In the 1980s, with the success of land-Hong Kong co-productions such as "Shaolin Temple" and "Kapok Robes", making north-to-earth filming an advanced choice for many Hong Kong filmmakers, but not everyone was as lucky as Zhang Xinyan, Xu Xiaoming and Chen Kexin. The kung fu movie that Xiaobian talked to you about today, "King Kong: Death Redemption", is a major failure case of Hong Kong directors going north to shoot films.
Directed by Luo Yongchang and co-starring Shi Yanneng (Shi Xingyu), Liu Chengjun, Nan Xianjun and others, the film tells the story of the anti-Japanese period, When Japanese militarism was prevalent, at the behest of Amanogawa Bear (Kurata Yasuaki), Daisuke Cangsheng (Liu Chengjun) gathered outstanding Japanese samurai to rebuild the Hades King Kong Shrine at the foot of Southern Shaolin in Fujian Province.
Its purpose is twofold, one is to train more Hades warriors to make Chinese, and the other is to introduce King Kong K-29 (Shi Yanneng). Originally a killer of the Hades Shrine, this King Kong converted to Shaolin and practiced the 17-second killing technique under master Yuan Zu (You Benchang).
The master died and the master was captured, forcing King Kong to return to the Hades Shrine. He defeated the altar master Tie Murray (Jiang Baocheng), the altar master of the wounded altar, the mad ape (Nam Hyun-joon), and the altar master Cangsheng Daisuke. In the process of going deep into the Hades Shrine, he found his brother K-31 (Dong Yanlin) and finally rescued all the imprisoned warriors and children with the help of everyone.
The film was released in the mainland in 2013 in the National Day file, with an investment of up to 80 million yuan, but the final box office was only 12.53 million (according to Maoyan Professional Edition). The Douban score of this film is only 5.4 points, resulting in such a double defeat at the word-of-mouth box office, and Xiaobian believes that there are the following reasons.
First, the overhead is too strong, resulting in the audience's low sense of substitution for the plot. Although this film takes the anti-Japanese period as the historical background, it is only briefly mentioned at the beginning, and the follow-up plot is not explained, so the sense of reality of the whole film is reduced.
Second, the schedule of this film is not well chosen. This film was released in the 2013 National Day file, and among the films in the same period as this film, the largest volume is Xu Ke's "Di Renjie's God Dragon King"; the genre dominant is "Escape from Heaven"; the volume is not enough, but the star box office appeal is blessed with "White Fox" and "Magic".
On the other hand, this film is not dominant in terms of genre and volume, and the lead actor does not have a strong box office appeal, so the final box office failure of this film also has certain congenital reasons.
But despite this, the action scenes of this film still have a lot of points to watch, and even Shihiko can proudly say in an interview: "Some of the action scenes of "King Kong" are better than "Wolf Warrior 2". ”
The film combines brazilian jiu-jitsu, karate, Western fighting and other world martial arts cultures, and more importantly, Shihiko can join the Shaolin boxing moves, such as the first fight with Tie Murray, the use of Luohan Sleep, and the middle section and the crazy ape fight, which can see Shihiko's imagination in action design.
The director of this film, Luo Yongchang, was the executive director of Du Qifeng, and after filming this film, he parted ways with Galaxy Image, who has been working for nearly 20 years, and began his own road to filming in the north. But the whole process was not too smooth: when filming "Frozen: The Gate of Rebirth", although the stars were gathered, the box office reputation had failed; the web drama "Notes on the Tomb Robber" became "Notes on Protecting treasures" for well-known reasons, and suffered a lot of doubts. It wasn't until 2019's "Little Q" that Luo Yongchang played a turnaround battle.
The screenwriter of this film, Yang Zhenjian, is the vice president of Qilin Pictures, who has served as a screenwriter and artist for the "Painted Skin" series. After filming this film, in 2018, he cooperated with Zhang Peng, the action director of this film, to shoot the fantasy blockbuster "Asura", this time as a screenwriter and executive producer. Although "Asura" has Wu Lei, Liang Jiahui, Liu Jialing and other big coffee sitting in the seat, it is still ridiculed by the group for its exaggerated world view and special effects after the release, and it is also rare in the industry to urgently withdraw the file only two days after the release.
Regarding "King Kong: Redemption of Death", it may be more exciting behind the scenes than in front of the stage, although the editor failed to find more detailed behind-the-scenes information, but for filmmakers who are still on the rise, it also has important significance: it tells us to do what we can, do not overestimate or underestimate ourselves. Although it is a fortunate thing to be able to take over a big production, if your own ability has not yet reached that point, or the right to speak is in the hands of others, it will only lead to an embarrassing situation like this film. (Zhang Liyuan)