encounter great disasters in the future, and for example, Sha Monk is suspected of eating Tang Monk ten times, but it is actually just a loophole that has been forgotten to correct in the process of compilation and integration. In particular, Sun Wukong blew himself up and "turned into a suffering woman... Eating a person" paragraph, is even more inconsistent, after a few times the author turned his head to write "the walker since childhood bites pine and chews cypress, all a breath of fresh air", specifically emphasizing that this monkey head is different from ordinary monsters, there is no black history.
Overall, "Journey to the West" is undoubtedly a popular reading that exhorts people to be good throughout, and in such a story, it is necessary to insert the elements of "evil" into the protagonist of the embodiment of justice, and infinitely enlarge the ordinary personality characteristics such as acute and informal, into fierce arrogance, believing that this is "exploring the depth of the character", which is inevitably looking in the wrong direction.
Comply between tradition and innovation
Another country with a rich mythology and a long history, India, is probably more keen than any other place in the world to remake their myths. It is no exaggeration to say that Almost every few years, India remakes the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, the Mahakashri, the legend of Shiva, the legend of Buddha, and so on.
But indian dramas will never have the stubborn monkey god Hanuman, let alone the timid and rude Arjuna or the less upright Rama, everything is strictly in line with traditional mythology. This, of course, is done with religious belief in mind – the gods of Hindu mythology are still widely worshipped in contemporary times. However, the creative method of following the original text did not affect the interest of the work in the slightest, and the Indian mythological drama has won a large number of overseas fans with its unique world view, twisting plot and unique traditional dance.
The monkey in the Ramayana. /wiki
Of course, on the basis of respect for the original, innovation is indeed very important. But what innovation is this innovation if you just spit out what you want to express and then rub a name on the myth? It's better to honestly call it creation.
Even Marvel, who wrote the Norse gods as aliens, knew that Wei Guangzheng's hero allowed him to continue to be famous in contemporary entertainment works — and more tall and handsome than in legends, so that he could be popular.
Therefore, the audience saw Thor played by Chris Hemsworth in the "Avengers" series of movies, not only the guardian of Asgard, the benefactor of the slaves, the guardian of all civilians and the weak, but also the most loyal warrior in the Avengers. Although he sometimes falls behind, and occasionally abandons himself to become a fat man who eats junk food, Thor will never use ulterior motives and tricks, nor will he commit any betrayal of his companions.
On the other hand, Thor's brother Loki still maintains the origin of the Frost Giant in the original text and the characteristics of good and evil, changeable, sometimes allied with the protagonist's side, sometimes plotted conspiracies, as in the original classic, always promoting the development of the plot, and incidentally triggering the twilight of the gods.
Stills from Thor 3: Twilight of the Gods.
Aside from the works mentioned above that strictly follow the original texts or carefully deconstruct, are there any works that are still very successful in bold innovation? Yes, but it requires clever skill.
In the 1960s, the famous American science fiction master Roger Zerazni wrote a science fiction novel "The King of Light", which is also related to the gods. In order to permanently rule mankind, these "gods" disguise science and technology as "divine power" and package "consciousness transfer" as "reincarnation", and will never reveal half of human knowledge. But among the aliens, the man named Sam and his companions were willing to educate humanity, and he held rallies to tell the truth to the crowd.
Thus he was called the Enlightened One, the Buddha, the Demon Binder, the King of Light, and Siddhartha. Sam's actions are opposed by other aliens, who fight with his own countrymen. After the defeat, his consciousness was imprisoned, but he did not give up his faith, and finally realized the "reincarnation" seen by believers with the help of his companions, defeating his opponents and leading mankind into a new era.
"The King of Light" [Beauty] Roger Zerazni, translated by Hu Shu, reader | Beijing United Publishing Company, 2015-3
The hugo award won in 1968 for its skillful writing skills, philosophical dialogue, and deep understanding of Indian mythology and Buddhism, and is a classic in the history of science fiction.
Also a bizarre and bold re-creation of mythology is American Gods. The famous fantasy novelist Neil Gaiman describes the life of ancient gods in the United States in a contemporary society where ancient faith has declined dramatically, losing believers.
The ancient Norse god Odin made a living from small scams and drew faith from Nordic heavy metal rock bands, the ancient Egyptian god of writing and magic, Trotter, opened a funeral parlor, The God of Darkness and Destruction in the ancient Slavic civilization, Zenoberg became a butcher in a meat processing plant, Vulcan sold arms, the Queen of Sheba became a call girl... Every god lives a secular life that is inconsistent with their identity, but every life conforms to their divinity. The whole work interprets "faith" and the connection between humans and the gods in an incredible way.
It can be seen that the Doomsday Wasteland style is not incompatible with the Green Snake ("White Snake 2: The Green Snake Robbery"), and the punk locomotive is not incompatible with Nezha ("New God List: Nezha Reborn"). The most important thing is whether the plot is solid.
Stills from Whitesnake II: The Green Snake Rises.
If you deeply understand the core of the myth, coupled with a smooth and non-preachy plot, it is naturally the best re-creation of the traditional mythological IP.
If there is no solid original plot, it is not shameful to follow the original classic in a decent manner, after all, everyone loves to watch the fairy fight of the luxury special effects performance, and it should be good to want to launch such a work.
Or maybe the plot is quite good, but it has nothing to do with the original text, and it doesn't matter what the character's name is. If you can generously claim to be an original work, it is even more praiseworthy.
The most terrible thing is that the story is written in an unclear way, and the characters have no characteristics, only knowing that holding the thighs of traditional myths, the gods and immortals cannot save such works.
Source: WeChat public account "Hardcore Book Club"
Author: Wang Shuang
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