Hollywood is out of order?
From the beginning of the year to now, no Hollywood movie looks presentable.
The superhero universe has been away for three years, did not usher in a retaliatory movie, Marvel DC sequel Douban score collective failure, the box office is even more miserable.
△ Data source: Maoyan Professional Edition
Entertainment blockbusters with a good reputation can't be sold:
"Super Mario" sold 730 million US dollars (about more than 4.7 billion yuan) worldwide, surpassing "Manjiang Red" to become the global box office champion, but only 132 million yuan in China.
"Dungeons and Dragons" is even worse, with extremely low discussion after its release, and the domestic box office is only 78 million yuan, far lower than the expectations of the film.
△ The Douban scores of the two movies: 8.0, 7.7
The two most popular films are from Japan:
At present, "Journey to the Bell Buds" has 775 million and "Slam Dunk" has 437 million.
Have Chinese audiences abandoned Hollywood?
This conclusion is too arbitrary.
The more likely reasons are:
Hollywood, is decoupling from the 00s.
You know, who is the biggest audience in Hollywood?
It is the post-70s to post-90s group, who grew up in the era of reform and opening up, and the sudden influx of Hollywood blockbusters refreshed their horizons.
At that time, it was the peak of Hollywood.
But what about the 00s?
By the time they grew up and started watching movies, it was after 2010.
At this time, Hollywood entered the era of superheroes, and the box office repeatedly reached peaks, but the crisis has also been buried since then:
The superhero universe is constantly deriving, self-breeding, and finally like what Martin Scorsese calls a "theme park".
Closed, repeated, routine.
How many refreshingly original stories have Hollywood had in the last decade?
Sail against the tide.
It is difficult not to create the situation of today.
According to the statistics of Maoyan Research Institute, in the past year, the post-95s and post-00s contributed 45% of the box office, and the post-00s are considered to be the fastest growing moviegoers.
What do post-00s like to watch?
Does Hollywood still have a chance to rejuvenate?
01
For Sir's generation, Hollywood blockbusters have opened up our imagination of distant places, the world, and the future.
In 1994, China officially imported movies from Hollywood.
Although at that time cinema was still the patent of big cities.
But it does not prevent us who live in small cities, watch the pure version on CCTV6, listen to "old guys", and are so shocked by the action blockbuster with a compact narrative and explosive special effects that we can't breathe.
In 2001, China joined the WTO, and with "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" killing all over the world at the Oscars, we have ten more imported films to watch.
When Hollywood blockbusters cross the ocean with the waves of globalization, even if it is only a few sporadic films, it brings us not only a visual spectacle, but also an identity:
Watching Hollywood, it is an online chat room that connects peers around the world.
Although different countries, the reality is very different.
But the desire for individuality, the vision of the flower world, can be through the light of the big screen, and at the same time shoot into the hearts of young people.
At that time, the main theme of the world was that as long as there is the same dream, we can sail into the distance together.
That's why the Beijing Olympics sang: "We live together in the global village."
The year after the Olympics, "Avatar" was born, a film intended to go out of the earth, representing the insurmountable peak of the global film industry and allowing our market to touch the ceiling for the first time.
The 00s are of course happy.
As Internet natives, their entertainment methods are richer, and their exposure to the outside world is no longer limited to movie theaters.
It is true that no one in Hollywood at that time would see the crisis, the explosion of the market and the dazzling, the post-00s can freely travel Nolan's sci-fi world, enjoy the warm company of Pixar, and be ignited by superheroes Dopamine...
But soon, the excitement disappeared.
In 2014, only 25% of the original scripts of the five major Hollywood studios remained, and under the monopoly of giants, the living space of independent films was further squeezed.
In 2019, in mainstream Hollywood commercial films, the original script has disappeared.
In 2022, among the top ten most profitable Hollywood movies in the world, only the horror film "Dangerous Laughter" is not a remake or sequel.
Hollywood's ebb and flow in China is obvious to all:
In 2019, "Avengers 4" won 4.2 billion yuan at the box office, like a real elegy.
Because after that, there is no Hollywood that can enter the top ten of the Chinese box office.
Our generation of movie fans is difficult to completely turn their backs on Hollywood.
Because when you say goodbye to Hollywood.
It is also goodbye to the youth that was once bloody and restless, but could not be turned back.
Therefore, under the fixed news of "Fast and Furious 10", only middle-aged boys and girls are laughing at themselves, and they are making up tickets for youth with love and hate:
"This is something I'm definitely going to see at the cinema... Bad films".
Hollywood's historical turning point from prosperity to decline has hit the adolescence of the 00s head-on.
The farewell of the post-00s and Hollywood does not need to do psychological construction at all.
It's like if you see a video you don't like, and you can cross it off in three seconds.
Spring Festival file, half of the audience of "Manjiang Red" and "The Wandering Earth 2" are post-00s.
And after the carnival, returning to the movies that can arouse discussion in daily life are also supported by the 00s:
"Journey to the Bell Buds", firmly sitting in the first place after the Spring Festival.
The domestic box office is about to exceed 800 million, which has already surpassed Japan.
△ Comparison of the box office between China and Japan in "Journey to the Bell Bud", source: Maoyan Professional Edition
Among the people marked "want to see" in Maoyan, more than eighty percent are post-95s, and 35% are under the age of 20.
690 million "Keep You Safe" (the highest domestic film after the Spring Festival).
The film focuses on what young people are most concerned about at the moment - online violence, slut shaming and other topics.
More than seventy percent of the people who want to see it are post-95s.
△ Source: Maoyan Professional Edition, "Keep You Safe" "want to see" crowd user portraits
When the 00s go out of school and become social people, they vote for their youth and their favorite pop culture.
Because only then can they prove to the adults:
You see, I've really grown up.
02
It is not only China's post-00s who dislike Hollywood.
Although from the data point of view, Hollywood nuggets are still overbearing, last year's global box office top ten, the top eight are Hollywood blockbusters.
But being able to sell well does not mean that the 00s like it.
The global box office champion "Top Gun 2", Tom won the Hollywood salary championship with this film.
But according to Paramount's statistics, more than half of the audience of "Lingyun 2" is over 35 years old, and the 18-24-year-old population is far less than other movies, such as "The New Batman" and "Minions".
So, what are the post-00s in the United States looking at?
Like us, it's all online dramas.
However, it is the kind that cannot break into our field of vision:
You can watch it anywhere!
...... But you can't watch from you!
In 2017, LendEDU's market survey of American college students showed that 92% of college students preferred Netflix when watching videos and following dramas;
In 2018, a survey by U.S. investment banks showed that teens spend 40% of their daily watching videos on Netflix.
Last year's world's most popular youth drama "Wednesday".
In the first three weeks, the total time spent online was 1 billion, topping the viewing list in 83 countries.
Dark loli, gothic makeup.
The small body hides a soul with a strong vengeance.
Occasionally, there are golden sentences of feminism and reflective information explosion.
Who took this?
Hollywood's most famous director who can shoot fantasy, Tim Burton, whose masterpieces are "Big Fish" and "Edward Scissorhands".
You see, even the old directors of Hollywood began to dislike Hollywood's obsolescence.
Not to mention another one who was pushed to the top by young people:
"Stranger Things".
The most watched English-language series in Netflix's history, featuring a nostalgic youth, but a lot of yellow storm.
Last year, a survey of Gen Z in the United States showed that "Stranger Things" fans have surpassed "Harry Potter" and are challenging Marvel's supremacy.
Streaming media, firmly take the 00s for themselves.
Today, Hollywood can't even hold a new generation of superstars.
In 2019, a large-scale youth drama was launched on HBO streaming, and one episode broke the ratings record.
The night of the show's premiere was actually the opening ceremony of the Super Bowl of the "American Spring Festival Gala".
And the attention of young people has shifted from the family's TV set to the small screen in the bed.
The heroine of "Hyper".
Zendaya, born in 1996, is a well-deserved top Generation Z in the United States.
But before "Hyper", she was a child star at Disney, sang pop songs, and even played a female ticket for Spider-Man, but she did not become a top stream.
Until she played a cool girl who was addicted to drugs and liked transgender people while she was in the large-scale "Hyper".
The old guy gaze from Disney can't get Zendaya to get Gen Z's approval.
Until her various outrageous behaviors, they are showing the coolness and rebellion that young people need.
At the Oscars, she wore a white dress with a dirty braid, and replied after the media's yin and yang strangeness: dirty braids represent strength and beauty, and there is no gender distinction.
"Hyper" can become the top stream, not just because of the scale, but because it really tells the confusion of young people.
It's like talking about addiction and pain.
"Guess the Train", which liberated the previous generation, is telling you the most correct truth of life with the coat of teaching bad children:
It's better to do something wrong than to trust the authority and mainstream in your life.
And "Hypertheria", also borrows incorrect teenagers to make you reflect on greater incorrectness.
Gender bondage, racial discrimination, domestic violence, public opinion kidnapping...
In the past, mainstream Hollywood commercial films were the best at creating fairy tales.
But what about the post-00s, as soon as they were born, they were already witnessing the disillusionment of the fairy tale of globalization.
When Hollywood can't understand America's young people, they give awards that represent the highest standards to works that can really get close to young people.
The best Oscars in recent years have dissolved the traditional rules of Hollywood from different angles.
"Parasite", Korean film, a class gap that young people cannot overcome.
"Nomad Life", the bleak side of the American dream.
"Instantaneous Universe", an all-Chinese lineup, responds to the panic, nihilism and self-destruction of young people in the era of information explosion.
These movies will never become mainstream in Hollywood in the past.
Is Hollywood today humbly abdicating to favor the virtuous and beginning to take care of minorities and vulnerable groups?
It is better to say that the mainstream Hollywood itself, can no longer take the hand, and finally is willing to let the "substitutes" who could not be seen in the past replace the field.
Imagine even if the Oscars weren't awarded to the so-called "politically correct."
Is there a better quality option?
Eternal youth, it does not exist in the first place.
Perhaps the rule of aging slows down is:
Admit that you are no longer young, but still try to read young people.
Even, hand the microphone to a new force that wants to subvert itself.
03
In the era of globalization, information and culture are fluid.
But in a different society, information that can be discussed with high profile is still selected.
Hollywood can't do it, is it good for domestic films?
Not necessarily.
In this war for attention, Hollywood did not lose to domestic films.
Not even a movie.
Think about those cutting-edge and most concerned areas, and national films may not be able to keep up.
Like games.
Blizzard withdrew from China.
If World of Warcraft is adapted into a movie again, China may not be able to do so.
Even if it is, it will not achieve the box office of the past.
Young people may also choose to ignore it without playing the game, just like Dungeons & Dragons has a long history and a strong foreign mass base.
In domestic theaters, they can only be "passers-by".
Like streaming.
is the main Disney of a family fun, after frequently crashing into a minefield, can only say the misunderstood sentence in ashes:
"You can succeed without China."
After all, people's most profitable streaming business is also isolated like Netflix.
In the asymmetry of information, we build a cocoon of value.
When Marvel's fourth phase did not have a single movie introduced into China, Chinese the Internet was full of quarrels over the controversy of insulting China that could not be confirmed or falsified.
What doesn't like to watch Marvel is the "bottom wolf", and the one who wants to speak for the movie is "kneeling and licking the American emperor".
In 2018, McKinsey conducted a survey of Gen Z worldwide, including Asia.
What is the biggest label of Gen Z?
- Don't want to be labeled.
They are nomads of identity, political stances and self-perception that can float at any time.
This is the freedom and openness of the new generation.
But at the same time, they are less romantic and more realistic.
Worship the power of morality more.
More believe in groups composed of independent individuals.
Because information is open and the economy is slowing, they have cautious optimism.
In China, when the 00s have become the main force of film and television drama consumption, how many works can express their inner confusion and anxiety from their perspective?
An increasingly common trend, even in domestic films.
There are fewer and fewer films that express the ego and characteristics of young people.
In its place is the greater self and commonality.
What's really strange is not that Hollywood has become a vandal for young people.
It is the young forces that make Hollywood have to serve the old, aesthetically diverse, avant-garde issues, and loose three views, we have never been able to see the real face.
Michelle Yeoh won the Oscar actress, but the mystery of "Instantaneous Universe" has not yet been unveiled by us.
Last summer's "Minions", the domestic version has one more minute.
The things that have been changed are the most boring preaching among young people: encouraging three children and reforming evil spirits.
Almost all of the blockbuster dramas that have caused this year's carnival come from foreign streamers.
When Korean dramas, American dramas, and Japanese dramas are all entering the maturity period of infinite involution.
And we, still can only rely on the subtitle group to generate electricity with love, secretly see the Internet, and turn the young people's culture that should be in the hall into an underground subculture.
Even if you don't talk about film and television.
The most relevant changes to our future owners:
The ChatGPT wave, Musk's Starship launch live stream, and I are still far apart.
When young people as audiences can't push open the door of the world.
A new generation of creators is also lagging behind the international market.
Two weeks ago, Sir and Jia Zhangke talked about young directors.
He always reminds us of the distance between Chinese young people and the world:
International young directors are easily closely related to the evolution of contemporary society, and the questions they raise are almost always synchronized with the trend of world thought.
In the past, many films showed socio-political anxiety. But this decade has shifted, they are more identity anxiety, gender anxiety. The further change today is the confrontation between humans and artificial intelligence. But in the country, many things are off-limits to topics.
This reminds Sir of another confusion that Jia Zhangke expressed through film twenty years ago.
In 2004, in the main theme that development is the last word, Jia Zhangke saw the powerless young people and the collective spiritual crisis.
"The World".
In Beijing's World Park, dancer Zhao Xiaotao dances exotic dances and rides a mini roller coaster that travels from "Russia" to "Japan."
But after work, her life is trapped in a dark dormitory, and the so-called communication between the world is compressed in a small flip phone.
Planes in the sky, journeys to foreign lands, colorful lives all exist, but none of them have anything to do with her.
Jia Zhangke said that what inspired him to make "The World" was the similarity between Beijing and New York, the void behind the consumption frenzy.
I looked at Beijing and it seemed exactly like what I saw in New York.
I wondered, is Americanization globalization?
Is the whole world going to become the same as the United States?
To say that "globalization equals Americanization" is a lack of foresight and rudeness.
So another roughness today:
Deny what has been worshipped.
Turn off everything that has been turned on.
When college students want to eat barbecue, they can take the train to Zibo; To travel, with the quality of special forces who traveled through six provinces in five days.
However, the screening of "City of Sorrow", which was not released in the mainland, at the Beijing Film Festival can trigger tens of thousands of people to rush in a second, and scalpers bid as much as 8,000.
Young people tell us with their actions.
People can tolerate the sinking of matter, but curiosity about distant places, the expectation of another life, is always germinating.
Sir also believes that today's young people should be scrappy and have light in their eyes.
But the secret to making this happen.
It is not the positive energy slogan that is shouted higher and higher, but it secretly reduces the visibility of the world.
In fact, what young people need is very simple.
A real, fun, open world.
A future where you can truly believe that I am the owner.
The picture of this article comes from the Internet
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