The summer file, the National Day Golden Week, the "May Day" Golden Week and the Spring Festival are important nodes of the film box office throughout the year, which have attracted much attention. In a blink of an eye, the summer vacation of 2024 is already halfway over. The movies released in the past month or so have not been as popular as expected by the audience. "Decryption", "Silent Killing", "Catching Dolls", "There is a Canteen by the Clouds" and several foreign films, although there is a certain degree of discussion, they cannot be regarded as real hits.
"Silent Killing" and "Catching the Doll" both pay attention to the mental health problems of children, which are very popular nowadays. "Catching the Doll" presents the behavior of parents in the name of love, manipulating their children's lives, as well as panoramic monitoring and kidnapping education, in a humorous way. This is the third part of the "Xihong City Universe" series after "Charlotte's Troubles" and "The Richest Man in Xihong City", and it has also sparked discussions because of the criticism of director Lu Chuan's release of "low-quality and strong alkaline comedy films" on Weibo.
As of August 3, the box office of the summer season in 2024 will exceed 8 billion yuan. Compared with the summer box office of 20.619 billion yuan in 2023, there is still a big gap between this figure and the box office of 20.619 billion yuan. This year's summer file is tired as a whole, and it has always been so bad. Therefore, the box office results in August are particularly important to the total box office of the summer season.
Among the new movies released in August, "Retrograde Life" is one of the most concerned. Xu Zheng, the former comedy brother, returned to the summer file after "I Am Not the God of Medicine", which is regarded as a "shot in the arm" for the summer file in 2024.
Stills from "Retrograde Life".
"Retrograde Life" still depicts the joys, sorrows, and sorrows of little people: Gao Zhilei, a manager of a large factory, is middle-aged and unemployed, facing the life dilemma of being old, young, with a mortgage in the middle, and a wife at home, so he has to choose the business of food delivery to make a living. The film expresses the life difficulties of middle-aged people and the life of the bottom of society in a humorous and witty way. The positive values advocated by the film give the audience more joy and hope, and also make the film closer to market acceptance. It is not difficult to predict that "Retrograde Life" will be the most worthwhile movie to watch this summer, but the ideological touch brought by Xu Zheng's "I Am Not the God of Medicine" a few years ago has always been almost meaningless - business is not classic, and it is not memorable.
Brilliant in 2023 Callback in 2024 The Chinese film industry is humble to learn from the world
Last year's summer file continued to be excellent. The animated film "Thirty Thousand Miles of Chang'an" aroused the memory of the Chinese people for the prosperous era of the Tang Dynasty, the first part of "Fengshen" opened the "star-making mode", "All or Nothing" put the true story of northern Myanmar's electric fraud on the screen, "In the Octagonal Cage" focuses on struggle and hard work, and "Dad" focuses on the choice of different family education. The number of moviegoers exceeded 500 million, the box office exceeded 20.6 billion yuan, and the 2023 summer file was praised as "the strongest summer file in history". Through last year's hot film market, we can see not only the high consumption enthusiasm of Chinese film audiences, but also the growth of local creative forces in Chinese films and the rising Chinese film industry.
The glory of 2023, the correction of 2024, and the temporary downturn cannot negate the achievements of the Chinese film industry in recent years.
Take this summer's "Decryption" as an example. This red-themed film, directed by Chen Sicheng, starring Liu Haoran, and starring Chen Daoming, Wu Yanzu and Yu Feihong, has added many new technologies and new film narrative styles. For example, how to deduce the psychological activities of mathematicians, the director adopted the dual themes of "dream interpretation" and "mathematics", which is quite in the style of Hollywood movies "Inception" and "Imitation Game", which is very different from the narrative logic of suspense films that the audience is familiar with. In addition to being unacceptable to some audiences, can we give some creative space to cutting-edge directors who dare to break through their comfort zone?
10 years ago, as the five Chinese directors of the "Sino-US Film Talent Exchange Program", Chen Sicheng and others lined up on the bench where "Forrest Gump" starred in "Forrest Gump" sat and sat on their knees, like primary school students who are eager for knowledge. These overage "primary school students" are full of longing for the future of Chinese films, and they also have the devotion to humbly seek advice from the film power.
(The two on the right are Chen Sicheng)
At the sub-forum of "High-quality Development of the Film Industry" of the 2024 Cultural Power Construction Summit Forum held in Shenzhen in May this year, Chen Sicheng recalled the bits and pieces of studying in the United States and said: "I was deeply inspired by this trip to the United States." In addition to gaining inspiration, the young directors who went to the United States to study may have also been inspired to have higher ambitions: to make great works like "Forrest Gump" and catch up with the pace of the United States film industry.
"Decryption" may still have a long way to go from greatness, but it cannot deny Chen Sicheng's determination to boldly innovate. Chen Sicheng has continued to work in recent years, and several other cutting-edge directors who have gone to the United States to "study" have also invested a lot of energy in the creation of their works.
Among the 5 directors, the eldest Ning Hao became famous earlier, "Crazy Stone", "Crazy Racing", "No Man's Land" and "Heart Flower Road" are all familiar works to the audience. Guo Fan's "The Wandering Earth" series carries the exploration dreams of several generations of Chinese astronauts. Xiao Yang has had wonderful performances in many acclaimed and acclaimed movies. It can be said that these "post-70s" and "early-80s" filmmakers are the backbone of Chinese films at this stage. Every year's summer file, there are more or less their contributions.
The dream of a filmmaker and the strategic planning of the country
Filmmakers have the dreams of filmmakers, and the country also has strategic planning and calm thinking in the development of the film industry.
In 2021, the National Film Administration issued the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Chinese Films", which made it clear that it will strive to focus on launching about 10 acclaimed and popular film masterpieces every year, and about 50 domestic films with an annual box office of more than 100 million yuan. By 2025, the total number of screens will exceed 100,000, and the mainland will be built into a film power in 2035.
Mao Yu, deputy director of the Film Bureau of the Central Propaganda Department, who is in charge of daily work, said bluntly that Chinese films are still in the initial stage of development, and even if the box office of the film market reaches 100 billion, it does not mean that we are a film power. "China's film companies are still very weak, compared with Disney, which had a market value of more than $350 billion at the peak, and Netflix, which had a market value of more than $280 billion, we are still 'primary school students' of films, we need high-quality film companies, and we need to continue to promote the marketization, industrialization, and digital reform of films to shorten the distance."
The summer file is another exploration of the integration of Chinese films with the world. The term "summer file" comes from United States, which has previously been considered a box office off-season in China. Since "Ambush on All Sides" won 150 million box office in 2004, this nearly three-month film schedule has gradually attracted attention. In the summer of 2009, the mainland film market had a summer file for the first time, and in 13 weeks, it created a box office of 1.65 billion. In the summer of 2010, nearly 60 movies were released, with a box office of more than 2 billion.
In the past 10 years, the summer season has been making a huge contribution to the box office of Chinese films. Since 2014's "Breakup Master" won a box office of 663 million, "Monster Hunt", "Tomb Robbery Notes", "Wolf Warrior 2", "I Am Not the God of Medicine", "Nezha's Demon Boy Descends", "Eight Hundred", "Chinese Doctor", "Lonely on the Moon" and "All or Nothing" are the summer box office champions in the past 10 years. Among them, "All or Nothing" became the highest-grossing movie in the history of the summer file with a score of 3.525 billion. The results of "Disappearing Her" in the same year are also almost the same, and the double hit in the summer of 2023 will be born.
Is it enough to be good at the box office? What is missing in Chinese cinema?
Of course, measuring whether a movie is great is not just by looking at the box office. To evaluate whether a country's or region's film market is developing benignly, it is not just based on the attendance rate.
I believe that in the minds of many fans, domestic film works in the 1980s and 1990s can be called classics. "Farewell My Concubine" portrays the times and the fate of the characters, making this work perennially at the top of the list of the best films in China.
30 years later, domestic films focus on the domestic box office and are becoming more and more distant from the international market. More than ten years ago, the annual box office of Chinese films was only a billion yuan, and now it has already reached a scale of tens of billions of yuan. China is the world's fastest-growing film market, but there are not many works that can really impress audiences psychologically and gain recognition in the international market.
Looking a little further, neighboring Korea has made a big splash in filmmaking in recent years. From the former "small film country" to the Oscar and the three major international film festivals, the Korea film industry has gradually formed its own style from imitation and learning, and has occupied a place in the world film industry with the help of international trends. If 10 years ago, the perception of Korea films was limited to "good-looking commercial films" and personality directors such as Kim Ki-duk, then after "Parasite" won Cannes and Oscars in 2019, no one questioned its artistic standards and industrial system. Today, Korea movies have become a calling card of the "Korean Wave".
The Korean film "Parasite" won the Oscar for Best Picture.
Back to the beginning of the article, director Lu Chuan posted an article criticizing "Catching the Doll" as a "low-quality and strong alkaline comedy", and this evaluation of comedy sketch movies was resisted by some public opinion. Regardless of whether Lu Chuan's summary is objective and rational, but are our movies in the past few years really flawless? Does our work tolerate any objections?
"Tell China's stories well and spread China's voices". Making Chinese films well is also a way to tell Chinese stories and spread Chinese voices, which is not contrary to the self-reflection and growth of the Chinese film industry. On the contrary, in the development of the film industry, continuous learning and self-adjustment, Chinese stories can be told more loudly on the international stage, and Chinese films can be more widely recognized in the global market.
Author丨Yang Ying, senior chief writer of Shenzhen Satellite TV Direct News