In the 1950s, Peking opera actor Yu Zhanyuan established the "Hong Kong Chinese Drama Academy" in Hong Kong to widely collect disciples and inherit the art of Peking Opera.
After entering the 1960s, the opera market went into decline and the film industry rose rapidly. As a result, a large number of pear garden children began to enter the movie screen.
Many of Yu Zhanyuan's disciples also began to set foot in the film industry in the early 1960s, including Hong Jinbao, Jackie Chan, Yuan Kui, Yuan Biao, Yuan Hua, Yuan Bin and others.
At this time, Yu Zhanyuan may not have imagined that this group of disciples he taught would carry half of the action Hong Kong film in the future.
After entering the 70s, Hong Jinbao rose rapidly in the action film world.
A group of division brothers have gathered under the banner of the master brother, and the name of "Hong Jia Ban" has also begun to resound in the Hong Kong film industry at this time.
In the mid-to-late 1980s, Hong Kong films entered a golden period of vigorous development. These teachers and brothers from the "Drama Academy" have also encountered their own different development opportunities.
In 1985, Jackie Chan left his brother Hong Jinbao and established "Weihe Film" and began to develop his own career independently. In 1990, after Yuan Kui and Hong Jinbao cooperated in "Royal Women", he also left the "HongJia Class" to seek another development.
Although Jackie Chan has its own portal, the "Chengjia Class" and the "Hongjia Class" are both subordinate to "Jiahe". At the end of the day, it's just two "branches" of a company.
Yuan Kui, who left the "Hongjia class", joined Jet Li's "Zhengdong Film" in the early 90s.
Different companies and different positions are bound to cause a positive collision above the box office market.
No, in 1995, Yuan Kui and Hong Jinbao came to a head-on contest on top of the Hong Kong film market.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="13" > joined hands with Jet Li's Yuan Kui </h1>
In 1992, Jet Li established his own "Zhengdong Film", and Yuan Kui also joined "Zhengdong" at this time, and filmed the entrepreneurial work "Fang Shiyu" for "Zhengdong Film".
After "Fang Shiyu" was released in 1993, it achieved good box office results, but the development crisis of "Zhengdong Film" also showed its traces at this time.
In the early 1990s, the Hong Kong film market set off a boom in costume martial arts films. In 1993, this "costume martial arts film" boom ushered in the peak.
This year, a variety of martial arts films appeared in a pile. The industry chaos of blindly following the trend soon made martial arts films lose the audience market.
The box office failure of "The Demon Sect Leader of the Dragon Slayer" is a symptom of the shrinking market of martial arts films in 1993.
In the early 1990s, Jet Li has been dressed in ancient costumes and is active in Hong Kong films. In the face of the decline of costume martial arts films, "helping Jet Li transform into modern action films" has become the top priority of "Zhengdong Films".
In 1994, Yuan Kui planned the movie "Zhongnanhai Bodyguard" for Jet Li, hoping to help Jet Li's screen transformation through this work.
After the release of "Zhongnanhai Bodyguard", it did achieve good word-of-mouth evaluation, but the box office performance of the film was greatly disappointed.
"Zhongnanhai Bodyguard" was released for 16 days on the Hong Kong film market in 1994 and won more than 11 million Hong Kong dollars at the box office, which is completely incomparable with the box office of "Fang Shiyu" of more than 30 million Hong Kong dollars.
"Making money" is the most fundamental purpose of making movies. In order to create a work with good box office and word of mouth, Yuan Kui after "Zhongnanhai Bodyguard" focused on the creation of "action police films".
"Action police films are a sharp weapon to harvest the box office", Yuan Kui has always been convinced of this view. After all, his brother Jackie Chan has proven everything through one work after another.
In view of the excellent market performance of "Jackie Chan police films", Yuan Kui in 1995 also created an action police film work for Jet Li - "Letter to Daddy".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="26" > Hong Jinbao, who is struggling at the bottom of the valley </h1>
I don't know if it is a tacit understanding between the brothers of the same disciple, Hong Jinbao in 1995 also focused on the theme of "action police films".
In the early 1990s, Hong Jinbao's film career was very unsuccessful.
At the end of the 1980s, the market setback of "Oriental Vulture" severely dampened Hong Jinbao's confidence. The decline of the "Psychic Zombie Film" has also brought a huge blow to the development of "Hongjiaban".
In the early 1990s, martial arts films began to become popular in the Hong Kong film market. Hong Jinbao has successively directed two works, "Legend of the God of War" and "A Knife in the City", but both of them have collapsed at the box office.
Under the successive box office blows, the two film companies under Hong Jinbao's name, "Baohe" and "Debao", have successively gone out of business.
Hong Jinbao, after "A Knife in the City", completely lost confidence in himself.
At the low point of his career, although he participated in the shooting of some works as an action director and actor, he never led the "Hong Jiaban" to create films as a director.
During the period when Hong Jinbao was trapped, Jackie Chan broke through himself step by step with his outstanding performance in action police films.
The two works of "Police Story 3" and "Serious Crime Team" not only made Jackie Chan proud of the box office, but also let him win two film emperor trophies in succession.
Jackie Chan's outstanding performance on the big screen of police bandits gave Hong Jinbao great creative inspiration.
In 1995, Hong Jinbao, who had been silent for a long time and was in pain, once again sat in the position of director and directed himself to act in the police action film "Face".
The title of this "Mian Mian" is very interesting, in Cantonese,"冇" means "no", and "Mian" and "俾面" have the same meaning of "giving face".
"Face to face" is connected, which means "no face to give, no mercy". As the big brother of the action film industry, Hong Jinbao launched a "non-emotional" police film work.
This domineering title made many competitors daunted at the time.
Jackie Chan in 1995 also seems to have intended to make way for the new film of the master brother.
This year, Jackie Chan withdrew from the market of "action police films" and filmed "Red Fan District" in the image of a small person in the city. Even "Police Story 4" was postponed by Jackie Chan to February 1996.
Jackie Chan chose to make way for the master brother, but Yuan Kui was not calmed by the domineering spirit of the master brother.
Hong Jinbao's "Face To Face" was released on February 17, 1995, followed by "Letter to Daddy" by Yuan Kui and Jet Li, which entered the Hong Kong film box office market on February 18, 1995.
With the release of the two works of "Mian Mian" and "Letter to Daddy", the "Police Film Showdown" between Yuan Kui and Hong Jinbao also officially kicked off.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="46" > "Letter to Daddy" vs "Face" </h1>
"Letter to Daddy" is joined by Yuan Kui and Jet Li, while "Face To Face" has Hong Jinbao, Yuan Biao, and Jin Chengwu sitting in town.
The box office clash between these two works should have been extremely intense.
However, judging from the effect after the release, the box office performance of "Letter to Daddy" and "Face Boy" does not seem to be optimistic.
"Letter to Daddy" was released for 28 days and won more than 15 million Hong Kong dollars. "Face Tom" was released for 14 days and only achieved a box office of more than 5 million Hong Kong dollars.
Compared with "Zhongnanhai Bodyguard" which received more than 11 million box office in 16 days, "Letter to Daddy" scored more than 15 million in 28 days, which is obviously not worth mentioning.
And the result of more than 5 million yuan in 14 days is even more dismal.
In the competition in the same period, the box office performance of "Letter to Daddy" and "Face Beggar" was so unbearable because it encountered a market rival - that is, Stephen Chow's "Journey to the West".
On January 21, 1995, "The Moonlight Treasure Box of the Journey to the West" was released. On February 15, 1995, "Moonlight Treasure Box" was released, and "Fairy Tales" was released, and then continued until March.
In the early 1990s, on the Hong Kong film market, under the crushing pressure of "bi-weekly success", almost no works could survive at the box office.
The two parts of "Journey to the West" continued from January 1995 to March 1995, one of which won more than 25 million at the box office and the other of which achieved more than 20 million.
Under the market pressure of Zhou Xingchi, "Letter to Dad" and "Face" are also silently frustrated.
Of course, in addition to the external factor of Stephen Chow, the internal factors of "Letter to Daddy" and "Face" itself also restrict the box office performance of the film.
First of all, let's talk about the "Letter to Daddy" jointly produced by Yuan Kui and Jet Li.
In this work, Yuan Kui played the creative concept of "undercover police film", and the literary and opera portrayals and action performances of Jet Li and Xie Miao were also amazing.
However, this work weakens the presentation of "comedic elements" and tries to infect the audience with the tragic atmosphere of "wife and daughter separation".
"Letter to Daddy" did move a lot of viewers, but it was difficult to move the box office. After all, in the Hong Kong film market in the 90s, comedy was the biggest trump card at the box office.
Stories that are too tragic will eventually only be abandoned by the mainstream market. Hong Jinbao's "A Knife To The Fall of the City" is an extremely typical example.
"Letter to Daddy" was not accepted by the mainstream market at that time because of the tragic story tone. Hong Jinbao's self-directed and self-acting "Face" was alienated by the market audience at that time because the story was too old-fashioned.
This "Face" tells the story of "Agent Pierre" (played by Hong Jinbao) and "Agent Wang Yuwen" (played by Yuan Biao), because of a misunderstanding, they have a vendetta against each other.
However, shortly after the feud, Pierre and Wang Yuwen were arranged to follow their boss "Ah Shi" (played by Jin Chengwu) to solve a tricky case. The three love and kill each other, while playing with girls, while handling cases, and finally the story ends with a reunion.
The story mode of "Mian Mian" inherits all the characteristics of Hong Jinbao's "Five Lucky Stars" series, and it can be said that it is a simplified version of "Three Blessings".
At the end of the 1980s, the decline of the "Five Lucky Stars" series has shown that audiences have begun to get tired of this kind of "hodgepodge of police comedies".
On the big screen of Hong Kong films in 1995, Hong Jinbao "fried cold rice and new fried rice" in "Noodles", which was obviously difficult to appease the audience at that time.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="70" > Hong Jinbao Company went bankrupt, and Yuan Kui and Jet Li went to break up </h1>
In this police film showdown, Hong Jinbao can be described as a heavy loss.
In 1992, Hong Jinbao's "Debao" and "Baohe" went out of business one after another. In the face of huge career pressure, Hong Jinbao made a desperate bet and pressed the opportunity to turn over on this "Face Beggar".
However, the box office performance of 5 million yuan not only did not save Hong Jinbao, who was walking on thin ice, but made him worse.
After "Face Tou", Hong Jinbao's "Baoxiang Film" also ushered in the fate of bankruptcy and bankruptcy. And this "Face" also became the last work launched by "Baoxiang Film".
After this "police film showdown", Hong Jinbao's company went bankrupt and closed down, and Yuankui's career was not much better.
"Letter to Daddy" and "Zhongnanhai Bodyguard" failed to achieve the desired box office results, and the partnership between Yuan Kui and Jet Li was terminated because of successive box office failures.
After 1995's "Letter to Daddy", Jet Li began to cooperate with Wang Jing, Li Rengang, Dong Wei and others to shoot works such as "Rats and Dragons", "Black Man", "Killer King" and so on.
At this time, Yuan Kui left the "Zhengdong Film" to make another living, and then also cooperated with Zhao Wenzhuo in "Sparrow Flying Dragon", "Ma Yongzhen" with Yuan Biao, and "Black Rose Yijie Jinlan" with Zhen Zidan.
However, the box office performance of these works is not ideal.
At the end of the 1990s, the Hong Kong film market was in decline, and neither Yuan Kui nor Jet Li, nor Hong Jinbao and "Hong Jiaban" could escape the impact of this torrent.
And those disturbed film stories are also under this "Hong Kong film recession torrent" and are moving towards their own endings.
——(End)