It's not easy to make Shen Teng! How to break the happy twist movie?

The summer season ended, breaking the box office record in Chinese film history with a total of 20.6 billion.

In this group of joy, happy twists are lonely.

Its participation in the summer "Super Family" box office only reached 300 million, and the Douban score was 3.7. Compared with last year's "Walking on the Moon Alone", it is not even a fraction.

Happy Twist lost both at the box office and word of mouth last time, and it has to be traced back to "Li Cha's Aunt" five years ago, with a cumulative box office of 600 million and 4.6 points on Douban, even if "Chao" is compared with "Li", there is still a certain gap. After the failure of "Lee" that year, Happy Twist did not seem to make obvious and effective adjustments, but its actors appeared in more non-twist movies and variety shows, constantly consuming audience popularity.

In the past three years, the only highlight of Happy Twist's main control work seems to be "Walking on the Moon Alone" ("This Killer Is Not Too Calm" released in the Spring Festival in 2022 won 2.6 billion box office, staging a good drama with a small broad, but the main investment master is actually not Happy Twist, but Xinli Media), this movie remade from Korean comics, almost Shen Teng's "one-man show", combining sci-fi and comedy, in addition to the movie version, also produced an animated mini-drama (but the response was little). The director of "Walking on the Moon Alone" is Zhang Eatyu, and in 2017, he co-directed "Iron Fist of Shame" with Song Yang, the director of "Super Family".

After the rout of "Super Family", what kind of "technical and artistic adjustments" should Happy Twist make to avoid more "Waterloo" in the future?

Drama adaptations and remakes

Happy Twist is a drama start, after entering the film industry, "Charlotte Troubles" and "Iron Fist of Shame" are adapted from the previous drama of the same name, both of which also have surreal elements.

There is a crossing in "Summer" and an exchange of souls in "Iron Fist of Shame", both of which are common surreal settings.

It's hard to imagine what "Iron Fist of Shame" would have become of this boxing movie without male and female exchange memes?

I think it should be the next year's "Li Cha's Aunt" - "male and female exchange" is not based on fantasy, but through the effect achieved before and after Huang Cailun's transfiguration. This very realistic comedy is the first "Waterloo" of twist movies.

The directors of "Charlotte Troubles" Yan Fei and Peng Damo set up their own doors and established Xihong City Pictures (Happy Twist holds 15% of the shares), and the films produced by Happy Twist still have Happy Twist's investment. But then they did not adapt the previous drama, but chose to remake the 1985 American film "Brewster's Million Windfall", the title of which is directly the name of the company - "The Richest Man in Xihong City".

In fact, this is similar to Yan Fei's previous drama "The Count of Wulong Mountain" - the story of a young man with three nils who accidentally received a huge inheritance.

But why give up acting for more than ten years and breaking thousands of dramas, and choose to remake foreign films? I think it's because "The Count of Wulong Mountain" is too "self-free", and the police, banking, religion and other aspects have been unscrupulously ridiculed, and the drama can be performed like this, but no matter how the movie is changed, even if it is put abroad, it is estimated that it will not pass the censorship.

And the core idea in the American movie "Cloth" is not to get a windfall, but to require the male protagonist to spend a huge amount of money within a month before he can inherit the inheritance, so that the content is very "safe" and more suitable for the structure of the film.

This reflects a major problem of Happy Twist, that is, although it was founded in 2003, with the purpose of "serving the people's entertainment", it has been deeply engaged in the field of comedy for 20 years, pioneered the concept of "New Year stage plays", and created and produced 86 stage plays, of which 64 are original, but few can be effectively adapted into movies, and they have to rely on remaking other countries' films.

This in itself is actually a great irony.

Of course, this is also a common phenomenon in the so-called IP field in the mainland cultural circles, whether it is tomb robbery thriller, or reasoning and beauty and other themes, and whether it is a web novel, comics, or drama at the beginning, you must first be out of place, there are no taboos, after winning attention and attracting attention, and then carry out a lengthy adaptation, and delete the original "taboos" one by one... Until it triggered the controversy and conflict between the original party and the adaptation party, it seems that controversy is the heat, and the quality of the adapted film and television drama is completely unimportant.

Such a "curve" adaptation, although there is a realistic helplessness, but what is lacking is a whole set of system thinking. Needless to say, the final end point of online comic dramas and other forms is directed to adaptation into film and television dramas, and it seems that only in this way can the maximum benefit be achieved. But the fact that the thunder is loud, the rain is small, or even the rain cannot be rained at all, makes the entire creative process disjointed and extremely distorted.

Happy twists are naturally not exempt from vulgarity, the drama that took the lead, put down fierce materials, as a small advertisement to solicit, but after "entering the hall", it either became a "clean" version, or the goods were not right, and the "improvement" was imported directly from abroad ...

Of course, this is not a long-term solution, we must do it at the source of drama creation, think about the problems that will be encountered when adapting it into a film later, and use real creative thinking to open up the two links before and after.

|The combination of stage and film

In fact, the drama stage is not so far from the movie screen, not "interlaced like a mountain", not to shoot a stage in the movie like "Dog Town", nor like Meng Jinghui's "Fly Like a Chicken Feather", it is an obscure art film made by a theater director. Instead, it can integrate the advantages of the stage and the movie, and combine the two rooms to learn from the "two" strength.

Similar masterpieces, such as 1998's "The Truman Show". This movie starring Jim Carrey tells the story of a man who has lived in a world-class reality show since he was a child, and was kept in the dark at first, and then the protagonist slowly discovers the truth of this shooting that is like the meaning of life. This reality show scene is designed to be extremely large, with the world's largest soundstage, no different from the real community, and the global audience is like a group of global villagers, watching the male protagonist grow up, fall in love, and get married.

Under the premise of such a close combination of reality and surreality, there is a stage "innate" in "Truman's World", and the time of this drama performance is not two hours, eight hours, as long as the protagonist does not discover the truth and the audience is not collectively tired, the play will never end.

As a result, the film not only cares about reality and compassion for the protagonist, but also takes care of human rights and emotions as he discovers the truth, and allows the dramatic structure to have its own use, not just a bunch of news material, and as a temporary outlet for emotions. If it comes to the collision of two worlds, in "Chu" it is his personal privacy space and the conflict between the stage in the eyes of reality TV audiences around the world.

This is the idea and technique that twist movies should really refer to and learn from (of course, it is not recommended to remake), so that the "front-end" drama and the "terminal" film are truly integrated, rather than separate and "wrong goods"; It also allows the two forms of drama and film to have a chemical reaction, instead of playing each other and not looking at each other.

Happy twist stage play

|Its artists are cautious about receiving external plays

What Stephen Chow's comedy is praised for is not only his personal performance as the protagonist, including the supporting roles in his films, even if there are only one or two lines of dialogue, it is impressive enough, which is of course the credit of the choreographer's design and tuning.

And Happy Twist should have signed a large number of writers and directors talents, and the drama IP is as well reserved, but when it comes to any twist movie, there should be no actor who can be praised with just a sentence of dialogue or even an action, which is not only the lack of famous "group performances", but also supporting roles, and even the protagonist can only make people remember the "Shen Ma" combination. And Allen, Chang Yuan, including Wei Xiang and others have always owed the fire.

There is no doubt that this is a problem for the writer and director as a whole, as well as the artist management aspect.

Let's not mention the conflict of interest of the production company and the artist agent at the same time, because it seems too advanced for the current domestic entertainment. But one thing can be emphasized - that is, the general audience cannot distinguish whether a movie is voted by the owner of Happy Twist Film, or participated, or not produced by Twist, but only recognizes actors, especially those movies starring Ma Li Allen Changyuan and others.

And when the reputation of those movies is too bad, it affects not only the reputation of the actors, but also the happy twist itself.

"Li Mao as the Prince" stills.

For example, "Li Mao Playing the Prince" (rating 4.3), released on New Year's Day 2022, has collected many twist actors (Ma Li, Changyuan, Alan Wei Xiang, etc.) except Shen Teng, but among more than 20 investors, there is not even a twist figure, and the main controller is Xinli Media, the first producer of "This killer is not very calm".

However, the audience who did not know what to do came out of the cinema and scolded the twist.

During the period when Xing Ye was most popular on the Internet, one of the major crimes was that he was alone, and the artists who signed the contract terminated their contracts one after another, because they could not receive plays for many years. Of course, this sounds very unreliable, because the artist's fame has a short shelf life, and while it is still hot, you should hurry up and make a few more money.

But the problem is that, firstly, the fame of these artists comes from participating in Zhou's comedy, and secondly, Xingye's film output in the later period is very low, and it does take several years to have a play, but if he is like a happy twist, let his artists take on as many plays as possible, regardless of the quality, then in the same way, it will not only damage those signed artists, but also affect Xingye's own reputation.

As for the "content" repeatedly mentioned by the media, if you can only rely on Feng Xiaogang like Huayi, and Feng's comedy is not "excellent" or unhappy, this is certainly not a long-term solution, and finally leads to "the loss of water in the pond and the city gate".

How to break the game

When it comes to happy twist comedy movies, the impressions in the minds of ordinary people are actually very homogeneous: no matter which director directed it, no matter what the "content" is, although there may be differences in quality, the model itself is not much different - routine.

This is a terrible situation, especially for a film label that specializes in comedy.

How to break the game?

This cannot fail to mention what almost all film and television companies or some Internet giants want to be - Marvel.

Marvel has also been declining in the past two years, but the brilliance created in global popular culture before, as well as the overall phased planning, are worth Happy Twist's reference.

Solo movies such as Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Ant-Man, Spider-Man, Deadpool, and team battle works such as "Guardians of the Galaxy" and "Avengers", although they are all superheroes, have their own characteristics in movie style, with elements such as spy warfare, comedy, theft, teenagers, black heavy mouths, etc., as far as possible to produce chemical reactions with the superhero theme of the base.

Moreover, there is no "Tang content" problem - although Robert Downey Jr., who plays Iron Man, is the "veteran" of Marvel movies and has the highest popularity, not every Marvel movie needs his appearance, but everyone can also be alone.

In the same way, Happy Twist should also do more subdivision in comedy, trying to explore and amplify the personal characteristics of its different directors and actors, rather than just "dividing pork" like sending tasks.

For example, on the basis of the original twist comedy style, it is extended to elements such as thriller, crime, emotion, etc., and even increases the action scenes; You can also try to drastically reduce the dialogue and advance the plot purely with body movements, just as there are branches such as pantomime in drama.

However, this tests the "persistent" ability of the creative side. Looking at the domestic film and television industry, it is comparable to Marvel's stable output rhythm, and there is no one.

Only by facing up to its own advantages and disadvantages, as well as the actual gap between it and the "ceiling", can it be possible to make "Super Family" a "technical and artistic adjustment" of the happy twist film and television sector, rather than a real Waterloo.

Written by | Li Yi

Curated | Editorial Department of Entertainment Spring and Autumn