Wen | Ling Fox Bo Guang
As we all know, Chinese science fiction literature has many excellent works, but science fiction movies so far only the heavy science fiction movie "The Wandering Earth" has been able to get its hands on, and at that time, because of the explosion performance in all aspects, it was praised as opening the door to Chinese science fiction.
But after that, only "Shanghai Fortress" starring Lu Han was released. This science fiction film has been widely criticized by Chinese audiences for its poor quality and word of mouth, and even by some netizens: "The Wandering Earth" has opened the door to Chinese science fiction, but "Shanghai Fortress" has closed it.
Here is not to analyze the shortcomings of "Shanghai Fortress", but everyone may not pay attention, even "Shanghai Fortress" is released in 2019, since the next two years and more than no domestic science fiction films have been released, until recently there are two good science fiction "net big" released.
Before the domestic "net big" also had science fiction themes, but most of them were very bad; the production was shoddy, the setting story was copied from foreign countries, and the actors casually found a few Internet celebrity show figures to complete a science fiction film.
The two recently released "net big" are somewhat different, and one of them is a science fiction film that I personally even think is good. It cannot be said that it has reopened the door to Chinese science fiction films, but the emergence of this film may be an important enlightenment for medium- and low-cost domestic science fiction films.
That is the space thriller "Space Community" starring Lu Jintao, director Zhang Dawei, Ruan Shengwen, Wu Jiao, Xia Wang, etc.
This movie has a lot of problems in terms of quality, but it has several places to beat "Shanghai Fortress", and it is doing well, I think domestic science fiction films if you can't buy well-known science fiction writers to solve the problem of science fiction concepts and styles, this network is worth learning.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="14" > this small-cost "net big" and opened a precedent for Chinese space thriller science fiction films</h1>
The trailer of this science fiction film appeared after "The Wandering Earth", probably in the first half of 2019, the publicity investment at that time was 8 million, which is a huge gap with the 300 million investment of "Shanghai Fortress", and the following is about the story plot and shortcomings.
The film is set in 2047, when Earth's space base captures a mysterious set of signals that scientists believe come from other civilizations in the universe. In order to explore alien civilizations, humans sent a spaceship, Deep Space, to the signal.
Earth named this alien signal the Messenger!
Deep Space sent a probe to detect whether the messenger was alive, and as a result, the probe failed, and human scientific and technological means did not detect any signs of life. So the captain "Yuan" decided to collect some crystals from the messenger and go back to study. As a result, something like a dusty microorganism spread throughout the deep space, and all the crew members were affected.
The heroine is al engineer Yin, who has a problem with her legs due to long-term dormancy and wants to use a wheelchair. By the time the Messenger's crystals spread across Deep Space, she also fainted, and when she woke up, she not only found herself lying on the bed, but also her legs were fine, and at the same time there was something wrong with Deep Space, and there seemed to be some monster outside the cabin.
Then the ship's robot Aiqi ran in, and then was hit by a monster outside the door and fainted due to the impact.
When the heroine treats the robot, she finds that he has the bullet of the captain's gun on him, but before she can ask the deep space if it is hit by a meteorite attack from the messenger and smashes the cabin, she climbs from the vent to the upper floor with the help of the robot, but when she comes to the upper floor, she finds that it is full of strange objects, and there are monsters from time to time.
Immediately after the heroine is attacked by a monster, the next scene is that the heroine restarts the spaceship and becomes entangled with the monster.
When the heroine is almost bitten to death by the monster, she finds that the monster seems to be herself. Then the monster heroine is swallowed up by the huge monster, this time the robot Qi came to her rescue and carried her to the bridge, the heroine found that the captain was swallowed by the monster, and the head grew something like a huge dead branch.
Then the movie explains the setting and context of the whole story, and many viewers say that they do not understand it.
When humans discovered that the Messenger was lifeless, they chose to collect crystals and bring them back to study. But the robot discovered that the messenger's message was a living organism, not a carbon-based creature like a human. As the crystals began to spread, the captain realized that something was wrong and wanted to throw the crystals away, but the robot did not press the button in the end.
This information body infects everyone, and then collapses and wakes up all of them into monsters and is repeatedly devoured and fused. AiQi is a robot so it is okay, the captain knows that after a very angry gun shot the robot, but the robot this call made the captain choose to actively fuse.
Unfortunately, the captain's active fusion failed, but his spiritual body merged with the information body, and the robot was at the critical point of self-consciousness awakening, so the clone of his creator Yin, the heroine, could finally withstand the information body after genetic optimization (probably many times).
Because the captain loves the heroine, the information body devours the monster heroine (which may be the original body or the replicant that failed in the middle), and finally because the robot is not a living body (it may be completely awakened), the information body finally chooses a stable replicant heroine.
There is another line in the film, that is, 150 years later, the "Deep Space spacecraft appeared near the Earth's orbit, and only the heroine of the dormant remained on board." Humans form a provisional committee to investigate the heroine, who tells the committee what happened at that time.
In the usual style of science fiction movies, the heroine is definitely no longer the original human. But she said a word at the end, the messenger's message is a living body, and when humans detect the messenger signal, they come to the earth, leaving a suspense.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="50" > this sci-fi film has many problems, but it has a few points that outperform "Shanghai Fortress"</h1>
The film is a space thriller, and there are obvious traces of learning from foreign science fiction films, and the film itself has many problems, some of which even affect the viewing experience very much.
1, may be because of small cost reasons, the film itself has too many deficiencies.
There are three characters in total, the heroine, the captain and the robot. The Earth Investigation Team is a group of special effects plus dubbing, and there are several supporting roles in the front fleet without any scenes, and the whole process is three people interacting.
Although the three actors are serious, their acting skills are insufficient, and the dubbing used throughout the process is still very written. This feels like the name of the protagonist group. If the robot is called Qi, then the male protagonist is called Yuan, the female protagonist is called Yin, which Chinese in reality use a character code name?
The sense of science fiction on the costume road is insufficient, the male protagonist wears a jacket which is like a captain, the robot wears a turtleneck sweater, and the female protagonist wears a uniform behind it.
This is because the film has limited investment, and the money is used for several large scenes, such as the deep space spaceship vista, the messenger space scene, especially the internal structure of the heroine's escape spaceship, props and monster special effects, it does not do the logical and logical links between the shots.
For example, from deep space to messenger scanning life forms, collecting crystals is very hasty. The crew is infected and changed is a brush stroke, the heroine and the captain are lovers, the creators of the robot Qi, but there is no interaction in front, the structure of the Deep Space is unclear, the details of the crew and life are blurred, and so on.
This leads to the fact that the entire film is transmitted with visual information and the logical narrative is not deeply connected. In the end, it was all explained in the form of chapters, completely supported by several science fiction concepts. Although these are all because of poor and helpless choices, they still affect the viewing experience, whether from the perspective of literary and commercial films.
2, this science fiction film has many problems, but it has several points better than "Shanghai Fortress"
Before turning to the question of "Shanghai Fortress", here are two questions.
One thing that many people may overlook is that Chinese science fiction, like other pop culture industries, is very backward compared with Europe, the United States and Japan, and the industry of backward countries is a process that must be experienced by learning from developed countries, just like the much-anticipated 3A game "Black Myth Wukong".
This learning imitates in addition to industrial technology learning, which science fiction concepts, science fiction aesthetics and science fiction systems and so on. Chinese science fiction writers have their own things after integration and localization in the process of learning (novels cannot establish science fiction aesthetics).
"Black Myth Wukong" also has a rich traditional Chinese culture, the aesthetics of traditional culture to support. Because these original science fiction movies skip the successful part of science fiction writers, they not only have to do science fiction concepts themselves, but also do science fiction aesthetics and image styles from scratch.
This is very rare in terms of the Chinese science fiction environment.
Second, science fiction works are the same as popular culture, the important thing is to learn from the integration of localization success, that is, to find their own style.
This is also the problem of "Shanghai Fortress", it has many problems itself, Lu Han's acting skills and image are not grounded, the story plot and character shaping are bad, etc., but its biggest problem is the science fiction concept, science fiction setting and science fiction aesthetics, etc., anyway, the inconsistencies in the landing of science fiction images.
Science fiction films are fantasized on the basis of science and cannot be completely in line with reality.
The setting of "Shanghai Fortress" is an alien invasion such as "Independence Day", where the battleship bombs the White House, the Empire State Building to show the oppressive power of alien technology, the alien organization is swarm-like, and finally infects the alien mothership with viruses. In fact, a lot of things think about the problem carefully, but at least like that.
The alien setting of this movie is not to be mentioned, the problem is that the various settings and images are not uniform on the ground.
The alien organizational structure is not clear, the alien attack method is as chaotic as the human defense, it is not at all like the system of a science fiction film, just like the Shanghai cannon is now doing a one-person special effect next to Shanghai, which is too stupid to contact the real audience, because it is really too fake.
It's like Shanghai in the whole fortress, the protagonist group and aliens fighting several battlefields, the bar where the male and female protagonists date, the place where everyone lives and the whole cityscape are not at all like a science fiction movie.
When we return to this Space Community, its merits come out.
Some netizens complained that this movie borrowed from the 80s and 90s foreign space thrillers obviously, like the space thriller nature is the famous "Alien", the space creatures and human bodies fusion of "Strange Shapes", aliens through biological information to copy human "Annihilation".
There are more people behind the birth of artificial intelligence wisdom, and the more similar is David of "Prometheus".
The advantage of this film is that it has obvious learning, but it has its own things on two levels.
The first is that the science fiction aesthetics and image style have their own thinking, the deep space spacecraft, the outer space scenery of the Messenger, the interior of the cabin, and the art effects of the monster are only a little bit of the shadow of foreign science fiction films, or have their own things.
In addition to the space thriller atmosphere, "Alien" is most successful in the shaping of space creature aliens, this monster has no similarity; "Strange Shape" is also a fusion of alien creatures and humans, but the image is more grotesque than european and American curt; the Cthulhu-style weirdness of "Annihilation" is not mentioned.
This monster aesthetic is like the "forbidden woman" of the three uncles of the southern sect (the third uncle of the southern school is one of the producers), and a large number of black pheromones are fused with weird but not disgusting, and if you think about it, you still have your own construction.
The second is the concept of science fiction, the expression of science fiction culture, the film discusses the diversity of life, discusses the uniqueness of the soul, discusses the limitations of human life in space navigation, discusses the eternity of information, and discusses the difficulty of communication at different latitudes.
You see this is a bit like "Arrival", and the final successful foothold of the body change is a bit like "Annihilation". However, whether it is the fusion and exchange in the front of this film, the subsequent element transformation is also very different from the two foreign science fiction.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="114" > end</h1>
This movie has too many problems because of investment reasons, it is only worth two points at most, but I am willing to give a three points.
Why do I think this "Space Community" is worth encouraging, in fact, the domestic science fiction network has a "Mars Mutation" in the same period, the special effects of that movie are also good, and there are obvious participations, although the story plot is also rotten.
Its problem is that the science fiction concept, the setting copy of other people's things that do not have their own, the science fiction aesthetic and image style is "The Martian" + kun game, this kind of thing is a cultural replica, it is difficult to lead the popular culture (although the scene is much larger).
"Space Community" has its own thinking in all aspects, although it is not mature, but there is talent. This is the most scarce thing for the team behind Chinese science fiction and even other pop cultures.
Finally, young audiences have now seen too many excellent foreign products through the Internet, like games, music, but whenever there is a little similarity, they begin to scold plagiarism and garbage. However, in the case of China's pop culture industry as a whole lagging behind developed countries, this learning imitation is inevitable.
The future of Chinese science fiction what science fiction concepts, science fiction aesthetics and science fiction settings like this foreign science fiction, like that foreign science fiction film will exist for a long time. The difference is like "Space Community" and "Mars Mutation", one has its own thing and the other does not.
For the former, I am personally willing to affirm, and I hope that this team will have money to make science fiction films later.