It's been 6 months and finally a movie makes money? It turns out that "stealing" killed Korean movies

Text | Ling Hu Boguang

Since 2023, Korean movies have been hitting the streets. Note that it is not a Korean drama but a Korean movie, from "Jung-yi", "Hero", "Negotiations", "Kill Fushun", to "Goodbye My Soul Mate", "The Next So-yu" and so on, the reason why these Korean movies hit the street is also very simple.

Commercial films are all bad films of tailoring foreign films, while movies with good reputations are relatively literary and limited box office.

According to data released today by the Korea Film Promotion Council, the film attracted 470,877 viewers when it was released in South Korea, ranking first in the Korean single-day box office list. Since its release, it has attracted a total of 1,695,069 viewers, and is about to exceed the 1.8 million viewers who are the cut-off point for profit.

The American films "Fast and Furious 10" and "The Little Mermaid" yesterday attracted 125,834 viewers and 111,620 viewers, respectively, ranking second and third in the single-day box office list. This is still data from a few days ago, and by June 4, this post was published, and it had clearly made money.

This movie is Ma Dongxi's "Crime City 3", because this movie has not been released in China and has not been launched on the Internet, if you can't see it, you won't analyze how the movie is. In fact, I have written several articles before to analyze why Korean movies have hit the streets since this year, so let's analyze it again!

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Korean films are indeed very prosperous, but Korean films have limited contributions to world film history, which is the root of the decline of Korean films, after all, it is too entertaining and cannot go far. South Korea's world-class literary film directors include Lim Kwon-taek, Kim Ki-duk, Lee Cang-dong and Hong Sang-so.

Their number of awards in the three major European countries is rare, and I believe that many people will definitely have two questions.

First, how Korean films dare to shoot, dare to shoot and art is not linked, Korean film art is really not very good.

I think the art of film can also be viewed from two levels, traditional culture and art before ancient and modern urbanization, and contemporary art after urbanization and modernization.

Ancient oriental traditional art: Japan has Kurosawa Akira, China has Hu Jinquan, Zhang Yimou (do they all define oriental traditional aesthetics). South Korea is Lim Sang-taek and Kim Ki-duk, who also studied with many Japanese directors whose films have limited influence on traditional Eastern aesthetic art.

Kim Ki-duk is a representative director of traditional Korean art, who was recognized by the three major European countries before his death in 2020, but he and Zhang Yimou are not a level director, let alone Kurosawa Akira.

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The biggest achievement of Korean urbanization directors, I think, is Lee Cangdong, and then Hong Sang-so. The former has good artistic achievements, but there are too few works, and the artistic achievements are poor. The latter is too high, and the art is just like that.

There are two and a half world-class genre film directors in South Korea, one is Park Chan-wook of the "Revenge Trilogy", which has a greater influence on revenge films. The other is Bong Joon-ho of "Memories of Killing" and "Parasite", which has a greater influence on Korean crime films. There is also half Luo Hongyi who I think is "Chaser", "Yellow Sea" and "Cry", but it is a little worse.

The rest of the Korean directors are all commercial blockbuster directors, and some directors have also achieved good, such as Kang Dikyu in "The Flying Flag of Taiji", and then Kim Jiyun in "Seeing the Devil" and "Good Guys, Bad Guys, Weird Guys".

In addition, directors such as "New World", "Uncle", "Agent", "Ministers of Nanshan", "International Market" and so on.

But these movies are still commercial blockbusters, that is, commercial entertainment films. The above list is already very mature and very good commercial genre films. However, they themselves do not explore the art of genre films and genre styles, so their influence is limited.

Walking into the world while seriously declining? How did Korean movies suddenly fail

The problem of the decline of Korean films has previously been analyzed from external perspectives such as economic development, population consumption capacity, and market scale, as well as the siphon effect of Korean creators supported by the US platform, and here is an analysis from the internal perspective of Korean films.

Korean films are too entertaining, too commercial, too cool, and the lack of artistic pursuit has led to limited influence of films. According to my observations, this film has achieved a huge breakthrough in two levels, it can travel through time and space, and it is liked by audiences in the new era.

First, the breakthrough in the expression of philosophy of thought will touch the fields of human thought and philosophy for a longer period of time.

Because the development of film theory and philosophy, like basic science, has long reached a bottleneck period, it is difficult for subsequent films to avoid these philosophical expressions.

On the contrary, the humanistic thought of the society at that time behind this "text", unless you reach the peak and become the representative of the times, otherwise with the development of society, people's spiritual needs will change, and this "text" idea will also be outdated and outdated.

The second is for light and shadow, as well as narrative, editing, shot scheduling and service and other film technical theoretical foundations.

One is that film is still image after all, and light and film, television and hearing occupy one of the absolute positions. The second is that the duration of the movie is limited after all, how to engage in the narrative rhythm of the movie, and how to edit like "montage" also occupies an absolute position.

On the contrary, techniques like what everyone now thinks of as "special effects" will also be outdated and outdated unless your film aesthetics reach the peak and are tied to some kind of film concept that has reached the level of film philosophy.

To give a less appropriate example, in 1968, both the East and the West appeared a big director who had a great influence on later generations, and a genre blockbuster that reached the philosophical level. The west is Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey", and the east is Hu Jinquan's "Dragon Gate Inn" in the same year.

As a result, on the purely technical level of the film, Kubrick's "Space Odyssey" costume and special effects scenes are still being learned. Hu Jinquan's "Dragon Gate Inn" and later "Xia Girl" are outdated in the performance of light skills, and the editing and action design of martial arts film fights are outdated.

Of course, when John Woo, Tsui Hark, including Ang Lee and Zhang Yimou made martial arts films, they all learned, inherited, improved, and finally developed the industrial technology of new martial arts films on the basis of Hu Jinquan's aesthetic and action design and editing.

Hu Jinquan is the pinnacle in the aesthetics of martial arts films, the light and shadow of martial arts films, the narrative of martial arts films, and the philosophical expression of martial arts films. The next generation of Chinese-speaking directors will either learn from him, or be his disciples like John Woo, Tsui Hark, and Hui Anhua.

At the end of the 90s, Taiwan's great director Ang Lee wanted to learn from him when he made the martial arts film "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", and Zhang Yimou wanted to learn from him when he made the martial arts film "Ambush on Ten Sides". After 2010, Chinese martial arts films have been very weak, and the only pure martial arts film Xu Haofeng, and "Embroidered Spring Dao" still have to learn Hu Jinquan.

Where do Korean movies lose? In addition to literary films, it leads to low achievements in film art.

Korean genre films also lack genre film directors with artistic pursuits like Kubrick and Hu Jinquan. As mentioned above, there are probably only a few crime films such as Park Chan-wook, suspense film Bong Joon-ho, and Luo Hongxuan of "The Chaser" and "Yellow Sea", and the rest of the Korean directors are basically commercial entertainment film directors.

These films have limited artistic achievements and limited influence. In order to meet the audience's viewing needs, the theme is updated too quickly.

In 2016, after the success of "Trip to Busan", Korean films began to comprehensively learn, integrate, and even copy Hong Kong and Japanese films to begin to fully copy American films; Zombie movies, exorcism movies, superpower movies, modern military action movies and international action movies and much more.

There are still a few classic works sporadically, but more are bad films that touch the upper limit of the reality pattern, culture and theme. Moreover, in recent years, Korean films have become more and more commercial and entertaining, so there are more and more bad movies, which eventually led to the current situation.

Korean movies walk down the altar? 8 stop-losses in 2022, 2023 or watershed

Korean movies themselves are still developing well, and entertaining audiences has never been a problem. Because the primary goal of literature and art is to serve the spiritual needs of the people, rather than pursuing art to win awards, because directors who truly pursue art have always been very few. What kind of movie should be made is enough to impress the audience's demand for "experiential consumption", which is good.

Korean films still die from the reality that the country is too small, the population is limited, and the political and economic constraints are hindered.

Chinese audiences still have less of the role of movies on public opinion and the "education" of the public! If the "three views are not correct" are banned all day long, people's willingness to watch movies will be even weaker, the commercial real estate of cinemas will die faster, and China will enter the era of VR watching movies faster in advance, which may not be a good thing for the Chinese economy.

Chinese films are now the best to liberalize standards, and there is hope for the widespread emergence of literary films, genre films, and commercial blockbusters.

First of all, commercial blockbusters are enough entertainment works to bring hot cinemas, restore the vitality of the film market, and boost the willingness of moviegoers, the audience will only like to watch cool entertainment blockbusters, preaching, bitter hatred and overly serious movies are really not attractive.

Secondly, realistic themes and black deep works are more, deeper and richer. A little more "Medicine God" is the right way for Chinese movies at present. After all, serving the cultural and entertainment needs of Chinese people is the market behavior that returns to the essence of film - experiential consumption.

Finally, this mature and huge film market, he can afford to pursue art literary films, pursue stylized genre films.

Korean films cannot be said to be a lesson for Chinese films, after all, the film markets of the two countries are far apart. But it is still worth learning, of course, now Chinese films are underestimated are literary and artistic films, but the public does not watch literary and artistic films, commercial films due to the poor market atmosphere, as most people recognize.

The best development of Korean films is still commercial films, the first ten years is the peak of Korean commercial blockbusters, because there is not enough market support, now the Korean market is occupied by Hollywood output is serious, the box office of Korean films throughout May this year, add up to a "Slam Dunk".

"Crime City 3" can finally stop the loss and start making money, except that Ma Dongxi slap man beats people coolly.

If you compare it with other Korean commercial blockbusters at the beginning of 2023, you will see that the reason is not worth mentioning, this film is a mature series, it is the least tailor American film, South Korea learns Hong Kong films, but localized has been very successful modern police action blockbuster.

Korean movies are indeed facing the challenge of survival.