Rhino Entertainment Original
Text|Fat Department Editor|Park Fang
A series of suspense and spy war dramas are being intensively launched this spring.
As Rhino Jun once analyzed, the long video platform will launch more typed circle content in the off-season of spring every year, and the suspense dramas that have increased in popularity in recent years are also in this category, and the circle-breaking hit "Crime Hunting Guide" appeared in March last year.
And this year, in addition to iQiyi's "Moses on the Plain", "Echo" and "Thirteen Years of Dust" in the suspense category, Youku has come up with "half a masterpiece" "Who is he" and comedy + suspense's "Meritorious Northeast Old Things", which began to focus on the two major platforms of suspense from 2020, and in recent years have once again met in this old battlefield.
As early as last year, when each platform came up with the 2023 film list, the industry had the judgment that this year is the "big year of suspense spy war dramas", on the one hand, Tencent Video, as a big player of national dramas, officially ended for the first time and officially announced many suspense dramas such as "Under the City" and "Black Earth Without Words".
On the other hand, as a spy war drama under the suspense category, it ushered in a full-scale flowering platform this year.
At present, there are Tencent Video's "Infernal" and Mango TV's "Thin Ice". Follow-up works include iQiyi's "Lonely Boat", Tencent Video's "Lurker", "Plum Blossom Peach" and Mango TV's "Shocking Strings", as well as "Front Without Gunsmoke" launched on multiple platforms, spy war dramas are rare after the 2010s in terms of the number and volume of head works.
But whether it is a suspense drama or a spy war drama in a subdivided field, it seems that this year's head lineup is still far from the expectations of the blockbuster.
"Infernal" and "Thin Ice" attract early popularity with the lineup, and it seems difficult to go further at present; In terms of suspense dramas, the Douban score of "Who Is He" dropped from 8.2 points to 6 points, and the other "Thirteen Years of Dust" is the best performance of this year's Misty Theater, with a Douban score of 8.1, but the broadcast data can only be said to be unsatisfactory, and the popularity of the station has not broken 9,000 so far.
In 2023, ushering in a wave of suspense and spy war dramas, it should be said that the considerations of each platform are still traceable, but the actual operation is not as expected, it should be seen that there are still various problems such as action deformation and market expectation deviation. In the past two years when the frequency of explosions has increased rapidly, will suspense spy war dramas wait for opportunities?
Why think
2023 and suspense spy war special match?
As mentioned earlier, suspense and spy war dramas have received quite amazing support this year.
From the two spy war dramas that have been launched so far, the matching lineup can also see the production volume, "Infernal" in addition to Jin Dong + Wang Likun who pulled the ratings, and Wang Zhiwen + Zhang Zhijian's drama bone team; "Thin Ice" has created a golden supporting cast of Fu Dalong + Wang Jinsong + Wu Yue and many drama bones. From the perspective of production level, it has also reached the forefront of similar works.
There is also no lack of large-scale content in the suspense category, such as "Who Is He", the early word-of-mouth is due to the excellent texture, led by Zhang Yi, Ding Yongdai, Zhao Yang, Shi Liang and many female characters are remarkable; Zhang Dalei and Feng Xiaogang, the directors of "Moses on the Plain" and "Echoes" of the Misty Theater, are both from movies, and they also match a good lineup.
This may be to open up a competitive advantage in the spring with good production, but combined with the film lists that have been released on various platforms, it can be seen that the volume of subsequent works is not bad.
Why did platforms suddenly start to engage in suspense and invest at such a high cost? Previously, Rhino Jun had analyzed the "post-2020" complex of long videos, and in the face of suspense themes that have shown cross-circle influence and market enthusiasm, it is natural for long videos to try to find their status.
In addition, from the executive level, according to the production cycle of the series, if you decide to enter the game during the industry boom period in 2020, three years should also be a suspense tide, and this batch of works should be easier to export than the suspense content produced in 2021. So it's still worth looking forward to.
Let's talk about the spy war drama subdivided by suspense, this category that has plummeted in popularity since around 2010 due to restrictions on being reported, in fact, has not stopped trying in recent years, and there have also been "Pretender", "Secret and Great", "Rebel" and other popular content, but the output frequency of such head works this year is really rare.
The reason is also very simple, one is a variety of favorable factors, spy war dramas come with the main theme attribute, suspense attribute have entered the mainstream of the market in recent years, which means that this traditional radio drama category, there is the possibility of opening up online topic discussion, which makes spy war dramas enter the field of vision of online platforms.
The second is the verification of successful works, from "Sparrow" in 2016 to "Rebel" in 2021, with the production idea of traffic actors + drama bone team, it has proved its feasibility in the market and its value to young mainstream audiences. The current spy war drama, looking at the lineup, basically continues this idea
And suspense, spy warfare these platforms hope to break through the type, under the idea of "efficiency", there is also a strategy for the platform to deliberately improve certainty by creating a "white horse" project, so the projects that can be seen at present have a fairly good team and production volume, to some extent, this "white horse" effect has been reflected in a series of popular dramas in the past two years, including "Crazy".
But for suspense and spy war dramas, this idea seems to be failing, why?
The first third of the "big year" is muted
Excusable
In the end, the failure of suspense and spy dramas in content actually shows some "bad habits" in the domestic production industry for a long time, and the action deformation brought by these habits has led to the failure of market expectations, after all, content is fundamental.
These problems are most obvious in spy war dramas. Because from the 2010s to the present, the stagnation of spy war dramas has caused obstacles to the integration of the category with contemporary narrative elements, and the only transformation in the past ten years may be the introduction of traffic; Some of today's spy war dramas can still see the shadow of some "work" in those years.
From the perspective of excellence, "Infernal" and "Thin Ice" undoubtedly integrate a lot of platform experience for content upgrades, such as improving the quality with old drama bones, whether it is the rivalry of Zhang Zhijian and Wang Zhiwen in "Infernal", or Wu Yue's interrogation of the male protagonist in "Thin Ice", they have received a lot of praise; The restoration of the elements of the Republic of China in the whole drama has also reached above the average.
But the specific problem, first of all, is routine, the current domestic spy war theme seems to have not yet come out of the shadow of "lurking", the plot is basically that the male protagonist is in the military system, against the Japanese and false, repeatedly made miraculous achievements but the corruption of the system is dark and desperate, and finally cast to the bright side. The formation of this path obviously has been considered by trial, and the military plot also allows for more commercial portrayals.
Even if the routine may not tell a good story, most of the episodes have a relatively limited degree of completion, mainly contrary to the basic attraction of long videos: story logic and character charm.
On the one hand, there are many problems with the story logic of some recent episodes, and the audience naturally has higher expectations for the logic of spy war dramas, and there is obviously a violation of expectations; On the other hand, "Rebel" stands out in spy war dramas because it portrays a protagonist with flesh and blood and feelings, but many dramas have shortcomings in this regard, and seem to be more immersed in the heroic romantic narrative of the male protagonist.
"Rebel"
These questions are placed in the category of suspense, and they basically apply the same. At present, the focus of suspense is on the theme of crime, and the second is criminal investigation drama.
The former is closer to the traditional suspense type narrative, that is, by setting up sophisticated puzzles to attract the audience, and then show the puzzle solving process, "Hidden Corner", "Silent Truth" and "The Beginning" belong to this type of content; Criminal investigation dramas integrate suspense elements into detective cases, combined with the main theme narrative, and create masterpieces such as "Crime Hunting Guide" and "Who is the Murderer", as well as the recent "Echo" and "Thirteen Years of Dust".
Suspense dramas belong to the exploration period of new genres, but the reason why the industry has been slow to come up with new explosive models in the past two years is that there are few good mysteries and lack of shocking characters like in the two works in 2020; And "Thirteen Years of Dust" is already a good work in criminal investigation dramas, but the model of new and old police officers joining forces to solve old cases may already be difficult to attract the current audience.
Fundamentally, suspense, spy war genre dramas have extremely high requirements for content, and the key to breaking the circle is often word of mouth, in this category, the pull of traffic actors and the increase in production can play little role; The integration of genres must not affect the main position of suspense, such as "Octagonal Pavilion Fog" and "Echo" with a high proportion of family elements, which are facing controversy.
The industry is trying to bring more possibilities to suspense, such as iQiyi's sci-fi + suspenseful "Bionic World", love suspense's "Double Food", Tencent Video has developed more suspense adventure themes, in addition to Mango TV's costume suspense drama "Da Song Youth Zhi 2", Youku e-sports-themed "Player" and other dramas, may bring new possibilities.
Although the first third of this year has not exceeded the expected hits, there is no need to worry for the time being, with the arrival of the summer, there may be more head projects into the scheduling sequence, bringing more possibilities to the suspense and spy war genres, such as "Lurkers" created by the "Rebel" team may be launched at the same time as the summer; Some IP sequels, such as "Return to the South China Sea", "Da Song Youth Chronicle 2" and "The Road to Rebirth" are also expected to get good performance.
In the long run, the platform's judgment that content upgrades will become suspense, spy war drama growth points, there is still room for operability, whether it is spy warfare or criminal investigation, in the third year of suspense drama popularity, the industry and the audience will also look forward to the emergence of a new blockbuster, since 2020, it has indeed been too long.