"Becoming a Secret Agent" was just released, and I went to see it for the first time. I'm still interested in agent-type movies, especially the "agent + comedy + animation" attribute, which can achieve more unscientific but cool scenes, so my original expectations for "Becoming Agent" were relatively high. But after watching it, "Becoming Agent" did not have the expected surprises. Next, let's talk about "Becoming a Secret Agent".
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Inspired by the animated short film Dove in the Dove, Agent Transformation is an adaptation and lengthened work. Compared to "Spy in the Pigeon", "Becoming a Secret Agent" is better in many ways. "Dove in The Dove" is a 6-minute short film with no lines, the content is very simple, about a pigeon flying into the agent's high-tech suitcase, the pigeon's various button operations lead to escalating weapon accidents, and even the launch of missiles.
The plot of "Becoming a Secret Agent" is much more detailed. The plot goes like this: an agent who likes to go it alone makes a mistake during a mission, causing the villain to get away with it, and he is investigated by the Ministry of the Interior. In order to stop the villain as soon as possible, the agent finds the expelled scientist and hopes to get his support, only to accidentally drink the genetic potion and become a pigeon (please ignore the scientific irrationality behind it). Subsequently, agent Pigeon and scientists go after the villains and evade the arrest of the Interior. The ending is naturally a victory for the secret service team, needless to say.
In addition to the rich plot, "Transformation Agent" also added a lot of novel weapon design. Although some weapons do not conform to science, such as lasers that turn the human body into rubber software, the application of most weapons in fight scenes still brings good visual effects. Coupled with some humorous and funny bridges, the content is indeed much better than "Pigeon Spy".
As the official said, "Dove in the Dove" is only a source of inspiration, unlike "CodeName 8", the short film has a more direct connection with the feature film. You basically don't have to watch "Pigeon In the Dove". It is worth mentioning that the main support of "Becoming Agent" is Will Smith and Dutch brother, and some netizens jokingly call it "Men in Black + Spider-Man". However, leaving aside "Spy in the Pigeon", the story of "Becoming Agent" itself still has many shortcomings.
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Online reviews of "Becoming Agent" are not bad or bad. "Not bad" lies in the visual effects and humor, the human setting is very interesting, the film storyboard editing is also quite distinctive, and the fight scene is still relatively good. "Bad" lies in the story, even if there is no large number of readers, you can feel that the story of "Becoming a Secret Agent" is actually very ordinary. Regarding the blandness of the story, it can be viewed from the following perspectives.
First of all, the length of "Becoming a Secret Agent" is relatively short, and the plot line is relatively thin.
In terms of actual length, "Becoming a Secret Agent" is about 100 minutes, the length is not very long, and its plot density is relatively sparse. You can compare "Klaus: The Secret of Christmas", this movie is only 90 minutes, but in addition to the main line of the protagonist completing the postal indicators, it also adds the protagonist and "Santa Claus" Klaus, the protagonist and the local residents, the protagonist and the villain, Klaus's past experience, the changes before and after the female teacher, and many other plots. Although the sub-plots of Klaus: The Secret of Christmas are relatively simple, they are numerous and make the 90-minute film very substantial.
Except for the main line of "The Pigeon Agent takes the scientist to chase the villain", there is basically no sub-plot, and most of the length of the film is placed on the funny bridge. Not only that, the main plot of "Becoming a Secret Agent" is not very rich, and there are fewer twists. Compared with the "007" series of movies, "Becoming a Secret Agent" lacks the process of chasing the villains and twisting and turning, layer by layer. The audience does not feel the difficulty of chasing the villain, naturally there will be no feeling of defeating the villain, everything is too easy.
At the same time, "Becoming a Secret Agent" also has less use of suspense. For example, "Klaus: The Secret of Christmas" was buried in 90 minutes, "Why are the people of this town fighting each other?" "How does the protagonist accomplish the postal target in such a chaotic town?" "What's Klaus's story?" "What is the connection between postal indicators and Christmas secrets?" and many other suspense. Every time a suspense is revealed, it will make people exclaim "Oh, it was so". In "Becoming a Secret Agent", the villain is basically revealed from the beginning, "What happens when the agent becomes a pigeon?" "What cool weapons do scientists have?" And other suspense also lacks surprising answers. This leads to the plot of "Becoming a Secret Agent" has a feeling of "not surprising to the audience".
Second, the story design of "Becoming Agent" begins to go wrong from the moment of motivational events.
An incentive event is an event that can break the balance of the character's life, it stimulates the character's desire to restore the balance of life, so the character begins to act. However, the character will initially take the most conservative action to restore the balance of life, and until he realizes that this will not work, he will take riskier actions. In this way, the story moves forward little by little until the characters take actions that they would never do in the first place, which is usually the climax of the story.
After understanding this, and looking at "Becoming a Secret Agent", it is not difficult to find that the protagonist of the agent takes the most unlikely high-risk action after the emergence of the incentive event. When the agent protagonist brings back an empty chest after the mission, but the real weapon falls into the hands of the villain, and the Home Affairs Bureau also detains the agent protagonist, the protagonist directly chooses to flee and pursue the villain alone.
It is reasonable to say that the conservative action at this time should be to prove self-innocence, and then act with the resources of the secret service. After all, if you are wanted by the secret service, weapons, intelligence, transportation, funds, comrades and other resources are extremely limited, and it is difficult to hunt down villains in such a situation. Moreover, once there is another incident of the villain committing murder in the face of the protagonist during the detention, the protagonist can easily get rid of the suspicion and chase the villain with the entire secret service, which is the most efficient.
The irrationality of the agent protagonist's actions after the incentive event is only a small problem, the bigger question is, how to design the protagonist's biggest action after that? If the option of "fleeing and chasing the villain alone" is the protagonist's most conservative action, then it is difficult to design a riskier action afterwards. It turns out that Agents Don't really design riskier protagonist actions. As a result, the motivational event is followed by a lack of the sense of story progression. This is the fundamental reason why the audience feels that the "story is flat".
In addition, there is a very key question to explain, who is the protagonist of "Becoming Agent"? The analysis of the second point above is based on the premise that the agent is the protagonist. The reason for this is that the agent has the most variations, he has the most problems, and he has gone from "flying alone" to knowing how to work in teamwork, he has also experienced the contrasting second act of becoming a pigeon, and he is also the most actionable and goal-oriented character. If "Becoming a Secret Agent" is regarded as a dual protagonist, then the "main" of the "primary and secondary" is still on the side of the agent. Therefore, most of the discussion in this article revolves around the premise that "the agent is the main protagonist".
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The above is just a problem with the story design technique of "Becoming Agent" itself. If you dig at a higher level, from the original perspective of the creators, the choice of "Becoming Agent" in the general direction of story design is also problematic. In my opinion, "Becoming a Secret Agent" is a bit too obsessed with the inspiration of "Agent Pigeon".
On the one hand, in order to achieve the setting of "Pigeon Agent", many characters are very blunt.
The role of the scientist, in particular, was basically created to explain why agents turned into pigeons. In order to enrich the role of scientists, the creators bluntly added to him the scientific research and development concept that "he believes that secret agent weapons should protect people, not just hurt people", but this concept does not make this concept stand. At the same time, the scientist's attachment to pigeons seems unreasonable. In addition, the change of the protagonist agent from "single-handed" to "teamwork" is actually more blunt, and such a change lacks more powerful support.
In fact, what "Becoming Agent" should be polished the most is the villain character, who is the most prosaic main character in the story. The villain is a man from start to finish, with a robotic arm, and a bunch of drones. This villain setting, you have seen it as early as "Spider-Man: Hero Expedition". And why do villains sabotage? What does he want? What kind of person is he? None of this is answered in the movie. Basically, the villain character is designed just to give the protagonist an enemy as standard. The setting can only be the icing on the cake, the story design should always start from the characters, and "Becoming a Secret Agent" is to let the characters cooperate with the setting, which is obviously the end of the game.
On the other hand, when the creators took the setting of "Agent Pigeon" as a selling point, they did not meet the expectations of the audience very well. No matter how much the genes are mutated, they can't turn people into pigeons, but it is better to design them into superpowers from the beginning. Even if the audience accepts this setting, "Becoming a Secret Agent" should show "what advantages the agent has when he becomes a pigeon".
In the movie, in addition to simply adding some agents to become pigeons, it is basically impossible to see that pigeons have any advantages in being agents. Scientists mentioned the advantages of pigeons as agents, including "unobtrusive", "360° vision", "fast flight speed", etc., which were basically not shown in the pursuit of villains. In other words, the agent becomes a pigeon except for being funny, and the audience doesn't feel any use. In addition, since the pigeons are animals, even if the audience knows that the pigeons are agents, they will still subconsciously treat them as two images, which is a negative impact on the empathic effect of the protagonist.
If there is one thing that makes Agent the biggest problem when it comes to creation, it is that it doesn't dig deeper into more possible ideas. For example, in "Klaus: The Secret of Christmas", the background of the story is still very rich, and the world view is very unique. "Becoming a Secret Agent" does not have its own worldview, if you take the plot, cool weapon props, and funny bridges away, you will find that this movie has no story background at all. The villain, in particular, has no background at all. As a result, the story of "Becoming a Secret Agent" is like a castle in the air. If the creative team had gone deeper into the imagination, it might have led to a more exciting story. But for now, "Becoming a Secret Agent" is still not good enough.