The murderer of his father's "Fengshen stabbed out the ambition of "pioneering" a sword
"Father-killer" means the erasure and reconstruction of violence, laying out a new subset concept on top of authority; With "father-killer" as the narrative theme, "Fengshen " is about ambition, desire and struggle on one side, and crushing worship, getting rid of control, and finding oneself on the other. Identifying authenticity, choosing good and evil, and spiritual growth are the new values excavated by "Fengsheng".
In this process, director Wu Ershan did not hide his ambition to rebuild the market order, and wanted to use the "Fengsheng" series to "pioneer the genre", but Maoyan predicted that the box office would decline, and the film side would be more cautious in its exploration; But in this creation that has been laid out in the past decade, whether it is the macro line narrative, the group portrait shaping or the difficulty of controlling the cultural aesthetics of the times, it proves that this new "epic blockbuster" road is not easy to follow.
Author: Liang Xiang
Editor: Blue Two
Format: Wang Wei
The "Fengshen " series of ten years and one sword is finally here. Audiences who step into the IMAX giant screen theater will find that the picture presented on the screen subverts expectations: the magnificent scene of the snow siege at the beginning is close to the epic ceiling, and the film has reached the head level of the domestic film industry in terms of costume road, scenery, mirror processing, post-production, etc.; In terms of plot, King Yin Shou, who has a new personality, is well versed in power schemes, and in order to seize the throne, he stabbed a very ambitious sword at his father.
This sword also pierced the domestic type track.
"Father-killer" means the erasure and reconstruction of violence, laying out a new subset concept on top of authority. Director Wu Ershan did not hide his ambitions and planned to use the "Fengsheng" series to "pioneer the genre". He stressed that the "Fengsheng" series is not a fantasy film, but a mythological epic film, "This is a new genre of Chinese-language films, and I am willing to spend ten years and eight years to do it, just like making an atomic bomb."
New genre means new text, new audio-visual, new concept, the main creator of the "Fengsheng" series, aiming at the soil of traditional Chinese mythology, when excavating this new, injecting contemporary values, and using large-cost technical support, giving this article a Western-style lens expression.
Ten years of trail and ten years of heart, this period of long-distance running has investment, precipitation, and unavoidable separation. "Fengsheng", which dares to kill his father to the authority, has indeed come up with a sincere and brilliant operation, but in the big proposition of new genre pioneering, it may be necessary to build an altar of self-immolation in advance like King Yin Shou in the questioning of the audience and the market.
Genre Pioneering: A Chinese Epic of Blockbuster Thinking
To a certain extent, domestic magic blockbusters are tied to the name Urshan.
As early as 2002, when watching "The Lord of the Rings", Urshan was deeply shocked by the magical scenes. Trained in art, he focuses on Chinese and Western history, religion and mythology. The grandeur of "The Lord of the Rings", Pangu opened the heaven and earth to support the idea of sealing gods in his heart. Wuershan believes that China has abundant cultural resources and can also make mythological epic films like "The Lord of the Rings".
In 2007, Wuershan began to test the water fantasy theme in popular films, and the "Painted Skin" series was a great success, and in late 2015, "Ghost Blowing Lamp: Finding the Dragon" made him famous. And this is not enough to reach the level of mythical epic in his heart. In his view, what can support Chinese classical culture and contemporary aesthetics is "Romance of the Gods" - "It has the worldview setting of gods, demons, and people, which has been handed down for thousands of years, has a strong national nature, and also contains the core of motifs such as heroic growth and era declension."
This internal and external consideration of the project has become one of the criteria for the pioneering genre of mythological epics. The confidence of Wuershan's ambition lies in his confidence in the Chinese film and television market, "China has the best market, and Chinese audiences are simply the largest, most tolerant and best audience in the world." As long as you meet the basic needs of the audience, as long as you provide emotional value, the audience will praise."
Based on this logic, Wuershan believes that the biggest crisis facing the film industry is actually the loss of audiences. Let the audience sit back in the cinema, one of the ways to solve the loss is to strengthen the sensory experience, visual impact, and sound experience of the film from the outside, "in order to expand the genre, we must consider the problem of the genre reaching the standard and the type passing."
Under this "blockbuster thinking", in May 2017, the "Fengshen Trilogy" with an investment of 3 billion yuan was officially launched. According to rough estimates, the total box office of the trilogy would have to be 9 billion to recover the cost.
As a pioneer of oriental fantasy films, Wuershan seeks the possibility of integrating cutting-edge technology in Chinese stories. Since you want to seal the gods, you must first create a universe inhabited by the gods, and strive to take out the top imagination of domestic films to restore the core gathering point of the mythological theme. Imagination and reality, new and old, are originally a contradiction and opposition, and all aspects in between involve the choice of the planning end.
During the preparation, Wu Ershan and the art team considered whether to follow the real historical style of the Shang and Zhou Dynasty, or build the set according to the imagination of the Shang and Zhou period in "Romance of the Gods". If it is completely based on history, "Romance of the Gods", as the original work, itself cannot withstand scrutiny - Taoism, as the background of the story, was not born at that time, and the basis of the story did not exist. Restoring history is not the mission of entertainment works, and the audience of movies is modern people.
Therefore, the main creator of "Fengshen ", based on the Yuanming water and land paintings, fused Shang and Zhou bronzes and Song Dynasty landscapes, and created a semi-empty Fengshen world. Asaka and Nishiki are visually unified in color and design. Audiences with corresponding professionalism can distinguish the presentation of ancient paintings such as "Eighty-seven Immortal Scrolls" in the Tang Dynasty on character costumes, and the embodiment of the imagery of "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" in Kunlun Wonderland, etc., which not only have beautiful imagination, but also feel the thickness of Chinese culture.
After constructing the world view, the main creator of "Feng Shen" made a drastic rectification in the character.
In the nearly ten years of deep cultivation of "Fengshen ", Fengshen IP has become a hot spot in the film and television market, with the release of "Nezha: The Devil Child Descends", "Jiang Ziya", "New God List: Nezha Reborn", "New God List: Yang Jian" and so on, chasing light animation and color stripe house jointly support the popularity of Fengshen . Among them, there are faithfulness to the original work, new compilations of the plot, and more importantly, testing the audience's cognitive feelings about the myth of Fengsheng. It turns out that breaking the audience's stereotype and bringing a new shock is the key to whether a new series can stand on its feet.
Therefore, when a civilized and heroic king appears, it can surprise the audience and leave a memory, and the "Fengsheng" series is half successful. In fact, in the history books, King Feng is originally a positive image of "long and beautiful, super strong, and sensitive to smell", and is not as addicted to wine and flesh and not enterprising as in "Romance of the Gods". In Wuershan's opinion, Fei Xiang perfectly matched the temperament of King Shu. In the finished film, Fei Xiang is at ease and lives up to expectations to show the ambition, madness and charm of the co-master of the world to the fullest.
Daji, who plays with King Jun, is played by newcomer actor Na Ran. Na Ran is a dynamic actor, and the charm that cannot be seen in the flat promotional picture is enchanting in the movie. Although many of Daji's storyboards have both the visual sense of Xiao Wei of the "Painted Skin" series, and there are also traces of references from European and American "World of Warcraft" when Linghu came out, Naran's interpretation of animality is really impressive.
The "Fengsheng" series strictly selects actors, and the actors will also undergo closed training after entering the group. Young actors such as Yu Shi, who played Ji Fa, and Chen Muchi, who played Yin Jiao, based on the "Six Arts of Gentlemen", studied courses such as acting, horsemanship, martial arts, bows and arrows, and shaped the muscle lines of the ancient warriors' bodies. Etiquette and wildness coexist, and male and beautiful are equally divided. The muscle boy group has also become the main force during the announcement period of "Fengsheng".
Wu Ershan said in an interview that the current film and television market is in a stage of rapid development, and constantly uses works to improve the level of industrial production. The vision of "Fengshen Trilogy" is to show people from different cultural backgrounds to understand contemporary Chinese creative ideas, which is also one of the missions of the mythological epic film genre.
The Father's Heart: A Contemporary Interpretation of Old Myths
After watching this "Feng Shen", many viewers believe that this is a story in which the original work has been greatly modified. Whether it is a misreading or a new reading, weighing the scale is the most important challenge for the main creative team. To create a new domestic film genre, polishing the skin is only the first step, and the important thing is still to grasp the inside.
A cold knowledge is that "Romance of the Gods" itself is a fan work. This work, written in the Ming Dynasty, has been repeatedly revised, added and deleted by the literati of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, with many versions, messy content, and the logic is chaotic when deeply investigated, and it seems to be the same type as the "Journey to the West" listed in the four famous works, and it is not the same from the literary level.
Taking the character of King Feng as an example, he is inconsistent in "Romance of the Gods", sometimes shrewd and reasonable, sometimes without distinction between loyalty, unsympathetic, and even his physical characteristics are constantly changing - the objective reason is that the text is inconsistent due to multiple people co-creation, but for film and television adaptations, this is a topic that needs to be carefully explored. In the traditional concept, the king of the dead country does not match the positive image, but the king in the history books is indeed tall and handsome and outstanding.
Wuershan's screenwriting team invited professionals in history, folklore and other fields to participate in script planning, polished more than ten scripts, and finally established an image of a careerist who lacked father's love, had excellent talent, and had a deep city government. Since the seed of the villain comes from the internal causes of the character, Daji's charm is redundant, so Daji is set as an explicit character who repays grace and charms only to fulfill the wishes of King Shun - King Shun knows from the beginning that Daji is a demon, but he wants to borrow Daji's demon power.
Such a setting, not so much a magic reform, but a new interpretation that is more faithful to history and logic, undoubtedly has also created the most successful king in the film and television level in history. Wuershan himself was extremely satisfied with the setting, praising Yin Shou for "having the complexity of a villain, having a more convincing image of a king, and making the drama believable".
Taking the road to power as the underlying logic also gives the originally chaotic multi-line story of "Romance of the Gods" a clear narrative backbone. In order to seize power, father-killers have become the only way, and the plot also revolves deeply around father-killers: Yin Shou, who lacks his father's love, not only wants to kill his father, but even controls everyone around him and walks towards the fate of his father-killer together.
Therefore, the setting of "proton" has become the key point of the play's text: Yin Shou ordered the four great princes of the east, west, south and north to sacrifice their own sons and stay with them as hostages to control power. At the same time, Yin Shou also convinced the protons that their father sent him to Chaoga because they were not valued by their father; The more valued brothers stayed by their father's side as princes, and they were forced to go to war and die elsewhere.
In the battle of Jizhou at the beginning of the movie, Yin Shou used the death of proton Su Quanxiao to successfully stage a scene of rabbit death and fox tragedy. All the protons felt the same way, all hated their own father even more, and worshiped Yin Shou, who was infinitely charismatic, capable, and able to understand their situation. Going down this logical line, the scene of four protons and four uncles killing each other has become inevitable and one of the most shocking scenes in the movie.
Wuershan believes that what moves the audience must not be demons and monsters, but emotional power, and although "Fengshen " has rich religious mythological elements, it must eventually return to the story itself. The bridge of "King Wen's Eating Son" in the original work is impressive, and this is actually an extension of the father-son relationship.
The main creator of "Feng Shen", let the task of raising values fall on Ji Chang - in the whole film, he is almost the only normal father. Of all the protons, only Ji Fa was not completely brainwashed by Yin Shou, because Ji Fa knew and firmly believed that his father Ji Chang had unreserved and just love for him. Even with the proton selection of conspiracy theories, Ji Fa did his own tricks and feet and willingly came to Yin Shou's side, because he decided that Yin Shou was a big hero, and he also wanted to become a big hero, and in the middle, the love between father and son was never broken.
And Lei Zhenzi's appearance not only completes the richness of character group portraits, but also carries the role of showing the benevolence of Xibo Hou Ji Chang. Yin Shou threatened on the battlefield that "what the horse sees is decided by people", and he has indeed been playing tricks on the scene to manipulate people's hearts; And Ji Chang's sentence when he recognized Lei Zhenzi as his son, "It doesn't matter who your son is, who you are, it's important", is a high judgment with it, and the opposition is obvious.
In the patriarchal structural system, the identification with the "father" often transcends the self-identification, and the protons are controlled by Yin Shou, and this identity also has a slight taste of Stockholm syndrome. But in this deconstruction and reflexivity of gazing at patriarchy, Ji Fa completed another "father-killer": the filter of patriarchal worship was shattered, free from mind control, and found himself.
Wuershan believes that the core of the father-killing plot is about the choice of good and evil. Showing the growth of heroes through the perspective of the young King Ji of Zhou Wu is a classic narrative of mythological epics, "Characters experience different events, make different choices, and go to different lives." Such stories are timeless and meaningful to today's audience."
Identifying truth from falsehood, choosing good and evil, and ultimately achieving spiritual growth is to tap the contemporary value in the story of Fengsheng.
Conceptual Keeping: The Fault Line of the Western Aesthetic
"Nine years ago, in June 2014, my eldest son was just born, and the first script workshop of the Fengshen Trilogy was held. By the time the film was released, my eldest son was 9 years old. ”
Wu Ershan's words reveal the arduous journey of being a creator. According to his sharing, the original book of "Romance of the Gods" is biased towards fatalism, which conflicts with modern values, so it is necessary to refine the theme and core characters, rearrange the story line, and pack it into the story structure of the trilogy. The trilogy must tell a complete story, and each film needs to be written independently, with the growth of heroes, the change of the times, and the struggle between good and evil as their own themes. The creation is difficult, the production is very complicated, and the 9 years of work is really too much.
It is true that ten years to sharpen a sword does take time as the thickness to give the work higher quality and heaviness, but the premise of ten years to sharpen a sword is predictable. This foresight is not only visual, because the special effects and post-production were completed a few years ago, whether it can keep up with the audiovisual aesthetics of the current audience, and more importantly, whether it meets the scrutiny of the current audience in terms of fashion trends and cultural core.
After digging deeper, although the first part of "Feng Shen" has completed a new character design, it grasps the theme of killing his father and seizing power, creating a value opposition; But based on the story itself, it loses the clarity it deserves. The most obvious point is that it is difficult to tell in this movie who is the protagonist of the story.
Is it the King of Tang? A villain has his own charm and loneliness, and the character obviously cannot be the protagonist of a positive narrative.
Is it Ji Fa? But Ji Fa's scene is not even as much as the villain Yin Shou, appearing in a hurry in the early stage, drowning in the branch line in the middle of the current time, and coming to a homecoming trip in the later stage, which is somewhat abrupt, and also makes the mood at the end seem powerless to support.
Is it Ginger Ziya? This funny immortal who voluntarily accepted the list of consecrated gods, thereby losing his divine power and turning into a mortal, has the responsibility of "handing over the list of conferred gods to the co-lord of the world". And this is actually a very well-written main line, using Jiang Ziya's simple perspective to expose the true face of King Jun, witness Ji Fa's awakening, and find the real co-master of the world - but obviously, in the film, Jiang Ziya is a character who writes and loses.
There are many characters in the whole film, the story line is complex, and the main creator seems to only lay out the series of works, and the perspective stands higher, but does not see the integrity of the work itself.
It is also because of the lack of control of the multi-line narrative that there is also a fault in the beginning and end of the plot. The good and evil in the inner layers of the characters have become straightforward, and the interaction between the characters has become established: how the king and Daji reached a fusion of spiritual flesh, how Ji Fa made choices in the rights of his father, all the twists are missing details and foreshadowing, and are presented with superficial mechanical expression.
The death of Queen Jiang, Ji Chang's food, Bigan's digging heart... These classic bridges are completely instrumentalized and lose their due characteristics. Even the contradictions and frictions between the sons of the four uncles have become a kind of "Western-style bullying": simply to make dramatic contradictions, there is no need to lay internal causes.
Chinese art is characterized by white space, and in the rush "Fengshen "Fengsheng", the white space is almost exhausted, turning to the fast-paced narrative of Western films, which is easier to accept and more difficult to scrutinize.
This joy based on the joy of "The Lord of the Rings" many years ago has become a crude transfer on "Fengsheng". Lei Zhenzi's demonized form is not only unrelated to the "Classic of Mountains and Seas", but is similar to Western bat demons, which is more easily accepted by the Western market. Even the special skill "Soul Transfer" obtained by Shengong Leopard's mentor only used charms to bring two giant statues to life to join the battlefield: except for visual blessings, there was no gain to the plot.
And the biggest problem of the whole film is that the "Fengsheng", which tries to give the old myth and new theory, is still stuck at the level of "the emperor's chaotic ethics leads to heavenly punishment, and the co-master of the world uses the fengshen list to save the cangsheng". What the protagonists have to do is still to give important tokens to the most correct people, with a serious individualistic complex, still subordinate to the old narrative of the artifact and the new king, and the list of gods is just a Chinese copy of the Lord of the Rings. Such simple values have not reached a grand perspective with the world in mind, and the biggest foundation of epic films should be a thick and universal view of history.
The setting of King Feng has become another kind of Greek mythological Zeus, but what Chinese mythology needs most is still the spiritual continuation from the local area - not simply recognizing the father and killing the father, but re-examining the source of culture from the current perspective, discussing the "heavenly way and human ethics" on the soil of mythology, so that one value defeats another, and this process is the best consecration. At this point, the main creator of "Feng Shen" still seems to have not found a new concept of the new genre of mythological epic films.
Of course, the first part of "Fengshen " that we are currently seeing is not all, but the prelude to the series. Wu Ershan said that the last two parts of the "Fengshen Trilogy" have been filmed and cut, and no visual effects have been done yet; More characters will be added in the future, and the visual effect difficulty will be further upgraded, and it is planned to be released in the summer of 2024 and 2025. Perhaps all our questions will be better answered in the last two parts, so that the road to consecration of gods will be extended further.