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If you choose the worst among Jiang Wen's many movies, it seems that it is "One Step Away".
On the surface, the film perfectly illustrates what it means to "expect more, the greater the disappointment."
The investment of 300 million, bringing together a number of big names in the film industry, but after the release of the film, it only received 513 million box office, only to see the box office account even the cost can not be recovered, the audience comments are even more pounced on the home, Jiang Wen's word-of-mouth myth is also over.
Now that we look back at this new film with the strongest momentum in 2014, in fact, Jiang Wen still made a lot of efforts when he was creating and before and after the release. Unloading that high expectation, although the quality of the film is far less than the other works he directed, it is not as bad as the audience says.
01、
On the eve of the release, it encountered the dilemma of "not passing the trial"
We turned the clock back to the end of 2014, when One Step Away was about to be released, and audience expectations were filled with the success of the last One Let the Bullets Fly.
"One Step Away" is an upgraded version of "Let the Bullets Fly" from any point of view - the investment of "Let the Bullets Fly" is 150 million, and "One Step Away" directly soared to 300 million.
In "Let the Bullets Fly", Jiang Wen, Zhou Runfa and Ge You's three giants gathered, and in "One Step Away", Jiang Wen and Ge You continued to fight, and although Fa Ge was gone, Jiang Wen found Wang Zhiwen, Shu Qi, Tao Hong, and Wen Wen to make up for the vacancy of Fa Ge.
In order to make the story more solid, Jiang Wen also found Wang Shuo to polish the script together, and Wang Shuo's novel has a characteristic of "speaking people's words", which just makes up for Jiang Wen's self-congratulations.
With so much good news, "One Step Away" made the audience look through after the finalization of December 18, 2014, and the filmmakers also took advantage of the trend to open pre-sale 47 days in advance (official online pre-sale on November 1, 2014), and the daily box office increased by millions, with a pre-sale of 120 million in just 19 days, and the situation was very good.
Jiang Wen himself also made a bold statement: to lay down the "Transformers 4" released in the same year (content source: City Express reported).
Fast forward to the release month, Jiang Wen is still trying to promote, but things have changed without warning - first the media venue was cancelled for "technical reasons", then "One Step Away" was rumored to be "not reviewed", and not long after the premiere scheduled for December 8 was also withdrawn, three thousand fans from all over the world rushed to Beijing looked at each other for a while (content from: Huaxia Jingwei Network report).
For the sudden "accidents", the filmmakers also officially issued an apology statement and explained: a new situation occurred at the end of the review work.
There is no specific explanation in the statement of "new situation", but a "form of opinion" circulating on the Internet can provide reference.
In this "opinion form", we can see that the questions and opinion columns are written in detail with specific modification opinions, mainly including plots, lines, and vulgar pictures, and the content of ancient historical figures also needs to be adjusted.
At the same time, the actor Na Ying also revealed in a social media post that he was going to re-dub the newly changed lines, and said that the words "Zhong San Zhong Four, Hua Guo" and other words in the film have been modified.
Is this opinion form credible? Compared with the positive film and Na Ying's social media dynamics, Pigo believes that it is still credible. However, we can also see that the film is not a big problem, at least it does not hurt the bones, and the "inappropriate content" has been directly pointed out.
The filmmakers made urgent revisions and resubmitted for review in early December, and on December 12, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television gave a decision to reiterate their approval, and the release of "One Step Away" on the 18th was not affected.
Although the "off-site accidents" have been repeated, it has not affected the expectations of fans for this new film, and "not reviewed" has added an irresistible sense of mystery to the film.
While the heat continues to ferment, the film's pre-sale box office continues to climb, approaching 300 million on December 17 (the day before its release).
At this rate, it seems that the box office of 2 billion after the release of "One Step Away" seems to be a natural success. The filmmakers are also confident that this new film has no pressure at the box office (600 million) of "Let the Bullets Fly" 4 years ago.
02、
The pre-sale box office was 300 million, but the total box office after the official release was only 513 million
No one would have thought that the well-known Jiang Wen would "flip over" on this new work.
Since the day of the official appearance of "One Step Away" on December 18, the Internet has given bad reviews on one side, and the audience has complained that they "can't understand what the movie is shooting at all."
Jiang Wen's fans Shi Hang and other film critics have lost their voices, and the rating on Douban is only 6.2 points (160,000 users participate), creating Jiang Wen's worst record.
The collapse of word-of-mouth also caused the film's box office to fall off a cliff, and in the end, the box office of "One Step Away" was only 513 million.
Strangely, although "One Step Away" has a tidal wave of bad reviews, almost no one has classified it as a bad film, and the key words of audience evaluation are mainly "can't understand".
There's a vulgar review that summed up the film precisely: One Step Away is a gorgeous piece of.
Pigo also wants to admit here that after the film was released, I went to the theater for the first time to see this film, and the viewing experience was: the sofa in the theater was very soft, and I had the feeling of sleeping in the theater for the first time.
03、
Jiang Wen's "One Step Away", as Jiang Wen's fifth film, is really only "one step away" from God's work?
Revisiting this film many years later, you can still see Jiang Wen's good intentions.
"One Step Away" is a very Jiang Wen film, the film is adapted from the "Yan Ruisheng Case", borrowing the ancient irony of the present, it is a deep reflection on the current situation of materialism in the current society.
At the end of "Let the Bullets Fly", Zhang Mazi's little brothers left their big brothers for Shanghai, while "One Step Away" undertook "Let the Bullets Fly" and set the story in Shanghai. As the second part of the "Beiyang Trilogy", the time of this film is still the reign of the Beiyang government.
Wu Qi, the son of the warlord Wu Dashuai (Played by Wen Wen), who was entrenched in Shanghai at the time, was humiliated and found the former Qing Dynasty old Man Ma Zhaori (Jiang Wen) for help, and the confrontation between the two people at the beginning of the film is obviously a tribute to "The Godfather".
Subsequently, Ma went to the French Concession in Shanghai and joined hands with his long-time friend Xiang Feitian to plan the "President of Huayu" beauty contest, and Yan Ying (Shu Qi) was successfully crowned.
Ma Zaori and Yan Ying continued the frontier, when the two were dating, after Yan Ying chen corpse wilderness, Ma Zouri became the number one suspect, he found Wu Qi's sister Wu Liu (Zhou Yun) to help him clear the charges, but the yin and yang mistakenly saved Xiang Feitian, but Xiang Feitian used Ma Zhaori as a chip to add officials to the knighthood.
Ma Zhaori and Xiang Feitian turned against each other, and their duel was essentially the duel between Zhang Mazi and Huang Silang in "Let the Bullets Fly".
One is the horse walking day, the other is Xiang Feitian (elephant flying field), in that era of materialistic desires, the pace of the horse walking day can never catch up with the pace of "elephant flying field" climbing.
When Jiang Wen filmed "One Step Away", he returned to the tone of "The Sun Also Rises", he was extremely self-centered, fusing elements such as love, comedy, song and dance, satire, suspense, and tribute into one furnace to cook a colorful but delicious feast.
The film is wrapped in his strong personal style, and it can be clearly felt that Jiang Wen has been in the creative process, satisfying himself and taking precedence over pleasing the audience, resulting in that in the eyes of fans, "One Step Away" is very Jiang Wen, and in the eyes of ordinary audiences, the story is divided, the rhythm is unbalanced, the lines are strange, and they can't understand what to express at all.
The distance between "One Step Away" and The Divine Work is really a step away, and Jiang Wen's difference is not talent, but moderation of talent.
If when he is making films, there is a big guy who can supervise him and stop him from flying away, then he can make a good movie that is appreciated by both customs and customs. Unfortunately, the success of "Let the Bullets Fly" has brought Jiang Wen's right to speak to the peak, everything is up to him, and it is not surprising that he finally made a "One Step Away" that the audience did not buy.
04、
Is it objective to be ridiculed by the group after the release?
However, what makes Pi Ge strange is that in the domestic film, the Douban score of 6.2 is already a qualified work, and "One Step Away" is no matter how bad it is, it will not fall into the fate of being ridiculed by the whole network group.
And 6 years later, the Douban score of "One Step Away" has climbed to 6.5 points.
Let's do a simple arithmetic.
The average score given to "One Step Away" by 160,000 people that year was 6.2 points.
Today, 250,000 people have given "One Step Away" an average score of 6.5.
This means that the 90,000 people who scored it later gave "One Step Away" an average score of more than 7 points.
Jiang Wen's film has always been the first spicy, the more tasteful, the rating trend of "One Step Away" is basically in line with the characteristics of his film, Pigo predicted that over time, the score of "One Step Away" will eventually break 7 points.
A 7-point movie should be mixed, and even if the praise is greater than the depreciation, there must be something wrong with one-sided bad reviews.
In terms of knowledge, someone gave such an analysis, to the effect that this is the marketing strategy of the film side, "One Step Away" itself is a 70-point work, in the first few months before the release of the momentum to make enough, give the audience 100 points of expectation, rely on pre-sale to earn back the cost.
Then organized to reduce their own films to 50 points of bad films, so that ordinary audiences will feel that "the original film is not as bad as the Internet says", which helps the film to make enough passers-by.
Pigo disagrees.
Friends who are familiar with Jiang Wen know that he is an extremely narcissistic person, in "Thirteen Invitations", he said that the writer he most admires is himself, in "Let the Bullets Fly", he just said "I want to stand and make money", how can I turn my head and play such a small trick in "One Step Away"? No way!
Further, if it is just to make money, Jiang Wen knows how to please the audience, he can completely hit a "Let the Bullets Fly 2" while the iron is hot to achieve commercial success, not toss for three years, and then use these off-the-plate tricks to gamble on an unpredictable ending.
In the end, Jiang Wen is by no means a reason to play a mysterious and profound, when talking about "Let the Bullets Fly", he said that many film critics surprised him by the excessive interpretation of this movie, and later when filming "Evil Does Not Pressure the Right", the title of the film was originally called "Xia Cain", Jiang Wen was afraid that others would say that he was mysterious, so he changed the title to "Evil Does Not Pressure the Right". And Jiang Wen himself also said that the most difficult thing about a movie is not to tell a story, the most difficult thing is not to tell a story.
Therefore, "One Step Away" is Jiang Wen's own true feelings, a soul dialogue that he really wants to carry out with the audience.
05、
One side down the essence of bad reviews
Pico thinks the root of the problem lies in the critics!
We can imagine that when "One Step Away" is released, a large number of film critics are waiting to eat this cake: analyzing the plot, collecting golden sentences, touting the box office, and even some even rubbing hot articles are written in advance.
As a result, as soon as the film was released, the film critics were confused.
Why? The film is too obscure.
Film critics were eager to see a Let the Bullet Fly 2, only to wait for a "The Sun Also Rises 2".
This situation appeared in 2007 when "The Sun Also Rises" was released, but at that time, the influence of social media platforms was still very general, there were not so many dedicated film critics, and the public's aesthetic of the film was not so strong, which was so confused.
But 2014 was different. Mobile phones have become popular, social media have risen, and a large wave of people have developed the habit of watching movies first by looking at word of mouth and then deciding whether to buy tickets.
Everyone is waiting for first-hand reviews.
But "One Step Away" is too obscure, film critics can't find an angle to blow, big V has ideas but also knows the truth that more words must be lost, only not to speak.
The silence was not long, and some impatient film critics could not sit still, and began to say that "One Step Away" was a bad film, saying that "Jiang Lang was exhausted", saying that the film was rotten and colorful.
The others responded instantly, and the righteous people in the world threw rotten eggs at Jiang Wen, and the situation of bad reviews on one side was thus formed.
A few days after the release of the film, the first people who dared to eat crabs appeared, they tried to find an angle to re-taste the film, some people found tributes and funny memes from the film, some people found Out Jiang Wen's view of history from "Let the Bullets Fly" and "One Step Away", some people interpreted various metaphors, some people pulled out Jiang Wen's ridicule of the entertainment industry.....
In short, Jiang Wen first completed the creation, and a large number of film critics completed the second creation, because of the characteristics of Jiang Wen's films, there is a clear lag between the two, and the audience may have reached months and years after reading these comments and understanding or misinterpreting Jiang Wen's points.
And the release period of a movie is only two months at most, and "One Step Away" is too late to wait for the audience to appreciate it, and it is hurriedly offline.
In many art theaters, a movie can be released for a year, it must wait until the audience who appreciates it, "One Step Away" is actually more suitable for meeting the audience in such a posture. But in the current situation in China, it is often art films that are packaged as commercial films and rushed to launch.
The folding of "One Step Away" shows that China's film market is not mature enough, investors are too utilitarian, film critics are not very reliable, lack of correct guidance to the audience, and the audience's aesthetic is still in the bloody carnival brought by movies such as "Wolf Warrior 2", "Red Sea Action", "Wandering Earth" and so on.
Of course, "One Step Away" is not so good, especially compared with Jiang Wen's other works, the shortcomings are obvious. But for such author-type films, Pigo believes that it is more appropriate to maintain some tolerance, and it can also help the film industry develop in a more benign posture.
Text/Pippi Film Editorial Department: A Chicken
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