"Kuira the Black and White Witch" (hereinafter referred to as "Kuila") was released for 12 days and was close to 100 million at the box office.
Although the Douban score has reached the standard line of 7 points for genre films, it is still slightly inferior to the predecessor "Sleeping Curse", which is also a Disney animation adaptation and a villain's whitewashing work.
The IP of "spotted dog" is unfamiliar to domestic audiences.
Realistically speaking, "Kuila" is a highly completed animated adaptation. Not to mention the level of the Oscar-winning technical award, as well as the right soundtrack and song selection. Storytelling alone, it offers a prequel feature that tells the story of the genius teenage girl Estella becoming the black and white witch Kuila.
Of course, this prequel is still based on "whitewashing". After all, in today's age when animal protection has become politically correct, the Kuira in "101 Loyal Dogs" who tries to kill spotted dogs to make fur coats is indeed a bit "outrageous". In this film, she is even portrayed as a dog lover.
If Kuira, played by Glenn Cross in the 1996 version of "101 Loyal Dogs", gives people a sense of evil grotesqueness; then Kuira, played by Emma Stone, seems to be a punk. To accommodate this positioning, Disney also moved the story back 30 years to the 1970s.
Although the domestic box office is not high, but from the feedback of major social networking sites, this bad girl with a bad track record, the popularity of passers-by is not bad. In a way, the whitewashed Kuila is a typically fascinating villain.
The ugly personality of the original characters was stripped away and replaced by "mad demons" and coldness. In London, where neoliberalism prevailed, Kuila managed to crash into the audience's heart with a kind of soaring rebellion. At least after watching the movie, I can't remember Glenn Cross anymore. It's not just because Emma Stone is beautiful.
On the one hand, it is due to the rationality of the story setting. Although it is still the conventional ancient Greek "father-son" contradiction (the film is a mother-daughter contradiction), the sub-plot is embedded in the mother's (the difference between the birth mother and the adoptive mother) revenge of the mother, and inexplicably achieves a logical coincidence. This routine is not a drama.
On the other hand, it is the audience that already has a more tolerant mentality and a richer good feeling for the villain. The story of the princess and prince has long been tired of everyone, and the deeds of superheroes have also been told and said, and the distance between them and the audience is always farther. But those villains who do not hide their desires can touch the excitement of the audience.
Jungian shadow theory speaks of shadows lurking in everyone's heart, the "negative personality." It consists of the individual subconscious and the collective subconscious, often encompassing morally hated, repulsive qualities that want to hide. In other words, the audience projects specific emotions on some of the villains in order to obtain compensation.
In addition, there are certain macro factors to this. The reason why Hollywood has become popular again in recent years is that the traditional superhero image cannot solve the dilemma of the endogenous contradictions of capitalism. When the audience finds that the laws followed by positive characters can no longer provide convenience for the vast majority of people, anti-superheroes who advocate meeting personal demands naturally become the favorite of the public. "When God is powerless, it is the devil who crosses all sentient beings."
What villain is more fascinating? To answer this question, we must first figure out the position of the villain.
Even if everyone is a bad egg, eggs are different from eggs. The A Xing in "Kung Fu" who snatched lollipops and collected protection fees, no matter how outrageous the judge would not tie him up with Anton in "Old Nobody".
In the board game "Dungeons and Dragons", according to the different attributes of the characters, it is divided into nine camps: orderly goodness, neutral goodness, chaotic goodness, orderly neutrality, absolute neutrality, chaotic neutrality, orderly evil, neutral evil, and the most terrible chaotic evil. The villain roles we often talk about are roughly the last three categories.
The orderly and evil characters mostly appear as tyrants. They tend to follow the rules and follow them to achieve their goals by any means. The vast majority of rulers in the history of the world can be classified in this category. The supervillain "Two-Faced" in Batman is also essentially a well-ordered and evil character.
Neutral evil is more synonymous with selfishness. They are the most "orthodox" villains. Everything you do is to satisfy your desires. Even if this desire is to be fulfilled, it will take the blood or lives of others. Such as Tian Boguang in "Laughing Proud of the Jianghu", the Magic Woman in "X-Men", and Alex in "A Clockwork Orange".
Chaotic and evil characters exist mostly with absolute evil. They are symbols of evil, and their actions are completely out of control. Destruction, slaughter, crime, all sin is so pure. The Joker in Joker, Sun Wukong in Journey to the West: Demons, and Joffrey in Game of Thrones are all the same.
Villains are not equal to mediocre. Especially those who can become super villains, their strength will often be better than the protagonist. However, not all villains will be favored. Huang Shiren in "The White-Haired Girl" must not be supported by many people; Jiajing in "Daming Dynasty 1566" is even more spurned and disdainful.
I would say that if a villain wants to be popular, he has to do the following.
First, there must be self-consistent logic that can output a complete set of inflammatory value systems.
The villain's value system, which always overrides moral rules, is a kind of Nietzschean "superhuman" thinking of social Darwinism. James P. C. Scott, in Six Treatises on Spontaneity, talks about the importance of disobedience, arguing that the strong should be contemptuous of the rules. For example, Thanos, who makes a ring finger for the sake of the "balance" of the universe.
The logic of a good villain should be self-consistent. The villain who can be subdued by the protagonist's "mouth" move is obviously immature. The road to the villain should be full of thorns, and only by breaking through the eighty-one difficulties of kindness can we truly have the courage to fight against the world. The characters forged in this environment are as strong as iron.
The Joker in the Batman series is a villain who will not be easily destroyed. At least in the series I've seen, the only thing that makes it desperate is the animated version of Hallie Quinn. This also accounts for the light of the prevalence of feminism and political correctness, which is more or less difficult to put into the canon. Eating can be there, but Lao Tzu never conceded defeat.
Guo Xiaopeng in "Black Ice" can also be regarded as a big villain with a twisted personality. Compared with Ding Yuanying, another classic image of Wang Zhiwen in "Heavenly Dao", the former is undoubtedly a bad thing. But the ten-minute monologue in the cell added a lot of flavor to his body. His interpretation of "people" and his analysis of the self are all divided into the wood and whipped into it. He portrayed himself as a misguided idealist.
The wheel king played by Wang Xuexi in "Sword Rain" is not a satisfactory villain. The reason he snatched Rama's body was to ridiculously recreate his body and become a man again. It's also too funny.
In order to revitalize the Huashan Sect, Yue Buqun preferred to wield his sword from the palace, how did he get here and suddenly turn around? Ordinary people often do extraordinary things. The average audience won't understand.
Second, there must be a complex and cruel history, and after whitewashing, the trend can lead to a wave of tears.
That's what Kuila does. In the writer's pen, she became a little girl abandoned by her mother since childhood, and her anger at the spotted dogs was also because they killed their adoptive mother. When her mother was punished, the spotted dog was brought home by her. You see, pets are innocent, they're just poor creatures that are being used by bad people.
It is said that Disney is good at whitewashing villains, but the most outrageous in this regard is "World of Warcraft". With the continuous update of this game, the story background is constantly changing, and almost all the villains have become helpless. Even Sagras, who wanted to destroy the world, did not want the world to be defiled by the demons outside the heavens.
In the story of "Baolian Lantern" after the founding of the People's Republic of China, Erlang Shen is mostly a villain. Although he is an extremely positive character in Ming and Qing novels, due to the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal calls in the early years, he often stands against the people.
What really "whitewashes" this character is "The Prequel to Pauline Lamp". Not only did he express his helplessness and bitterness, but he also played the god of the elegant Qingjun Lang in the early years of the script. In order to change the heavens and bear the burden of humiliation, it is like a reformist. The Heavenly Court cannot launch a riot, and it is the best strategy to carry out the power of thunder with gentle measures.
Third, to be beautiful and handsome, but also to have strength. Only in this way can a fan base be born.
As the saying goes, as long as the villain looks good, the three views run with the five senses. As a villain, it's not enough to make the audience pitiful, but also to make them feel cute. Jiang Yuyan in "Little Fish and Flowers" is the biggest boss in the play. In the end, there is only one protagonist left in the whole drama. But just because of the beauty, there are many fans.
Strength is hard currency. If you want to be a convincing villain, you have to have absolute control.
The Pang eunuch in "The Tea House" is the villain, but he is a grasshopper after the autumn and has not been bouncing for a few days. Mixing with Ma Wuye, who eats foreign religions, is the right way. Erde Ziwei is not mighty? Ma Wuye dared to "say goodbye" to you at every turn.
The above is also a crooked joke. No matter how attractive the villain is, it is also because he is separated from us in a world and will not break into reality. The clown's fans probably don't want the city they live in to become Gotham. Who would want their neighbors to be the sea and the three children (both from "Destiny")? Hulan Hero is still less.
【Text/Feng Yi】