The audience has become tolerant of domestic films?
Author|Weinika
Editor|Li Chunhui
When we were still worried about the recovery of the film market in the first half of the year, the summer file in the second half of the year suddenly broke box office records with a thunderous trend. These days, the film industry and shareholders are completely hi. Chinese films seem to have been given some kind of magic, on the fast track of recovery, and the speed of light returns to pre-pandemic levels.
As of July 19, the total box office of the summer file in 2023 exceeded 9.3 billion, far exceeding the 7.3 billion box office in the same period in 2018, setting a new box office record for the first half of the summer file. If films such as "Fengshen ", "Super Family", "Megalodon 2" and "Warm" in the second half can successfully take over the baton and maintain the trend of the broader market, the total box office of this summer file is expected to break the box office record of 17.6 billion set in 2019.
At the same time, the number of moviegoers in the first half of the summer file exceeded 230 million, exceeding the number of moviegoers in the entire summer file in 2022. The film "Disappearing Her" alone won 80 million viewers.
In other words, this year's summer box office not only returned to the pre-epidemic level, but also pulled a large number of lost audiences back into theaters. So, is this year's summer movies endlessly charming, and there are phenomenal new works or word-of-mouth masterpieces?
In fact, the summer movies currently released are not "impeccable". But miraculously, the voices of bad reviews were almost drowned out. Hard Candy Jun randomly clicked on the bad reviews of a certain movie, and many netizens in the comment area refuted "flaws are not hidden", and said that the movie should be encouraged.
When exactly did the market start to change the wind? This summer, Chinese moviegoers seem to have changed their previous picky attitude towards domestic films and taken the "encouragement" route.
Domestic films bottomed out
The reason why the audience's attitude towards domestic films has become tolerant may be because they have seen the "change" of domestic films. This "change" is not only qualitative progress, but also attitude sincerity.
Take Wang Baoqiang's "In the Octagon Cage" as an example, when the film was established in 2021, Wang Baoqiang searched for domestic capital, but hit a wall one by one. Back then, the entertainment industry had a bit of a name, that everyone could be a director, and now no one is willing to vote for Wang Baoqiang.
In the end, three of the four companies produced by "Octagon Cage" are Wang Baoqiang's own company, and only one is another investor - Maoyan, and Maoyan is likely to be "invested by Xuan". In other words, Maoyan can give the film publicity resources with less money or no money, so as to exchange the share of the product and get the subsequent box office revenue. Taobao tickets, Douyin, Weibo and other platforms have such forms of cooperation.
The situation of "In the Octagon Cage" shows the sudden change in the capital environment of the film industry. The days when a celebrity could be a director and an investment were long gone.
It was 2013-2018, the year when domestic films were most disliked by audiences, and it was also the era when capital favored the film industry. Capital outside the circle has successively entered the film industry, and the stock prices of leading companies such as Wanda, Beiwen and Huayi have reached their peak in 2015-2016.
In 2016, Wanda acquired Legendary Pictures with great momentum. Zhang Yimou and Hollywood superstar Matt Damon filmed the legendary film "The Great Wall", but after its release, it was criticized by film critics and audiences in unison. For a time, criticism of domestic films became the largest traffic password, and the audience had a great crisis of trust in domestic films.
In 2018, the crisis of audiences' trust in domestic films culminated in the Chinese fantasy blockbuster "Asura".
"Asura", which cost more than 700 million, was released for three days, with a box office of less than 50 million, and could not withstand the pressure of public opinion and chose to withdraw the file. In fact, how bad "Asura" is, most people don't know. After all, the box office is there, most audiences and even movie KOLs have not seen it, and this film is out of print. But for this kind of film, looking at the poster and looking at the lineup is enough to identify it as a "bad film", which is the crisis of trust in the entire domestic film, and the predecessors dig the hole and the people jump later. (Now "Fengshen " seems to suffer a similar fate)
In the same year, Cui Yongyuan broke the yin and yang contract of Fan Bingbing's "The Great Bombing", which triggered a tax earthquake in the entertainment industry. Celebrities and listed companies have been investigated one after another, many illegal operations such as project accounting and money laundering have surfaced, and various capitals have fled the film industry one after another.
In those years when the audience disliked domestic films, the production environment of domestic films was indeed impetuous. Various films repeatedly fooled the audience with the gimmick of "taking X years and spending X billion", constantly selling "fake sincerity" to make the audience pay, and finally suffered backlash.
After the tax turmoil, the film industry suffered another three years of the epidemic, accelerating the flight of capital. Now the main investment force remaining in the film market is pure film capital after the "disaster", and everyone's attitude has become cautious. Wang Baoqiang does not make the comedy he is good at, but makes a realistic film, which is an extremely risky thing for capital.
But it may also be the calmness and conservatism of capital that makes creators sink. While Wang Baoqiang poured capital, he also invested 100% of his efforts, using all his contacts in the circle to do a good job in movies, finding Chen Sicheng to borrow money for post-production, and finding Liu Ruoying and Andy Lau to sing promotional songs and so on.
Now make a failed product, there is no outside capital to pay for you, the money is lost to themselves, which makes the creator have to be more attentive. Even Chen Sicheng, the director recognized by the audience as the most able to make money, in fact, his company is the same as film and television, and there have been layoffs during the epidemic.
Chen Sicheng also has to pay for his commercial failure product "Mozart in Outer Space", "Disappearing Her" can be regarded as his return to the familiar suspense field, and he has come up with the "sincerity" to make up for his mistakes. Wang Wei's chasing animation has been throwing his own money to do animation for ten years, and this year finally "Chang'an 30,000 Li" achieved a breakthrough of 1 billion at the box office.
It is the film industry, which is at a low point, that has created a cautious production attitude of insiders, and it has begun to show results this year. Dapeng and Yi Xiaoxing, who have made some bad films, turned over one after another, bringing two cold dark horses "Keep You Safe" and "Life Road Unfamiliar", and then to the summer "Disappearing Her", "In the Octagonal Cage" and "Chang'an 30,000 Li" took turns to sit in the village and raise the ceiling of the summer box office.
The aesthetic cycle of the audience changes
This "change" of domestic films can be seen because it catches up with the node of the audience's aesthetic cycle change.
Almost all of this year's summer films have taken the dot screening route. The classic case of successful counterattack through point screening is "I am not the God of Medicine" in the summer of 2018. But it is worth noting that the first batch of word-of-mouth screenings of this summer's films is not all praised, let alone produce the god-level word-of-mouth effect of "I Am Not the God of Medicine" with almost zero bad reviews.
Most of this year's summer films have seen polarized word-of-mouth and some controversy in the early days. For example, the women's film controversy of "Disappearing Her" is considered by some to be a "fake feminist movie" full of male gaze; The controversy over Li Bai's image shaping in "Chang'an 30,000 Li" is considered by some to be a "fake historical movie" that misleads people's children; The scratching of the boots of the archetypal event characters in "In the Octagon Cage" is considered by some to be a low-end version of "I Am Not the God of Medicine" with insufficient skills.
The audience is generally the main creative fans and fans of the audience, and few ordinary people participate in the screening. Therefore, the first batch of audiences can be regarded as more picky "opinion leaders" for the time being, but after the release of the film, the reputation of the film has completely reversed. Bad reviews from "opinion leaders" were not sought after, and general audiences preferred to encourage summer movies.
After the large-scale viewing of "Chang'an 30,000 Li", the Douban score increased from 8.0 to 8.2 points; "Disappearing Her" still triggered a frenzy of female movie-watching, and Maoyan showed that the female audience of the film reached 76%; "In the Octagon Cage" set off a wave of Wang Baoqiang's support in the short video.
For a long time before, the audience was "indifferent" to domestic films. Many bad films have lost their value and disappeared directly, such as "Turandot" starring Guan Xiaotong and Jiang Wen.
Domestic films have regained the attention of the audience, mainly relying on the sincerity of the works after 2019. From "The Wandering Earth" to the "Changjin Lake" series, it has not only won back the trust of the public, but also reshaped the audience's cognition and cultural confidence in domestic blockbusters. At the same time, during this period, many audiences became tired of the superheroic Hollywood movie routine, withdrew from the blind trust in Hollywood blockbusters, and the aesthetic psychology also changed.
The progress of domestic films has just caught up with this psychological change node. Therefore, no matter how much progress the current domestic films make, it is easy for the audience to see the "sincerity" of the main creator and eat the dividends of this "aesthetic cycle".
Moreover, geographically speaking, the Chinese market is widely populated, but in fact, the types of audiences and aesthetics are very different. Compared with foreign films, domestic films have a wider audience. Taking Maoyan's box office distribution map on July 15 as an example, "Mission Impossible 7" only won the championship in Shanghai culture. Other regions have been won by domestic films, and show a strong regional tendency:
Northeast dialect's "Tea Ah Two Middle School" dominates the box office of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning in the three eastern provinces, "Tang Dynasty Story" and "Chang'an 30,000 Li" first counterattack the national box office from the Central Plains, and "Sichuan Story" "Octagonal Cage" has a strong appeal in the southern box office.
Was the outer film abandoned?
Who would have thought that Tom's "Mission Impossible 7" entered the summer file, and was actually crushed at the box office by domestic animation, and even the box office was cut off, and it could only be sold for a mere 400 million.
Times have really changed. This year's summer file is no longer the domestic film protection month, Hollywood blockbusters can enter the summer prime time, but theater managers have frequently called on Hollywood blockbusters not to come to the summer file to "die". It turned out that domestic films were hiding from Hollywood, and now Hollywood has to hide from domestic films.
Tolerance of domestic films, pickiness of Hollywood, and changes in the attitude of Chinese audiences are actually determined by changes in the economic environment.
Some viewers said that the economic base determines the superstructure, and changes in the cultural environment are affected by changes in the economic environment. Now domestic blockbusters bring us cultural confidence, but also because of the rapid development of the film industry.
In the early years, the material and cultural life in China was not rich enough, and the audience faced a dazzling array of "special effects blockbusters", just like Grandma Liu entering the Grand View Garden. Just as at the beginning of the film, the Lumière brothers frightened the audience into panic and fled by just shooting a "train entering the station" scene, which triggered more and more curious people to watch the movie.
At that time, Hollywood IP movies were like one trend product after another, if they were not fashionable and did not know the content, they seemed to fall behind, and many people were dragged into the cinema.
However, with the increasing level of special effects in domestic blockbusters, the content routine of Hollywood blockbusters remains unchanged, and the balance of Chinese audiences will naturally be tilted towards the side of domestic films. After all, from the content level, the stories of domestic blockbusters are more likely to resonate, and ordinary audiences watch Hollywood stories from "translated lines", of course, there is a cultural barrier.
But at the root of the matter, Hard Candy Jun believes that it is not Chinese audiences who have abandoned Hollywood, but that Hollywood movies themselves have reached a dead end.
Before the epidemic, Hollywood giants began a wave of mergers, and production became polarized, with "blockbusters" led by superheroes and low-cost horror films prevalent. The epidemic has accelerated Hollywood's streaming process, disrupted the market window and production cycle, and frequently increased the production cost of "bombshells". Since the beginning of the writers' union in the first half of this year, Hollywood's major unions have gone on strike, from demanding minimum wages to boycotting AI, Hollywood has encountered an unprecedented industry crisis.
No wonder Chinese audiences are picky, the foreign film itself has a problem. Unexpected external films can still be seen, and "Guardians of the Galaxy 3" has counterattacked to the pre-epidemic box office level through word-of-mouth, selling 600 million at the box office like "Guardians of the Galaxy 2".
Hard Candy Jun is very pleased that domestic films are alone, but the market always needs effective "catfish" to really live. Moreover, when it is strong, it is strong, and domestic films continue to improve, and they also need a strong opponent.