丨This article was first published in the Pippi movie
Pigo came today to introduce a "strange" film.
It is the only martial arts film "Prodigal Son of border city" filmed by Hong Kong's "film all-rounder" Chen Xunqi before 2000, which is adapted from Gu Long's martial arts novel of the same name.
Catching up with the great trend of martial arts movies in the 90s, Chen Xunqi, who can play anything that can be magical, was full of ambition that year, won the support of Taiwan's Longxiang Film Industry, and took the entire crew to the inner Mongolian steppe to shoot this film.
The film's producers include three companies: Inner Mongolia Film Studio, Xunqi Film Production Company and Longxiang Film Company.
In addition to the role of Ye Tian in the film by himself, the actors also found Dillon as Fu Hongxue, Chen Yulian as Shen Sanniang, Yuan Yongyi as Ding Linglin, Yuan Jieying as Ma Fangling, and Hong Kong and mainland stars to join, with many characters and an extremely strong lineup.
Such a huge investment of a work, when it was released in 1993, it just happened to hit the tide of martial arts movies, and it was released in only 1 week, and it got 1.54 million Hong Kong dollars at the box office.
However, the story surrounding this film continues, and Chen Xunqi, who is not willing to fail, has made a comeback two years later, and with his own strength, he has written another legend.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" >, a vendetta</h1>
The master of the Excalibur Hall, "Excalibur Invincible", Bai Yu, was killed by his righteous brother Ma Kongqun, the master of the Wanma Hall in Guandong, and Ding Baiyun, the "White Cloud Fairy".
Bai Yu's family was tragically destroyed, and only Bai Feng and his son were spared.
Soon after The birth of Hua Baifeng's son, he was transferred by Lady Bai, the original match of Bai Yu, and was raised by Ye Ping and his wife and named Ye Kai, who worshiped Li Xunhuan as a teacher and learned a good martial art.
Hua Baifeng's adopted son, named Fu Hongxue, was taught by Hua Baifeng from an early age to avenge his father and take revenge as his life goal.
Although Ye Kai was the true son of Bai Yu, he was positively taught by Li Xunhuan and had already let go of his obsession with the previous generation's grievances.
Fu Hongxue came to the border town for revenge, and Ye Kai also came here in order to dissolve the hatred of the previous generation.
Ma Kongqun and Ding Baiyun had been discovering the fact that Bai Yu had an illegitimate child for many years, and they had already made preparations.
The two sides fought a series of bloody battles in the border towns, and finally Ma Kongqun, Ding Baiyun and Hua Baifeng all failed to escape the fate of being killed, and Fu Hongxue, who learned the truth, finally freed himself from hatred and became himself.
In the end, Fu Hongxue and Ye Kai became friends of life and death, they lit a fire, turning Wan Ma Tang into ashes, and the grievances of the previous generation also became the dust of history with the fire.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > second, a large number of deletions and deletions</h1>
The film is self-written and self-directed by Chen Xunqi, who is very familiar with novels and has done his best to preserve the original appearance of the novel.
Therefore, around the main line of revenge, there are many characters and story lines in the film, although intricate but not chaotic.
However, when it was released, it underwent terrible deletions, resulting in the "great injury" of the film.
In fact, after the completion of the film, Chen Xunqi edited a version of about 140 minutes long, but the filmmakers considered that the length of more than two hours was really difficult to schedule, so they cut it by 39 minutes and became 101 minutes.
One of the important characters, the role of Cui Nong (played by Xu Lin), the daughter who was sent into the land of fireworks by Ma Kongqun in the original work, was completely deleted; the role of the other character, Shen Sanniang (played by Chen Yulian), was also mostly deleted.
Such a big change makes the transition of the scenes in the film and the connection of the story have a big problem.
Therefore, although the martial arts are very exciting when the movie is released, the audience can see the clouds and fog and feel confused.
Coupled with the proliferation of martial arts movies in 1993, such a "lack of weight and two" works were difficult to stand out from more than 30 films in the market at that time, and the box office failure was also reasonable.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > third, unwilling Chen Xunqi</h1>
As a creator, Chen Xunqi was not willing to let his hard-earned conscience masterpiece be buried like this, he re-edited the original material, and then summoned Renma Er to inner Mongolia to make up the shot, and finally launched another work in 1995, "The Benevolent Invincible".
The length of "Invincible" is 92 minutes, and most of the shots are taken from the cut material of "The Prodigal Son of the Border City".
Including the plot related to Cui Nong and Shen Sanniang, only about 30 minutes of footage coincided with "The Prodigal Son of the Border City".
The final battle scene of "The Prodigal Son of Border City" is in the Wan Ma Tang, where Fu Hongxue and Ye Kai join forces to fight Ma Kongqun and Ding Baiyun; Chen Xunqi re-shoots another final battle scene for "The Invincible Benevolent".
Because he could not find Dillon to come back to participate, he had to go on his own, and then found Qu Ying in the mainland to play Ding Baiyun in place of Wang Luyao, and staged the drama of Ye Kai vs Ding Baiyun.
After the film was completed, it was not released in Hong Kong, but aimed at the mainland market.
Since the box office data of the films released in the mainland at that time did not count, we have no way of knowing the specific box office data.
But combining "The Prodigal Son of the Border City" and "Invincible for Good" gives us at least a glimpse of the whole picture of the film.
Now some netizens have merged the two movies into one, edited into a complete movie, and named it "The Invincible Benevolent Of the Prodigal Son of the Border City".
There are two versions with different lengths, one is 163 minutes and the other is 181 minutes, in addition to the length, the content and picture quality are different.
Although "The Prodigal Son of the Border City" does not have a very deep artistic theme, it can be seen that Chen Xunqi has devoted great efforts to the film.
The choreography of each action scene in the film is extremely elaborate, with 1-on-1 solo duels; martial arts group scenes; explosion scenes; and carriage chases, which are unprecedented in similar genres.
In the fast-food film market environment of the 90s, director Chen Xunqi dared to make such a grand martial arts movie, which was really an adventurous innovation.
But such an all-encompassing martial arts masterpiece is doomed to be difficult to do in the narrow film market with more monks and fewer porridges.
The cultural environment of Hong Kong at that time could not tolerate the works of craftsmen whose length was more than two hours.
In addition to this film, Dillon's "A Knife to the City" and "Barefoot Kid" in the same year also suffered the same fiasco; and Longxiang Pictures' "Late Qing Dynasty" trilogy also lost a lot; Chen Xunqi did not dare to touch the ancient costume martial arts theme for more than ten years after this film.
Until later, he turned to the mainland and launched "The Army Order of the Female Generals of Yangmen" in 2011, but it became another "disaster blockbuster".
However, after 27 years, this movie is still an irreproducible classic.
Text/Pippi Film Editorial Department: Bloody Dan Heart
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