Stellar gravity, can't learn Tang people, can't do Yu Zheng? 

Author|Gu Han

Editor|Li Chunhui

To say that the most popular film and television company in August last year, it was not stellar gravity. A "Canglan Recipe" left the industry with many thoughts on the innovation of ancient dolls, and also made the fan circle pay attention to the outstanding star-making ability of this young company. However, in August this year, the gravity of the star seems to have entered a water reversal period:

The first anniversary of "Canglan Recipe" is superficially peaceful and beautiful, but in fact there is an undercurrent; "Eternal Night Star River" (that is, the famous Jinjiang romance book "Black Lotus Raiders Manual") finally started, but the refinement of the Reuters map was repeatedly slapped in the face by the raw picture, which was not favored because of casting, and this time it was even worse;

Of course, the most serious problem is still on the side of the new drama "Seven Times of Good Luck". On the night of the premiere, the show was considered to be highly similar to the recipe of "Canglan Tips", and linkage Easter eggs were buried in the first few episodes. It stands to reason that these "IP cosmic senses" will make the show have a smoother start, but the reality is the opposite.

One week after its broadcast, "Seven O'clock Auspicious Luck" has still not shown signs of improvement, and it has now fast-forwarded to the stage of the main creator's madness. Starring Yang Chao apologized tearfully in the live broadcast of the drama, and producer and producer Wang Yixi sent a number of small essays in succession.

But as we all know, the masses now do not eat and sell miserable. Therefore, these operations did not save the decline, but led the flame to Wang Yixi himself and even Stellar Gravity Company.

How a 2.0 method

"Seven Times of Good Luck" is adapted from Jiu Lu Feixiang's novel "Impulsive, Seven Lives Unknown", produced by iQiyi and Stellar Gravity, directed by Li Nan and Du Lin, written by Li Lisa and Xu Hong, starring Yang Chao and Ding Yuxi, telling the story of the little immortal Xiangyun of the red line of the Heavenly Marriage Pavilion and the ancient war god Jun Chukong Yin and Yang are bound by mistake, and jointly open a copy of the love in the Nether.

The similarity between "Seven Times of Good Luck" and "Canglan Recipe" is first reflected in the organization. The producers are all iQiyi and Stellar Gravity, the IPs are all from Jiu Lu Feixiang, the cast is all female group members partner non-head 95 students, and then bring a group of newcomers to supporting roles.

The second is the similarity in audiovisual packaging. Both dramas use two-dimensional animation style titles, one of which is "Secret Love" and the other is "Only Love", both sung by Taiwanese singer Zhan Wenting. All OST reloaded and have many songs, all of which are voiced by Liu Yuning and Li Changchao. In addition, the styling director of both dramas is Yi Xiaoya, who has been famous for her colorful and brain-opening in recent years.

In addition to the modeling, the art and special effects styles of the two dramas are also obviously different from other fairy tale dramas on the market, only similar to each other. This is reflected in the large amount of special effects, but the combination with the real shooting part is more natural, which effectively enhances the picture texture. Moreover, both dramas use large special effects shots at the beginning to introduce the world view.

Finally, in terms of content, thanks to the original foundation of Jiu Lu Feixiang, both dramas easily incorporate light comedy elements, and have high concepts to play - "Canglan Recipe" is a male and female change, and "Seven Times of Good Luck" is an infinite stream copy. In this way, there are other plot highlights besides talking about love, and the process of generating feelings will not seem too industrial.

Of course, if the above similarities alone, it is not enough to arouse doubt and disgust. The biggest problem is that the novel settings of "Canglan Recipe" and "Seven Times of Good Luck" are actually not very similar, but they have been adapted with a very strong sense of déjà vu.

First of all, in the original work of "Seven Times of Good Luck", the male and female protagonists are two immortals, which can be said to be the love stories of ordinary people. The drama version was changed to the Celestial God of War and the Amnesia Female Emperor. The male protagonist, as the god of war, is brotherly with the ruler of the celestial realm, and calls himself "Honza", as if he took some settings from Changheng and Dongfang Qingcang and kneaded them together. The adaptation of the heroine from grassroots to background is the same as Little Orchid's life.

Secondly, the male second Xiu Ming of "Seven Times of Good Luck" is also an original character of the drama version, ostensibly a friend of the male protagonist's fairy world, but in fact, he has been obsessed with the original body of the female protagonist for tens of thousands of years, walking on the edge of blackening, like the combination of Changheng and Rong Hao in "Canglan Recipe".

Adding an original male second is still within an understandable range, and the reason is nothing more than to be popular or balance the volume gap between the novel and the series, and there are a lot of similar operations on the market. However, adding a preface to the fairy and demon war tens of thousands of years ago to the originally more mythical "Seven Times of Good Luck" has led to changes in characters and contradictions, and this degree of change is rare. You can't blame everyone for rubbing the aspect of "Canglan Recipe".

The degree of reprogramming of "Canglan Recipe" is not small, but the casting is close to the face, the plot is silky, and Yu Shuxin and Wang Hedi have finally received the praise of "Chosen Heaven" in their respective roles. "Seven O'clock Auspicious Luck" is different, Yang Chao and Ding Yuxi are actually more in line with the ordinary people of the original work, Huanxi and Wrongdoers, rather than the drama version of the Nengbending and Stretching Little Fairy and Bking God of War, so that it seems more difficult. Especially Ding Yuxi, for no reason, has to face a round of trampling, and the short board is infinitely amplified.

How to step on the pit

Homogenization is a common disease of ancient puppet labels, Tang people, Huanyu, Huanrui have all encountered, the reasons have also been analyzed thoroughly, including but not limited to: the core creators can not keep up with the times when they age, the team is too solidified, the actors are arranged and combined, too many popular models in the past have caused path dependence, and so on.

Compared with Yu Zheng, who is willing to take the initiative to change, this problem is especially obvious on the Tang side. Founded in 1998, the company can be said to be one of the founders of the concept of "ancient dolls", contracting countless post-80s and post-90s childhoods. Among them, "The Legend of Sword and Fairy I" and "The Legend of Sword and Fairy III" are regarded as fairy drama classics.

But in the eyes of game fans, this series also has magic changes and routines. For example, the male protagonist uniformly becomes a gangster, adds various tasteless nicknames to the characters, the plot is bloody and infantile, and he does not hesitate to change the plot in order to make people popular. In current terms, the arrogance of capital is pervasive.

Fortunately, in the era of "Immortal Sword One" and "Immortal Sword III", the actors are still powerful, the audience's choices are few, and social media is not developed, and the grievances of game fans cannot be fermented in the first place. If you don't believe it, you saw "Xuanyuan Sword" in 2012 and "Cloud Fan" in 2016, and the Tang people are still using the previous formula, and the results are very dismal.

Wang Yixi has mentioned more than once that he is deeply influenced by the Tang people, and the outside world once believed that stellar gravity attaches importance to OST, and pulls a large number of handsome men and beautiful women to do group dramas and other operations have Tang legacy. So, did stellar gravity step into the pit that the Tang people stepped on too early? Hard Candy Jun believes that the answer is no.

First of all, the homogenization of content labels generally appears when it is going downhill, and Stellar Gravity has only been established for 5 years, and there is only 1 popular model that has become famous. In addition, according to the main creator, the preliminary preparation of these two projects has exceeded 2 years, and "Seven O'clock Auspicious" was launched in February 2022, when "Canglan Tips" had not yet been broadcast, and there was no replication of explosive models.

More importantly, Stellar Gravity is not a simple production company, but an "IP operation company with high-quality netizen content as the core", in addition to film and television, there are music, novels, animation, meta-universe and other business directions, the content layout is based on labels, it is unlikely to be like the creator-core company or vertical label, limited by the style and ability of individual creators.

So, where does the high similarity between "Seven Times of Auspiciousness" and "Canglan Recipe" come from? Hard Candy Jun has two speculations.

First, a manuscript on the fifth anniversary of stellar gravity mentioned that at the beginning of its business, stellar gravity aimed to create content products with a unified aesthetic system. It may not be that "Seven Times of Good Luck" is copying "Canglan Recipe", but that both follow a certain template of the fantasy label.

Second, Stellar Gravity is not serious about production and creation, but when it defines itself as an "IP operating company", many things it thinks and wants have gone beyond drama, and it will inevitably have an impact on drama. The reason why it takes a lot of effort to design and enrich the worldview of the works every time is that these worldviews are not used once and discarded, and other works in the future may also be placed in them, forming an IP universe, and combining with the company's metaverse business.

In fact, in March this year, Stellar Gravity cooperated with mobile phone Tmall to hold a 3D music festival, recreating well-known scenes of "Canglan Tips" such as Shui Yuntian and Si Meng Dian in virtual space, some actors participated in the performance, and the drama official Wei and the character C number that was painstakingly operated at that time also promoted the event.

It is not difficult to imagine that the additional use will bring additional tasks to the script adaptation, and it is not necessarily a plus point for every effect.

Go deep into the rice circle and do not understand the masses

Wang Yixi is probably one of the most active producers on social platforms today. In only two years, he caught up with the old-timer Yu Zheng, and was nicknamed "The King of Drama".

The difference is that Yu Zheng of the post-70s generation mainly eats melons and puts materials from the perspective of senior industry and points out rivers and mountains, and he must also hold on to keep the clouds light and the wind light. Wang Yixuan, a post-90s generation, is committed to eliminating his sense of distance from netizens, often comparing hearts, shedding tears, going crazy or something, and is also familiar with rice circle talk.

Far from mentioning, let's talk about the small composition in the early morning of August 18. "I didn't expect that "Seven O'clock Auspicious" would be hacked like this", "There are many hostile and negative voices constantly looking for black spots to attack "Seven O'clock Auspicious "", "There is no reason for the all-platform flow limit", and "How hard do you work to make TAs" that occupies nearly half of the page. At a glance, I thought it was the big fan of the starring family shouting.

The audience has been bitter for a long time, because I don't know when a simple spit may be branded as a sunspot with ulterior motives, and the legitimate right to evaluate the work will be denied. Now the producer has also fallen into this thinking circle, taking the lead in rice circle thinking, which is even more painful.

In addition, this small essay continues Yang Transcendence's "label theory" in the live broadcast of the drama, and seems to regard the outside world's colored eyes or malicious sniping of the starring actor as the main reason for the failure of the series. The whole article is strange public opinion, strange delay, strange flow limit... However, there is no reflection on the adaptation of their own scripts, and they cannot see the temperament and consciousness that content creators should have.

Such a publicity not only failed to save "Seven O'clock Auspicious Luck", but also attracted questions about Wang Yixuan's producer's business ability, which made the followers of "The Fox Demon Little Red Lady" and "Eternal Night Starry River" beat drums in their hearts.

Since the audience has been annoyed, can wholeheartedly focusing on drama fans become Wang Yixuan's way to win?

It's also hard to say. In the linkage between "Canglan Tips" and "Seven Times of Good Luck", Wang Yixi completely miscalculated the reactions of the "trick people" (that is, "Canglan Tips" fans), one second blogging to invite credit, the next second kneeling to apologize.

"Trick People" is a relatively successful fan operation case of domestic entertainment. Through excellent feature films, rich materials, active character language C number, and the "hot-blooded fool" that the main creator often hangs on his lips, "Canglan Tips" has built a 2.5-dimensional utopia of love and sincerity for drama fans.

But sometimes, it will be difficult for outsiders to understand the authenticity of the drama fans. Paying homage to the previous game in the form of OST linkage, this kind of operation is actually very common. But the deep "trick" is that they will think that "Aftermath" is the soundtrack of the little orchid's self-defeating scene, and it is both unsuitable and profane when used in the heartbeat moments of the male and female protagonists of "Seven O'clock Auspicious". Although Wang Yixi interacted happily with the "know-how" last year, he also became the "outsider" at this time.

Because no matter how well disguised they usually are, the essence of company owners and producers is still businessmen and entrepreneurs, operating IP in order to profit from it, and there are differences with actors and fans. It's just that the former surfaced at the end of last year's episode and CP unbinding, and the latter will become more obvious the further it goes. For example, on the first anniversary of "Canglan Tips" this year, Stellar Gravity held a theme party for it, but the male protagonist Wang Hedi did not participate, and then the scene layout was also accused of perfunctory, resulting in some fans being very cold, like waking up from a dream.

Again, successful IP is a large-scale co-creation, which is not only the co-creation of IP authors and adaptations, but also the B side and the C side (do data, produce fandom... ) of co-creation. If the IP is large enough, anyone can commit the crime of sucking blood backstab, regardless of whether he is the creator or the copyright holder.

Looking at the resistance of the "know-how" to "Seven Times of Good Luck", it can be seen that the linkage idea of stellar gravity is not as easy as imagined. If he wants to continue to chase the waves, Wang Yixi may need a stronger heart.