With the start of the summer vacation, animated films have also ushered in a new round of hot screenings in theaters. From the release of "Doraemon: Nobita's Earth Symphony" on May 31 to "White Snake · Floating Life" released on August 10, 21 animated films have been released in the summer this year (including 5 re-releases), with a total of 1.75 billion yuan at the box office. But unfortunately, the cartoons in this year's summer file failed to reproduce the glory of last year's "Thirty Thousand Miles of Chang'an", and the total box office of all films is not as good as the 1.824 billion yuan box office of "Thirty Thousand Miles of Chang'an". Even "White Snake · Floating", which has the most box office potential, is expected to have a total box office of about 700 million yuan. How can animated films further enhance their appeal to audiences? It is worth pondering in the industry.
21 animations were released
The total box office is not as good as a "Thirty Thousand Miles of Chang'an"
Data source: Maoyan Pro
Among the animated movies in the summer file, there are not only fans-oriented Japan animation "Volleyball Boy!! Junkyard Showdown" and "Blue Exclusion Zone: Nagi", "Doraemon: Nobita's Earth Symphony", as well as Hollywood classic animation IPs "The Garfield Family", "Despicable Me 4" and "Mind Agent 2" are also hot. Domestic animation is not to be outdone, among them, there is "Falling Dust", which has gained a good reputation for its excellent production, and "White Snake · Floating Life" and "Guardian of Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf", which have been built into a series of IPs. In addition, original Chinese comics such as "Erlang God's Deep Sea Dragon" and "Umbrella Girl" have also landed in theaters one after another.
Among them, the best box office so far is "Despicable Me 4", with a Douban score of 6.4, creating a new low in the series, and the audience generally responded that "the plot is familiar" and "a very lazy work", but with the IP influence and the cuteness of the Minions, it still attracted a wider audience and achieved a box office of 367 million, but there is a huge gap with the 1.037 billion box office achieved by "Despicable Me 3" in China in 2017.
Pixar Studios' "Mind Squad 2" followed closely at the box office. The first part of the series shows the emotional world of a little girl in the form of a fairy tale, which is not only suitable for younger audiences, but also makes many adults re-examine their emotions, and is suitable for all ages. The second part tells the story of the changes in the life of a little girl after entering puberty, the reputation is still strong, Douban maintains a high score of 8.4, the Chinese box office is 339 million yuan, and the global box office is close to 1.6 billion US dollars, far exceeding the 800 million US dollars of "Despicable Me 4".
In terms of domestic series of animation, "White Snake · Floating", which was released on August 10, is still in theaters, and has achieved 232 million yuan as of August 15, which is expected to exceed the box office of the two previous works. As the 9th part of the "Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf" series, "The Guardian of Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf" is a little weak, and the box office is still less than 84 million, which is a big gap from the 160 million box office of the previous one.
In addition to continuing the traditional IP animation, the original animation represented by "Falling Dust" has also attracted more attention in this summer file. On the basis of following the mythical story of "The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl" and the setting of the 28 constellations, "Falling Dust" has made a bold innovation to traditional mythology: it not only subverts the appearance of the gods in traditional mythology, but also does not repeat the old-fashioned love theme, with brother and sister love as the main line, which is refreshing to the audience, but unfortunately, this film failed to become a box office dark horse.
Break stereotypes
I want both the box office and word of mouth
Animated films seem to be stuck in a dilemma where word-of-mouth and box office are difficult to achieve. Innovative original animations are difficult to gain market recognition because they are not well-known and unfamiliar to the audience; IP-based animated films face challenges such as creative bottlenecks and audience aesthetic fatigue. How to face this dilemma? Some of the past works have provided us with some references.
For original domestic animation, it may still be a safer way to rely on public IP with high recognition for creation, and it is necessary to clearly let the audience understand the source of the IP in terms of title and promotion, so as to avoid being like "Falling Dust". The main creator once said in an interview that the "market awareness" of "Falling Dust" is too low, "Including our title, everyone may think that "Falling Dust" is very poetic, but I don't know what it is about, it is not as direct as those public IPs. The natural weakness of original IP is that not so many people understand it, and the animation itself does not have any star actors, so we have taken a difficult path from the beginning."
"Falling Dust" is actually not a completely original IP, it is also born from the public IP "The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl", a well-known mythological story, but it is a pity that it failed to make full use of this IP in the title and promotion to enhance the audience's interest.
However, on the basis of relying on public IP and establishing audience awareness, it is necessary to interpret new stories through original plots to make the audience feel fresh. "Nezha's Demon Boy Descends to the World", "Journey to the West: The Return of the Great Sage", "White Snake" series and other most successful domestic animations in recent years are all because of this. The reason why "Nezha's Demon Boy Descends to the World" can achieve a box office score of 5.035 billion and a score of 8.4 on Douban is precisely because of its bold innovation. Nezha in the film appeared in front of the audience with an ugly and mournful image, which is completely different from the stereotypical little hero Nezha. But it is precisely this seemingly unpleasing character design that allows the audience to have a new experience of the story, coupled with the high-level production and smooth plot, which has created a double harvest of word-of-mouth and box office for the film.
Secondly, in recent years, domestic animated films seem to focus on the adaptation of various classical fantasy novels, and the display of real characters and events in history is relatively rare, and this is actually a direction worth breaking through, so as to avoid excessive homogeneous competition for public IPs such as Journey to the West and Fengshen Bang. The reason why "Thirty Thousand Miles of Chang'an" was a great success last year was precisely because it found a new way in the selection of topics, with well-known poets such as Gao Shi and Li Bai as the main line, showing the prosperous scene of the Tang Dynasty in the mainland and the ups and downs of the poets' lives. The recitation and visualization of one poem after another make the film a vivid lesson in ancient poetry, which moves Chinese who have been familiar with these verses since childhood.
In terms of how to break through the bottleneck of series IP, the Hollywood animation "Toy Story" series can be called a successful model. The Douban score of its current four-part series is maintained at more than 8.5 points, of which the fourth part has achieved a new development of the series after the end of the third part, when the audience generally believes that the fourth part is difficult to have new ideas. Director Josh Cooley's first sentence in the preface to the setting of "Toy Story 4" is to quote the famous words of the ancient Greece philosopher Heraclitus "The only constant is change", after saying goodbye to their owner Andy, the toys have new adventures and experiences, and the theme is from the interdependence of toys and owners to the independent adventure stories of toys. "Toy Story 4" was not only a great success in word-of-mouth, but also achieved a good result of $1.074 billion at the box office, which shows that the audience is willing to see the traditional animation IP have the courage to innovate and change themselves.
In the context of the production of animation from the technical level has generally reached a high level, in the face of the weakness of the market, creators need to show the courage of self-transformation and more attentive scripts in order to achieve a win-win situation between word-of-mouth and box office.