When it comes to Hollywood veteran tough guys, the first thing that comes to mind must be them-
Stallone,
Schwarzenegger.
Both became popular in the 80s and have been in Hollywood for nearly fifty years.
have experienced the golden age of action movies and witnessed the decline of traditional action movies.
For Chinese audiences, it also represents a classic memory of Hollywood action blockbusters.
How many post-80s, the first unforgettable Hollywood action film in the videotape era was Stallone's "Rambo".
And how many post-80s, the first memory of Hollywood blockbusters is the second Hollywood blockbuster introduced in China in 1995, Schwarzenegger's "True Lies", the box office of the film directly exceeded 100 million, breaking the box office record in Chinese film history.
How many viewers watched the footage of Schwarzenegger driving a fighter jet and directly launching the villain with a missile, so shocked that he couldn't breathe.
The two action veterans have "fought" for a lifetime, and it was their salary competition that raised the salary of Hollywood A-list stars to the standard of $20 million.
Unfortunately, action heroes always get old.
These two Hollywood tough guys, also with the ups and downs of action movies, Stallone in recent years, gradually faded out of his "First Blood" and "Quidi" series, "First Blood 5" was shortlisted for rotten strawberries.
When questioned whether he was old and could still eat, he used a TV series "King of Tulsa" to fight back beautifully to silence everyone.
The old rival turned into a wise and brave gangster old cannon won a full house, after becoming a governor and being silent in Hollywood for more than ten years, can Schwarzenegger sit still?
Sure enough, the action veteran returned with a spy action comedy - "Unrecognizable". Standing behind them are all well-known characters.
Producer, Netflix.
Director Phil Abraham, masterpieces "Breaking Bad" and "Mad Men".
Screenwriter Nick Sandora, whose masterpiece is the enlightenment work of American drama fans, "Prison Break".
Look at the villain actor, Gabriel Luna. You think if you change your hairstyle, I won't recognize you as the new Terminator REV-9 from Arno's last Terminator movie?
The inside is the steel skeleton of the T800, and the outside is the liquid metal of the T1000, beating the old terminator in the film all over the ground to find his teeth.
What kind of sparks can this group of people collide?
The first time to brush, the feeling, like most audiences: still the feeling of the golden age of the tough guys of the 90s.
"It's more like the TV series version of "True Lies" than the drama version of "True Lies"."
Or rather, this is a father-daughter version of "True Lies".
The sequel, which is 29 years late, has both the veteran male god "personally" fighting for his life and a funny comedy plot.
In a word, right taste.
Looking at the Rotten Tomatoes rating, the media doesn't like it, but the audience thinks it's okay. Imdb6.5。
Look at Douban again, 7.1, not high, but passing.
What I like is the familiar taste.
I don't like it, thinking that the series is too similar to similar spy action comedies such as "Warning in the Line of Fire", and the pace is too slow.
So. How did 75-year-old Schwarzenegger's first American drama go?
Is the opening of the new Netflix chief action officer worth watching?
Do not practice the fake style, come, start.
1. Enter the play: the veteran is out of the horse
The story begins, first let Shi Ye cool - smoke a handful of his favorite cigar.
I saw Shi Ye appear calmly, suit and leather shoes, with an extraordinary temperament, first calmly poured gasoline in the garbage can, and then took out a cigar to smoke twice.
Thrown into the trash, gasoline burned quickly, and the fire burst into the sky.
The fire truck was dispatched. Call to summon the fire truck, Lao Shi changed his clothes in 10 seconds, put on the prepared fire suit, and ambushed in the section of the road where the fire truck passed.
A flyer got into the car, hitchhiked into the heavily secured diamond area, and was shocked by the remote support colleagues who exclaimed: This is definitely the best 65-year-old man he has ever seen.
Yes, it seems that Schwarzenegger played a role ten years younger than himself, and he really can't see the flaws.
Successfully cleared, and then another perfect landing, tumbled to the sewer manhole cover.
Pry open the manhole cover and follow the sewer to the top of the vault, where a laser cut enters the vault.
Without saying a word, he directly engaged in a live blasting, burst the diamond safe, and if he didn't take anything else, he took away a bag of diamonds.
The camera turns, and Lao Shi, who has changed back to the outfit, takes the diamond to meet the black market boss and carry out his last task.
Needless to say, Lao Shi is still the best CIA agent, as long as he completes this last task, he can retire honorably and go home to redeem the love of his ex-wife and good daughter.
The plan is clear, the diamond is obtained, the transaction is completed, the target is blown up and shattered, but when he is about to complete his retreat, the other party discovers that the diamond smells of sulfur.
It is clear that Lao Shi is not the diamond factory owner he claims to be, but has another identity.
Boss Hei gave an order, and several subordinates directly controlled Lao Shi and forced him to ask which part of it.
Lao Shi is also a real person, not only reported himself to his family, but also stated the purpose of this trip: to kill you all and then leave.
What does the black boss say now? Lao Shi said that I can only drink and swallow poison in the northwest.
The black boss said that you swallow it!
Lao Shi took tea and swallowed it in one gulp. Then said slowly: Have you ever thought that what I swallowed may be the antidote?
What's the thing? Without waiting for the other party to react, the old tough guy struck.
Tea is blind, guns are swept around, and battles are solved in a few rounds.
Finally, retrieve the diamond, throw it in the air, show a smug smile, ride the beloved motorcycle, and retreat with your whole body.
This opening scene really can't be "True Lies".
Careful layout, complex grappling, really don't need it.
There are three steps to complete the task: baiting, hooking, and finishing.
It's also a long time since I saw such a crisp and neat action drama.
It's like the kind of Hollywood tough guy blockbuster starring Schwarzenegger and Stallone that was popular in the 80s and 90s.
Not much nonsense, just do it.
But as the synopsis of the series says: the fate of a hero is not retirement.
Because of a special mission, he had to go back to the rivers and lakes to carry out another final mission after the last mission. The veteran comes out and the audience enters the play.
Good show, opening.
2. Entry: Father and daughter join forces
This task must be done by the old Shi, because the target of the mission is the South American drug lord who was the son of the South American drug lord he used to hand the blade, and he has been sponsoring the other party to study over the years out of guilt, but he did not expect that his son grew up and returned to his old business, returning to his father's territory to return to power, and the business continued to grow and become a tumor that must be pulled out.
Lao Shi's mission is to go to his territory and rescue an agent who has been exposed.
How to perform this task?
Lao Shi, who did not admit defeat, went straight to the enemy camp without saying a word, and started.
The first step, camouflage.
As soon as he arrived at the ground, Lao Shi met the gloomy pick-up man, the deputy of the drug lord, as soon as he came up, he checked his whole body, and dropped a sentence: He knows you, I am not familiar with you.
It doesn't matter, Lao Shi entered the base camp of the drug lord with a smile and mingled with the drug lord.
I also followed the other party to visit the camp and went to see a mixed boxing match.
But just when he saw the appearance of the female fighter with a cigarette, the old face couldn't hang up-
Isn't this his well-behaved and cute baby daughter, who is now hammering people here and spitting fragrant fragrance in her mouth?
It seems that the next step must be hurried -
The second step is to recognize relatives.
After all, Lao Shi is a veteran agent, his heart has opened the gates, the surface is still calm and calm, smiling and shaking hands with the winning female boxer, the drug lord thinks he is interesting to the female boxer, and directly asks her to take him around.
As soon as the two arrived deep in the jungle, they immediately began the father-daughter mixing mode - you lied to me for ten years! You too!
Okay, a phone call back to the bureau, the colleague immediately admitted that this was the hot worker he wanted to rescue, and said that his daughter's entry results were better than his father.
Next, at the welcome party opened by the drug lord for Lao Shi, he directly shot off the accountant who betrayed him, and also matched him and his daughter, which was convenient for the two to act.
The daughter has already figured out where the drug lord hides his nuclear weapons, and when she gets the weapons, the two can evacuate.
The situation is critical, there is no time to quarrel, it is necessary to complete the task quickly, and the next thing is -
The third step is a pot end.
Father and daughter match, work is so tired.
The father-daughter first collaboration did not go well at all, solving several villains who recognized their daughter, and as a result, the young lady threw the body into a wilderness where no one goes, and the body was washed out by the flood the next day.
But at this time, there is no time to run-in, so I can only sabotage from within the drug lord group, hit the east and west with one move, and attract the attention of the other party with fake explosions.
Then take another sleeper agent with a family, get the nuclear weapons and quickly withdraw.
But the drug lord still arrived one step ahead of the respondent.
Lao Shi did not panic at all, and directly revealed that he funded the drug lord to study because he killed his father that year, and his words disturbed the drug lord's mind.
When the other party asked him angrily why he said this, Lao Shi replied with a slight smile, in order to delay time.
At this moment, rescuers arrived, and a strafing of aerial machine guns caused the stragglers to scatter in all directions, and the drug lord quickly drove away.
In this way, the task was completed beyond expectations, the personnel rescue was successful, and the other party lost his lair, but also laid the foreshadowing: the villain ran.
Revenge, will definitely come.
It is not difficult to see that in the past 29 years of "True Lies", Lao Shi's way of solving problems is still the same as before-
To the family, true lies.
To the enemy, give an iron fist.
Solve puzzles and adapt.
Times have changed, and this set of tough guy rules applies no matter what the era.
3. Routine: Cool to the end
The whole drama of "Unrecognizable" reveals a straight and straightforward toughness and cheerfulness.
In the end, this is a cool drama under a simple framework.
First of all, play well enough.
The action scenes of this play inherit the short and smooth of "True Lies".
The action design needs to be neat, with a gun in hand, and decisive shooting.
Hand-to-hand combat, clean.
Not pursuing the bells and whistles of action.
Instead, every detail of the action is expressed in place.
Every old punch of the 75-year-old Schwarzenegger makes people feel real pain.
The fast camera switch makes the entire fight rhythm become very fast, and it also masks Lao Shi's declining physical strength and sluggish movements.
The second trick, the plot is simple and rude, and it is cool to the end.
The ineffective reversal in many spy war dramas has been completely abandoned.
The whole drama has a total of 8 episodes, each episode has a mission main line, and the protagonist group will no longer drop at critical moments, fast and ruthless.
The pace of the whole drama is brisk, there is basically no waste drama, and the protagonist group has been doing tasks from beginning to end, until the father and daughter join forces to solve the villain.
At the last minute of the whole play, the biggest crisis followed: the identity of the father and daughter was exposed by the villain, and the whole family had to flee.
The whole play is relaxed, and after a few sharp fights, the battlefield is quickly harvested.
Drag racing chases, does not fall behind.
The fast editing rhythm constantly stimulates the visual nerve, in short, does not let the audience be idle.
Last trick, smile enough.
Almost every positive character in the series has its own sense of comedy.
For example, Lao Shi and his daughter's mouthful.
Full marks for the tacit understanding between the mouth cannon female partner and the flower heart male match.
The chemistry between Xiao Hei Technician and Lao Shi is also sufficient.
The laughter design is not dense, but the victory is naturally not far-fetched, such as Lao Shi quarreling with his daughter, taking his daughter's lipstick with his hand, and complaining about his daughter's heavy makeup.
As a result, the lipstick immediately began to vibrate the pattern hahahaha,
Lao Shi was shocked and said the next sentence: Hurry up and give me hand sanitizer.
Another example is that the whole group of people broke out after completing the task, just on the road, the mouth cannon female partner with a bazooka let them quickly get on the car, saying that it was too late and fast, the bazooka was fired, oh oh.
A group of people had to evacuate on foot.
Okay, it's better than getting in the car and you come back to this shuttle.
The whole drama is that there are handsome guys, beautiful women, play coolly, and laugh coolly.
The whole process of comedy + action is cool, which makes the audience happy.
But in addition to the above toughness, the series will appropriately show a little iron gentleness. To put it bluntly, the agent action movie is only the surface, and the father-daughter relationship family ethics comedy is the foundation of the whole drama.
Such a design is obviously designed to accommodate the 75-year-old Schwarzenegger.
Reborn action stars, there will be a day of aging.
Recall that in October 1984, the first "Terminator" was released.
With a budget of $6.4 million, it earned $78 million at the box office. And opened a series of legends that left a name in film history.
The original idea for this sci-fi classic, written and directed by Cameron himself, was to have Arnold play the soldier who protects Sarah, the father of John Connor.
The original candidate for the T800 was Stallone. Fortunately, due to various twists and turns, Stallone did not come.
Otherwise, it is very likely that Schwarzenegger just played a bland protagonist, and there may not be that classic T800.
In the first part, he is a ruthless machine killer. In the second part, he "changed his ways" and became the guardian of the protagonist group.
He also created the most classic role of his acting career.
"True Lies" is a product that Hollywood continues to create with the classic combination of Cameron + Schwarzenegger after the success of "Terminator 2".
In fact, what Hollywood wanted back then was that this was an ace combination, it didn't matter what to shoot, the audience was on the rise, and whatever was filmed would be hot, but I didn't expect to achieve another Hollywood action classic.
I didn't expect that the real sequel of the film was 29 years late.
"Unrecognizable" is like the classic Hollywood blockbuster model of 30 years ago, without too many bells and whistles.
There are no superheroes, no infinite reversals, but a solid, solid texture of the classic Hollywood action movie period.
Obviously, a return to the classics is not an outdated at any time.
4. Classic: Old guns don't die
But superhero-led film and television dramas are already the mainstream of the Hollywood market.
And this action drama created by Netflix naturally brings the characteristics of Netflix.
I can't say it's bad, but as long as you watch it for 20 minutes, you can master its routine——
One scene after another, classic bridges of various action types take turns to perform.
If "Yellowstone" director Taylor Sheridan led "The King of Tulsa", still maintains the personality of creation.
Then "Unrecognizable" is only a standard product under the big factory of Netflix's algorithm after all.
It seems that all aspects have been taken care of, comedy tone, family conflicts, gunfights and spy battles, and veteran guns in the workplace, but it always feels like the audience's viewing habits screened out by big data, and the episodes created by algorithms have directly led to the logic of the story cannot be thought through.
Anyway, the audience loves to watch Schwarzenegger, loves to watch beautiful women, and also loves to watch action dramas, comedies and warm family dramas, so it's good to intersperse together.
So back to the question at the beginning: Schwarzenegger's first TV series, will it work?
The reputation is average, can it be determined that this drama hit the street?
It depends on how we look at the show.
If purely from the perspective of spy war comedy, it is a drama full of routines;
But if it is regarded as a retrospective work before the veteran action star says goodbye completely, then it is a success.
Yes, when we complain that Schwarzenegger moves slower and slower.
But I forgot this: the group of veteran action stars in the classic Hollywood action film period are not much to move.
Bruce Willis, who is more than sixty years old, is no longer the unbeatable Xiaoqiang of the Die Hard series, suffering from aphasia, the quality of his works in recent years has plummeted, and many large-scale action scenes can only be completed by stand-ins.
Eventually retired from the film industry due to illness.
Schwarzenegger's old rival and brother Stallone, the new work has also become a family reality show.
The only ones who are really standing on the front line are Keanu Levi and Tom Cruise, who are younger than them.
The former is also speeding through the streets in "Fast Pursuit 4", step shootout,
But the most outstanding action in the film is no longer him, but Master Ye Donnie Yen.
And Tom's "Mission Impossible" has also entered the final chapter of the two parts.
Throughout Hollywood, the action star who is still attracting the audience with his fists and feet is already the goddess Theron in "Extremely Cold City",
Or "Wonder Woman" in a long red dress with a high slit open.
That era of Hollywood tough guys is long gone.
It is also because of this that Schwarzenegger and Stallone, who are still struggling to shoot action scenes, also show a clumsy cuteness.
Their existence is to tell the audience that Hollywood classic action movies, although in decline, are still there.
From "True Lies" 29 years ago to today's American drama "Unrecognizable", these action movies led by veteran action stars still maintain the posture of classic Hollywood action movies: to simplify the complex, and to create pure action movies.
Hostage rescue, violent fighting, and racing passionately.
Fill the screen with male hormones to get the audience's adrenaline pumping.
As long as the audience is addicted to it, everything is worth it.
The veteran comes out and it's done.
When audiences watch these veteran action stars, they don't just habitually see the "tough guy" side of them.
In fact, it is also watching them always stick to their goals.
Live to be old, fight until you are old.
These heart-pounding action spectacles they play have always been one of the biggest charms of action movies.
Today, when Hollywood blockbusters are gradually homogenized, traditional action movies seem to have become an unchangeable fate when they age.
But the veteran is still trying to hit our hi spot. This is the essence of the spirit of entertainment.
In my mind, this series is like the skeleton of the T800 that is no longer cutting-edge and is being eliminated by history.
It is no longer novel and has lost its former prestige. is being replaced by more gorgeous and faster juniors.
But the hero is old, and the wind bone is still the same.
从 I'll be back，到 I won't be back.
At the end of this glorious story, the veterans are still stubborn and have to go their own way.
Write an ending to your story.
Then have a good time.