With an investment of 200 million and a loss of 100 million, is Jackie Chan's "Thunderfire" really bad?

Jackie Chan's movies generally don't lose money.

But sometimes there are exceptions, and "Thunderfire" is one of Jackie Chan's judgment errors so far.

The appearance of this movie is related to Jackie Chan's love of racing, and before that, the Jackie Chan Cup Star Charity Racing Party was held every year, and many stars in Hong Kong came to help.

Since he was interested in racing, Jackie Chan naturally wanted to promote the execution of similar film projects.

However, several years passed and there was still no suitable opportunity, until 1994, when he met with Chen Jiashang and supported his old partner Mitsubishi, "Thunderfire" took office.

Jackie Chan's films have always been big investments, big productions, and international vision, because his audience is not only Hong Kong, but also huge overseas markets.

So when he saw Chen Jia on the script of "Thunderfire", on the one hand, he wanted to take advantage of this transformation, on the other hand, he also made an adaptation, adding a lot of Jackie Chan elements.

But this addition makes "Thunderfire" unusual, and the sense of separation between the front and back is extremely serious.

The first part of the film was a Jackie Chan-style police film, but it didn't take long to suddenly become a pure racing movie, and some fights were added to support the scene.

This leads to the entire plot being a tool man, serving for the final car, and the literary drama and the action scene are completely incompatible, as if they are forced together.

Coupled with Chen Jiashang's not good at filming action scenes, Jackie Chan hired Chen Xunqi, Yuan Kui, Sammo Hung, and Tang Jili to be responsible for action design and large-scale scene shooting.

The co-directing of the five directors is the biggest highlight of "Thunderfire" in addition to Jackie Chan, but it has also become a hidden danger of "Thunderfire", and the five people with different styles have not achieved harmony and unity in the film.

The most conspicuous thing is that the role of Jackie Chan is unreasonable, which makes the movie have the impression of forcible substitution from the beginning.

In "Thunderfire", Jackie Chan's A Huo is an ordinary ordinary person, but he has a superb martial art and racing skills that surpass professional racing drivers.

The logic of character positioning is a common problem in many of Jackie Chan's movies, and the audience must first convince themselves before they can watch the movie normally, which undoubtedly makes the film discounted, and the same is true of "A Good Man".

This can be understood as a compromise on the market, after all, the audience watches Jackie Chan's movies are all for action comedies, and some setting problems can be ignored for the time being.

But "Thunderfire" is not as wonderful as Jackie Chan's previous movies in terms of action design, and the traces of rush work are particularly obvious, not funny, lack of beauty, and "Major Crime Unit", not at all like Jackie Chan's movies.

The reason is because "Thunderfire" will be released in time for the summer file, and Jackie Chan was injured during the filming of "Red Fan District" and did not fully recover.

But the release date could not be delayed, so the seven crews started work at the same time, and Jackie Chan found a lot of stand-ins to complete the action, and then took some close-ups.

This method can indeed make the movie finish quickly, in order to avoid gangs, Sammo Hung used tricks such as frame drawing and editing to cover the stand-in, and the result was that the action was incoherent, not smooth, and did not look too enjoyable.

Compared with Jackie Chan's previous actions that were mostly shot to the end or with the help of a small number of edits, the actions of "Thunderfire" can only be regarded as work, the play is not excellent, and the design is not brilliant, that is, to complete the task decently.

In addition, during the filming of "Thunderfire", there was news that was good news for Jackie Chan and bad news for the movie.

"Red Fan District" sold well in North America, Jackie Chan's action comedy swept the world, officially entered Hollywood, Jiahe made a lot of money, and the investment in "Thunderfire" continued to increase, reaching 200 million.

The increase in cost made the script have to change, and Jiahe boss Zou Wenhuai asked Chen Jiashang to change the original tragic ending to a comedy, because the previous "Miracle" and "Flying Eagle Project" did not let Jiahe make much money, and Jackie Chan did not insist too much.

But Chen Jiashang didn't want to make comedy again, so he discussed with Jackie Chan, and quit the crew after directing the drama part, and the second half of the film was directed by Sammo Hung, and "Thunderfire" became what it is today.

In the film, it is obvious that the director is forcibly reuniting.

At the beginning, it was indeed a tragic stream, Jackie Chan's two sisters were captured by the villain, his father was seriously injured and unconscious, his family's old car factory was destroyed, and the unsatisfactory thing in life struck in an instant.

But in the course of the plot, a racing race makes all the suffering disappear, and it is difficult to explain how an internationally wanted professional killer can participate in a race that attracts the attention of the world.

Especially Amy, played by Yuen Yongyi, is no different from chicken ribs, and deleting all her scenes does not affect the direction of the story at all.

Arranging such a role is to give Jackie Chan emotional comfort at the end of the credits, matching the tone of the comedy finale.

Amy's actions neither promote the plot nor affect the characters' emotions, which is equivalent to an outsider who does not understand the slightest sense of boundaries.

Without Jackie Chan-style action comedy, the characters are out of tune, and the story is torn apart, "Thunderfire" is doomed to box office failure.

"Thunderfire" and "Red Fan Zone" were released in the same year, "Red Fan District" box office 32.4 million US dollars, global box office 82.3 million US dollars, but "Thunderfire" did not continue the good results of "Red Fan District".

In Hong Kong, "Thunderfire" ranked second of the year, with a box office of 45.64 million.

The Japanese box office was 334 million yen, the mainland box office was 65 million, the Taiwan box office was 85 million, the US box office was less than 10 million, and the global box office exceeded 20 million US dollars.

Based on the exchange rate and box office share at that time, "Thunderfire" lost 100 million, and the money earned by Jiahe on "Red Fan District" was not yet hot to fill the hole of "Thunderfire".

Although the subsequent disc revenue of "Thunderfire", plus the box office share at the time, achieved breakeven.

But the battle line of disc revenue was too long, and by the time "Thunderfire" began to make money, Zou Wenhuai had no intention of filming, and Jiahe was also sold to Orange Sky Entertainment.

The once brilliant giant of Hong Kong cinema has come to an end, taking away the Hong Kong film that is "all overdone, all crazy", bringing sighs from many fans.