Thanks to this, Li Bai was not chosen as the male number one, and a wave of "tiger" operations actually filmed a domestic animation conscience

As expected, the mainland film market in July completely exploded.

"Disappearing Her" won 3.2 billion+ box office, directly heating the entire market;

"In the Octagon Cage" followed, with a box office of more than 1.1 billion in a week, and finally 2 billion;

"Drug Sweep 3" "I Love You! Not to be outdone, "Mission Impossible 7" and "Feng Shen Part 1" are ready to go.

However, unexpectedly, the biggest dark horse is not Chen Sicheng's "Disappearing Her" or Wang Baoqiang's "In the Octagon Cage".

But a cartoon - "Chang'an 30,000 Li".

The film is rated very high.

The release has risen from 8.0 points all the way to 8.2 points, which is the best film in the current summer file.

But the evaluation of the movie's audience is full of controversy.

Some people say that "Li Bai's modeling image failed, ugly and oily";

Some people say that movies are "documentary-style bad films, and the director is making a very new running account".

The question is, what is the origin of "Chang'an 30,000 Li" and what story does it tell?

Why is the reputation so good, but the criticism is so fierce?

Today, Pico will take you to find out.

01, "chasing the light" is an unlucky egg

"Chang'an 30,000 Li" is a work brought by Chasing Light Animation for its 10th anniversary.

"Chasing light animation", for audiences who are not familiar with domestic animation, is Cheng Bitjin, who killed halfway, and frantically rubbed the popularity of "The Return of the Great Sage" and "Nezha: The Devil Child Descends".

But for veteran domestic anime fans, they are simply old "unlucky bastards", obviously they have been cultivating animation for 10 years, but they can't catch up with the heat every time they eat.

As early as 2012, Wang Wei, the founder of Tudou.com, sold the website and founded Chasing Light Animation with feelings.

At that time, "Thailand" sold 1.2 billion, marking the rise of Chinese films, chasing light animation originally stepped on the wind, but its biggest feature is the head iron.

In fact, a shortcut to shooting domestic animation is to shoot classic IP, "Journey to the West", "Feng Shen List", "The Legend of the White Snake".

But chasing light animation has to be original, and it also carries the banner of promoting Chinese culture.

Boss Wang personally served as a screenwriter and director, and successively filmed works such as "Cat and Peach Blossom Yuan", "Atang Adventure", "Little Door God", "Little Night Tour" and so on.

And each film is slow and meticulous, with a production cost of tens of millions, but the box office is small.

In addition to "Little Door God", which sold 78 million, the rest lost tens of millions per film, which really generated electricity with feelings.

In fact, looking back now, the animation quality produced by Chasing Light is still very good, but the step is too big.

That year, hot money poured into the film market, all kinds of variety movies and traffic movies were rampant, and no one would pay attention to such original films with a rough texture.

We all know the story later, a "Journey to the West: The Return of the Great Sage" and a "Nezha: The Devil Child Descends", which pushed domestic animation to a peak.

The themes of these two movies are all taken from classic IPs, they are standing on the shoulders of giants to pick fruits and eat, you say chasing light to engage in originality is not thankless?

Later, Chasing Light also woke up, and filmed "White Snake: Origin" and "White Snake 2: Green Snake Robbery" in 2019 and 2021 respectively, which was also a compromise and used classic IP.

But the audience who has seen these two films knows that they are "thieves' hearts are not dead", just a shell of "The Legend of the White Snake", and the core is still an original story.

The quality of the first film was in place, but the publicity was insufficient, and the final box office was only 400 million.

The second part of the publicity was well done, and the pace of storytelling was big again, and the shooting was a little unusual.

Chasing Light stumbled and fell his own path forward.

What is regrettable is that in 2019, Light opened the peak of animated films with "Nezha: The Devil Child Descends", and in 2020, it launched "Jiang Ziya" to directly fill everyone's expectations.

But because the painting style is dark, the plot is adult-oriented, although it also sold 1.6 billion, but it overdrew everyone's enthusiasm for animated films.

So in 2021, when Chasing Light launched "New God List: Nezha Reborn", many people mocked their popularity of rubbing Nezha.

In fact, from the real timeline, "New God List: Nezha Reborn" and "Nezha: The Devil Child Descends" are both movies established in 2016, and there is no problem of who copies whom and who rubs whose popularity.

If it is really true, it was also in January 2019's "White Snake: Origin" that the reputation exploded, and "Nezha: The Devil Child Descends" took advantage of the explosion.

Chasing light worked hard for ten years, but made a wedding dress for others.

Take the initiative to innovate yourself, but it is not as good as others' "take-ism".

You say, is it a bad luck?

02. "High art" is not easy to shoot

This time, "Chasing Light" chose the head iron again and shot a particularly tricky subject.

"Chang'an 30,000 Li" is from the perspective of the Tang Dynasty poet Gao Shi, through the decades of division and combination between him and the poet Li Bai to show the rise and fall of the entire Tang Dynasty.

The whole film is extremely ambitious.

In addition to Li Bai and Gao Shi, there are also poets such as Du Fu, He Zhizhang, Wang Wei, Wang Changling, Guo Ziyi, Cen Shen, Zhang Xu, Ge Shuhan, etc., and 48 well-known Tang poems are used throughout the film.

Simply put, "Chang'an 30,000 Li" is a "Tang Dynasty poets brawl".

This theme seems to be very lively, but it is actually not easy to shoot at all.

Because poets write poems, there is little freedom of "the article is natural, and the clever hand occasionally obtains it", but more is the bitterness of "chanting a word, twisting a few stems and whiskers".

Creation is an extremely lonely process, and it is difficult to express it in the form of a film.

And although the poets of the Tang Dynasty were dazzling, they were not suitable for the protagonists of film and television dramas.

Taking Li Bai and Du Fu as an example, the peerless double pride of Tang poetry, the two peaks of the poetry world, it is reasonable to say that two people love and kill each other, and they are also enemies and friends.

But in fact, Li Bai is 11 years older than Du Fu.

Li Bai was the top star at that time, and Du Fu was his little fan brother, and it was difficult for the relationship between the two to film a dramatic conflict.

Take two people out alone.

Li Bai is a poetic immortal, but he himself is somewhat worldly.

When he was born, he traveled in the mountains and rivers and let loose the wreckage;

After joining the WTO, he was another official fan, and he did his best to flatter.

Such a poetry immortal is too divisive, I am afraid that many people will crusade and smear the poetry immortal.

There was a little passage in the drama "Li Bai" that showed Li Bai's pursuit of fame and fortune, which was criticized by all parties.

So over the years, we have hardly seen any film and television drama with Li Bai as the protagonist.

Similarly, Du Fu is similar.

You are a poet saint, but you have witnessed the sufferings of the people, and you have been sad and indignant all your life, and you will always look like a bitter and bitter hatred.

No one likes such a protagonist made into a movie.

Other poets have more or less similar problems.

Their poetry is well known, but not suitable for film.

"Tang Dynasty Poets Brawl" is more like a concept that looks beautiful, and it is likely to be as faint as water, like a highly literary history book.

Chasing light animation should be given a try.

They not only have to shoot the big fight, but also shoot the feelings, the pattern, and the entire Tang dynasty.

The "Little Door God" and "Atang Adventure" filmed before Chasing Light are their works to test the waters.

"White Snake: Origin" and "White Snake 2: The Green Snake Robbery" filmed before Chasing Light are their "New Legend" series.

Later, "New God List: Nezha Reborn" and "New God List: Yang Jian" were their "New Myth" series.

Despite the stumbling, they kept advancing.

This time they launched the "New Culture" series, and "Chang'an 30,000 Li" is the first part of this series.

This title may seem ethereal at first glance, but understanding the stormy process behind chasing the light may understand their original intention.

03. This time, they did

Chasing this unlucky bastard, his head was ironed for 10 years, and finally he made the best work "Chang'an 30,000 Li".

An ungrounded theme, an elegant art, was photographed by them vividly.

The film first succeeds in choosing the right protagonist.

The film did not choose Li Bai and Du Fu as the protagonists, but chose Gao Shi.

Most viewers are both familiar and unfamiliar with Gao Shi.

We have all learned his saying, "Don't worry about the road ahead, no one in the world knows the king."

But beyond that, we know very little about this Biansai poet, which just gives the screenwriter creative space.

Gao Shi's talent among Tang dynasty poets was not high, but he worked hard enough.

He had experienced ups and downs in his life, came from a noble background, but his family was in the middle of the road, and he once begged along the street.

He had been dormant in Shangqiu, Henan Province for several years, failed to win the imperial examination many times, ran to Biansai to serve as a staff member in order to make a living, was still working as a catcher at the age of 46, and was made a marquis at the age of 61 because of the rebellion of Anshi in Pingding.

Such a bumpy experience is best suited for making a movie.

Gao Shi and Li Bai also have quite a relationship.

The two were friends when they were young, and Li Bai and Du Fu met at Gao Shi's house in Henan, but they gradually drifted apart after middle age.

Later, Li Bai was involved in the rebellion and pleaded with his former friend Gao Shi.

Gao Shi did not remember the old relationship, so Li Bai was demoted to Yelang, and the two never intersected again.

Therefore, from the perspective of Gao Shi, we can see the history of the struggle of an ordinary person in the prosperous era of the Tang Dynasty, and we can also appreciate the style of a generation of poets and immortals through him.

The protagonist stands, and the film stands.

Secondly, the film is very restored in detail.

For example, the characters in the film generally have long upper bodies and short lower bodies, and many people feel that they are belittling the protagonist.

In fact, this is made by the production team according to the Tang Dynasty figurines.

In the aesthetics of the Tang Dynasty, the upper and lower short represented an abundant sense of strength.

For example, the clip of Li Bai's sacrifice for his friend, the crew originally designed to fuqin in front of the grave.

But the crew consulted folklore experts to learn that the custom of that year was to pour wine on straw to mourn, and finally this method was presented in the movie.

For example, Li Bai inscribed a poem in the Yellow Crane Tower and released a bold statement, but when he met the "Yellow Crane Tower" inscribed by Cui Hao, he was ashamed to leave with his sleeves.

The Chinese teacher in the high school class told this allusion that year, and the film restored the feeling of dreaming back to the high school classroom, and there were no less than 10 small Easter eggs like this.

Another example is that the film uses a lot of ink animation clips and uses many elements of traditional Chinese dance.

These details may not be noticed, but they show the oriental artistic conception and convey the aesthetic concept of Chinese.

Finally, the film does not stick to the so-called historical facts, and carries out bold artistic processing on the basis of not distorting history.

In the shaping of Li Bai, the main creator withstood huge pressure and shot a lot of Li Bai's "black spots".

He easily forgot his friends' agreements, he grew a belly in middle age, he chose to enter the rich in order to be prosperous and wealthy, and he curried favor with the powerful in order to get rich in order to be promoted.

These "black spots" are actually real facts, and Li Bai's poems are tainted with fairy qi, but he himself also has a secular part.

It's very bold to dare to shoot like this, it's time for us to reshape the image of Shixian Taibai.

Not surprisingly, after the film was released, many Li Bai fans attacked the film on the Internet, saying that they distorted the facts to smear Li Bai, but most people can choose to look at it rationally.

Li Bai's vulgarity does not affect the greatness of his works, and he struggled repeatedly between birth and entry into the world to let us see a more living poet.

In the shaping of Du Fu, the film is also unusual.

Du Fu has always been an image of worrying about the country and the people, and little is written about his early years.

When the film takes place, Du Fu is still a child.

The main creator designed a naughty and cute image for him, subverting the public's perception of Du Fu, and also providing white space for subsequent works.

For example, we can imagine that if the second part has Du Fu as the protagonist, he goes from naughty and cute to generous and sad, which just reflects an era.

In the relationship between Gao Shi and Li Bai, the film has also done artistic processing.

A few notes in the history books state that Li Bai participated in the rebellion, Gao Shi did not save Li Bai, and the two parted ways, and what subtle changes in the relationship between the two did not explain.

The film takes this as an entry point to show the opposite sides of Gao Shi and Li Bai's personalities.

Li Bai is free and free, Gao Shi is down-to-earth, and Gao Shi can represent the spiritual temperament of ordinary Chinese.

Looking at Li Bai through him, the audience's sense of substitution will be a little stronger.

The film uses two sumo scenes to show the changes of the two friends.

The two met for the first time, they were full of spirits, and a sumo wrestling came to Gao Shi to throw Li Bai down, the victory or defeat did not matter, and the two laughed.

Years later, the middle-aged Gao Shi and the middle-aged Li Bai reunited again and came to sumo wrestling again.

The bodies of the two had weakened, but their spirits were still strong, and finally Gao Shi threw Li Bai down again.

Li Bai said: "The silver saddle shines on the white horse, and it is as sassy as a shooting star. This is the poem I wrote for you 20 years ago, Gao Shi. ”

Gao Shi and Li Bai are not the same people, but they both have their own ideals.

This poem is immediately full of story because of this plot, and the relationship between the two is also vivid and three-dimensional.

In the presentation of poetry, the film has also put a lot of effort into it.

The whole film mentions 48 Tang poems, all of which are well-known works and explain the background of creation.

The most colorful part of it is the passage of "Will Enter the Wine".

The film uses wild imagination and bold visual effects to show Li Baibai's pride in middle age, unpaid ambition, and bitter but still ambitious.

Many people cry when they read this paragraph, and I believe that in future Chinese classes, whenever this text is mentioned, this fragment will be mentioned many times.

In short, "Chang'an 30,000 Li" is a bold attempt.

After ten years of hard work, Chasing Light Animation finally made a movie with both word of mouth and quality.

Although as of now, the box office of "Chang'an 30,000 Li" is only 350 million.

But don't worry, the potential and stamina of "Chang'an 30,000 Li" even surpass "In the Octagon Cage".

Chinese animated films may open a new chapter.

Text/Pippi Film Editorial Office: A Chicken

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