The summer box office will reach a new high! But from "Disappearing Her" to "All or Nothing", there are traps behind it
This year's summer movies are simply "fairy fights", starting from "Disappearing Her", the box office has been soaring, and the following movies are also very powerful, and there are currently 4 films that have exceeded 2 billion box office, setting a new high in summer history.
As of press time, the total box office of summer movies in 2023 has exceeded 17 billion yuan, and it is about to surpass 2019, which won the first place in the summer box office with 17.778 billion, and the momentum is very strong.
Among them, "All or Nothing" is the latest of these 4 to be released, but the box office has been singing all the way, only with the point of screening to win 400 million box office, only took two days to break the record, the current 8 days of release box office has exceeded 2 billion, is a well-deserved dark horse.
However, while the box office soared, this film with the theme of "anti-fraud" was labeled as "fraud" by the audience.
There are two main aspects, one is marketing fraud. In the early stage of the release, the film party publicized Wang Chuanjun's performance a lot, and many viewers rushed to see Wang Chuanjun, never expecting that the protagonists were Zhang Yixing and Jin Chen of "Shenyin", and everyone shouted fooled.
Second, under the high box office and high topicality, the quality of the movie itself is not as good as expected, and there are even many plot bugs, and the character is unreasonable. The beautiful dealer Liang Anna, played by Jin Chen, was able to escape back to China, not relying on the rescue of the police, purely because the second-in-command in the fraud syndicate, Ah Cai, fell in love with her and couldn't bear her death, so he returned her passport.
In the subsequent plot, she also played an important role, the Chinese police found her and used her fingerprints to open the door of the fraud syndicate, and in real life it was very fragmented, lacking realism and rationality.
Therefore, in the case of publicizing fraud and the plot cannot withstand scrutiny, why is "All or Nothing" still popular?
This has to be said because the film side shrewdly used "ingenuity", allowing the audience to enter a huge trap that was hidden.
1. Uncover the secret of this year's dark horse movie: stepping on the hot social issues
The success of a movie is inseparable from its schedule, theme, and casting, and the summer file has always been very sought-after. But counting the movies in this summer, especially the blockbusters, it is not difficult to find that most of them are tightly linked to "social issues".
"All or Nothing" pinpoints the subject of telecom fraud, which is a hot social issue at the moment. The incident in northern Myanmar made a lot of noise, which made many people creepy. The movie accurately eats this wave of topic dividends.
Looking further, this trick of "Desperate Bet" was used by Chen Sicheng as early as the Dragon Boat Festival, and it was extremely effective, allowing him to make a lot of money and capture a box office of 3.5 billion.
The story of "Disappearing Her", like "Desperate", still takes place in Southeast Asia, where accidents are frequent, and "Disappearing Her" is itself adapted from the real-life news case "Thai pregnant woman fell off a cliff". This similar creative method has been complained about.
"Disappearing Her" is even more absolute, it hits more social issues, Chen Sicheng chose gamblers, phoenix men, love brains, girlfriends and a series of topics with their own traffic into it, successfully creating a movie that makes money from love movies under the skin of suspense.
This is easy for the audience to empathize, think of their "love brain" friends in reality, think of the confrontation between men and women everywhere on the Internet, and think of the terrible case of "Thai pregnant woman falling off a cliff", thus pinching the audience's psychology.
This approach is undoubtedly successful from a business point of view.
Chen Sicheng's good brother Wang Baoqiang is also deeply affected, "In the Octagon" is also indispensable to the blessing of social topics, poor children in the movie rely on martial arts to change their lives, in reality Wang Baoqiang from the grassroots to achieve a counterattack, can trigger the resonance of those of us who are looking for a way out. It's just that the spiritual core of "In the Octagon Cage" is stronger.
Even the foreign film "Barbie" has tasted the sweetness of social topics, even if the film has a bad start, but relying on its gender issues out of the circle, its lines have shocked many independent awakened women and are willing to contribute to its box office.
The creative motivation behind these brainwashing, viral, and high-topic movie themes has been clearly revealed:
To create a product manager film, that is: the audience can create what they want, the audience will stick to what they are talking about, the creation is market-oriented, and the artistic value bows to the wallet.
Everything they create is to serve the public's ideas, just to touch everyone's pain points and cool points, sell this "product" and everything will be fine, and the artistic value of the film may only be in the back row in the face of making money.
2. Are blockbuster movies really good? Or is the audience brainwashed?
When the film is made into a "product" and it is more important to sell it, the artistic value of the film will inevitably be sacrificed. Therefore, some audiences will feel confused, these movies are not very amazing, and even some have bugs such as thin stories and illogical logic, but they still make a lot of money.
This just confirms that product manager movies, as long as the right theme that directly hits the audience's pain points, through the viral promotion of hot topics, how high the quality of the film is is not too important, and meeting the emotional needs of the audience is the most important.
After the release of "Disappearing Her", there were many complaints about the excessive traces of commercial templating of this suspense film. The case is too simple, the murderer can be found almost effortlessly, and it is impossible for the capitalist to cultivate such a stupid love brain daughter.
But for the audience, this film grasps the sharp issues of feminism, gender antagonism, and fear of marriage and men, as Chen Sicheng said, this is a movie that the audience will discuss enthusiastically when they walk out of the theater, as long as they do this, they will not worry about the heat.
Therefore, "Disappearing Her" is also close to the audience's emotions in terms of publicity, and because of playing a scumbag, Zhu Yilong's humanoid standing card was destroyed, which to a certain extent shows that the audience is too deep into the play.
On social platforms, many viewers will spontaneously share their feelings after watching, and even in the statistics of hot words, the term "love brain" ranks first on the list, which is enough to see Chen Sicheng holding the audience's emotions to death.
Some people even said that let everyone leave the scene in no hurry to leave, pay attention to the reaction of the couple on the spot, this means of watching the comparison before and after the movie, satisfies everyone's "immersive movie-watching" experience, and also adds fire to the promotion of "Disappearing Her" in disguise.
The same is true of "All or Nothing", which hits the theme of fraud, as long as it is enough to pinch the psychology of the audience during the promotion, and the bugs in the plot do not affect anything.
However, in the early days, it did not find a direction, focusing on the marketing of Zhang Yixing and Jin Chen, and the effect was not outstanding.
It was not until the later adjustment of the focus to Wang Chuanjun as the villain, the popularity of brainwashing slogans, and the tight marketing of "anti-fraud" topics, did the viral marketing effect form.
Although scolded, it still can't stop the violent rise at the box office, and the movie is linked to real life under the slogan of "one more person watching the movie, one less person being deceived", so that many viewers feel that they can stay vigilant to prevent being deceived, so they "drag their families and mouths" to watch.
Under the influence of vigorous brainwashing marketing, the audience collectively went up, it didn't matter whether the movie was good or not, and emotional superiority and beware of being deceived became the help that pushed up the box office of the movie.
Of course, not only movies, TV series will also be affected, the audience's emotional thinking is well grasped, that is out of the circle artifact, if you do not grasp it well, then you will be scolded for "out of the circle".
Last year, the popularity of "Qing Qing's Daily" was high, and many of the "sober in the world" lines in the play were the focus of the early stage of the drama announcement, and they were frequently searched.
The early stage did bring a lot of attention to this drama, but in the later stage, the leading actors in the play set up a collective collapse, shouting the slogan to be "independent and sober" heroines and heroines and female partners, trapped in love all day, and finally collectively forcibly reunited, the audience felt fraudulent.
Therefore, this kind of product manager-style film and television drama creation that deliberately caters to the audience's psychology and predicts the hot search is dangerous.
If everyone wants to replicate this successful model, where should Chinese films go?
Chen Sicheng made a lot of money with "Disappearing Her", some people feel that he is concerned about the personal safety of women, but the heat makes everyone pay more attention to this topic, catering to the needs of the market does not need to feel ashamed, after all, customers are God.
But it is a pity that Chen Sicheng, who has eaten the dividends of gender themes, has hardly stood from the perspective of women, and he weakened the criminal of "wife killing" into a phoenix man, using children as a tool to make gamblers regret, and lacks strength in criticizing characters.
The story told in "Disappearing Her" is still limited to the surface, and Chen Sicheng only presents it in a clever way.
In fact, this year's summer file, while social topic movies are popular, "Fengshen" and "Chang'an 30,000 Li" that draw marketing from Chinese traditional culture have also achieved good results.
However, compared with these movies that rub social heat, their success is obviously much more difficult, Wuershan has sharpened a sword in ten years to produce "Fengsheng", "Chang'an 30,000 Li" to go to various places to collect style, and the harvest of word-of-mouth box office can only rely on the recommendation of "tap water".
Maybe next time, the audience can be a little more rational. And these movies full of social topics, perhaps while pleasing cleverness, we must pay more attention to the spirit of hard work, and put more of our shrewdness in the polishing of the script, maybe next time it will bring you a different surprise.