"The bustle of the world" has always had an inexplicable attraction for Zhang Ziyi. For more than a decade, she has been trying to reach more audiences, and "Shangyang Fu" is one of the most powerful games. Unfortunately, Zhang Ziyi did not seem to win the bet this time.
Text | Zhang Weicheng
Edit | Chu Ming
Operational | Xiao Rui
The news that Zhang Ziyi was going to act in a TV series first came out in 2016, when everyone thought it was a rumor for eyeballs. No one will believe that Zhang Ziyi, who has portrayed well-known characters such as Gong Er and Yu Jiaolong, and almost has to go to the altar of the film industry, will appear on the small screen at a reduced price. So when the "Shangyang Fu" starring her was broadcast on January 9, the media used "XiaFan" to describe her performance.
But this is actually not the first time That Zhang Ziyi has tried to get close to the public. For more than a decade, she has been trying to reach more audiences, and "Shangyang Fu" is one of the most powerful games. Unfortunately, Zhang Ziyi did not seem to win the bet this time. "Shangyang Fu" Douban scored less than 6 points when it opened, and the number of plays was not bright enough. At the center of the topic is not Zhang Ziyi's acting skills, but her sense of violation of playing a 15-year-old girl. Zhang Ziyi even personally sent a Weibo, telling the drama party that she no longer had to market her girlishness.
▲ Zhang Ziyi shouted drama parties on Weibo. Photo / Sina Weibo @Zhang Ziyi
In fact, "Shangyang Fu" was filmed in 2018 and waited until it was broadcast so far. In the lost 3 years, it is more and more misaligned with the TV drama market environment. And the core decision maker, Zhang Ziyi, still does not seem to have found the entrance to the next journey of his career.
Imperfect and unlucky
In March 2018, it was rumored that Zhang Ziyi was getting louder and louder about taking over the ancient puppet drama, and the first to worry was the fans. Fans wrote a bloody and tearful "letter", giving detailed reasons for their opposition from the aspects of theme and length, domestic market environment, team team, and broadcast platform. There was no echo in the book, but someone came out to comfort the fans and said: "The vivid and interesting thing about your yi is that it loops back and forth between high-level performances and people's eyes, acting is acting, but also want to make people lively, let her go." ”
"The bustle of the world" has always had an inexplicable attraction for Zhang Ziyi. Back in 2009, she was both a producer and a star in the film "Very Perfect." "Very Perfect" is different from the serious and profound masterpieces that Zhang Ziyi is accustomed to starring in, and is the most popular "chick movie" at present, starring in addition to her, there are also topic queens Fan Bingbing and Yao Chen. The comedy was released in the summer holidays and initially targeted the mass market.
Acting in this movie is like Zhang Ziyi's first pleasant rebellion after 10 years from the film. In an interview, she bluntly said that playing Sophie was very happy, not as nervous as in the previous action scenes. "Every day I have a good time going to the set, and the audience and the partners I work with are also very sunny and brilliant." She said.
▲ Zhang Ziyi said that filming "Very Perfect" was very happy with the co-actors. Photo / Visual China
Although "Very Perfect" reached the box office, no one can deny that it is a completely bad film. Yu Dong, CEO of investor Bona Pictures, took the initiative to stand up and take the responsibility on himself, "This is not strange Ziyi, she has done the work of production." The script was too poor, and we didn't do a good job in the early stages. ”
But this did not dispel Zhang Ziyi's determination to go further on the "chick movie". In 2012, Zhang Ziyi produced, supervised and starred in the second part of "Very Perfect", "Very Lucky". In Zhang Ziyi's view, "Very Perfect" laid a good mass foundation for the "extraordinary" series, so the second part was standing on the shoulders of giants, and she shot very smoothly. And there will be a third in the "very" series, called "Very Positive Energy" or "Very Girlfriend". When the film was released in 2013, film critics commented that it was a bad film that could be compared with "Fuchun Mountain Jutu" and "Detective No Two".
The "very" series has almost become a stain on Zhang Ziyi's film history. In the third season of "I Am an Actor", when Zhang Ziyi sat on the mentor's seat and advised the actors not to take roles that were not suitable for them and not to act in bad movies, the voice of opposition immediately poured out, asking her, Have you not also acted in "Very Perfect"?
Zhang Ziyi did not look back, her actions on the movie became more and more bold, and began to march towards idol traffic movies. In 2015, she collaborated with Guo Jingming to launch "Descending from Heaven". As a producer, she chose Zhang Yixing and Chen Xuedong, who were traffic students at the time, as the main actors. The creators have high expectations for the movie, and Zhang Yixing also promised that as long as the box office exceeds 500 million yuan, he will dress up as a woman to show the audience. But in the end, what they gained was a dismal box office of less than 40 million and a Douban score of 3.7 points.
People gave Zhang Ziyi the nickname of "Niangniang", and Zhang Ziyi was always committed to tearing up this image. In 2019, she took over the second season of the variety show "Wife's Romantic Trip". In this variety show, her identity is Wang Feng's wife, not the international film queen. What fans left this time was not a proposal, but a sad farewell letter. But Zhang Ziyi's breakthrough did not bring much heat to the show, and in the end it ended silently.
▲ Zhang Ziyi talked about her relationship with Wang Feng in the second season of "Wife's Romantic Trip". Graph / Network
"Emperor Huangye"
During the promotional period of "Very Perfect", a reporter asked Zhang Ziyi, saying that another lead actor, Fan Bingbing, also did TV dramas and did not invite her to join. She immediately replied: "I certainly won't make a TV series, if there is a suitable movie script, why don't I." ”
Today is different from the past, perhaps the popular route of the movie, variety show still did not meet Zhang Ziyi's wish to go down, she finally chose to take over the filming of "Shangyang Fu". The original work of "Shangyang Fu" is called "Imperial Industry", which is an ancient romance and power plot novel of the originator level, telling the love story of the noble maiden Wang Yan who was forced to get involved in the dispute between the government and the opposition, married to Wang Xiaoqi, who had a different surname, and finally the two joined hands to achieve imperial hegemony. Due to the joining of Zhang Ziyi, this TV series was once renamed "Emperor Huangye". And "Emperor Huangye" is the best summary of its nature - it can be said that it is Zhang Ziyi's personal work, the crystallization of her career.
Hou Yong, the general director of the TV series, was once the cinematographer of Zhang Yimou's "Hero" and "My Father and Mother", and the work he directed, "Jasmine Blossom", starred Zhang Ziyi. Director of Photography PhilipPe Lessell is the cinematographer of Zhang Ziyi's masterpiece "A Generation of Grandmasters", and he won the Best Cinematography Award at the 33rd Academy Awards for this film. Music director Mo Yanlin has cooperated with Zhang Ziyi since "Very Perfect". Art director Han Zhong, who served as the art work of "Ten Faces Ambush" and "Hero" starring Zhang Ziyi. Lighting director Zou Yinglun is also the team of "Generation Grandmaster".
The first producer of "Shangyang Fu" is Kashgar Feibao Culture Media Co., Ltd. Before "Shangyang Fu", Feibao Media's representative work was "Si Meiren", which was a TV series that still scored only 3.1 points after inviting Yi Qianxi to play a supporting role. Zhang Ziyi will choose the TV series produced by Feibao Media, which is out of a deeper capital interest bundle. Kashgar Feibao Culture Media Co., Ltd. is wholly owned by Shanghai Feibao Culture Media Company, and Zhang Ziyi is the largest individual shareholder of this company, accounting for 9.35%. Feibao Media wrote in the corporate profile and press release: The famous international film star Zhang Ziyi has joined the company in 2017, and Feibao Media has become the only film and television company that Zhang Ziyi cooperates with.
Zhang Ziyi has also reached the stage of seeking career transformation, and actresses of her age have walked ahead of her. Also a guest in the actor competition program, Zhao Wei's title is already a director. Xu Jinglei earlier had directing masterpieces such as "Letter from a Strange Woman" and "Dulala Promotion". The company founded by Li Bingbing and Dongshen Future, which is involved in Song Media, Zhou Xun and Shu Qi, have good results in acting agency and film and television production.
If "Shangyang Fu" can be successful, then Feibao culture can also gain a foothold in the film and television industry, and the behind-the-scenes part of Zhang Ziyi's career can be completed, which will provide a foundation for future transformation. Zhang Ziyi's filming of "Shangyang Fu" is not simply "going down" to experience life, she really needs such a "Shangyang Fu". It also pinned down her exploration of her own boundaries, as she said in a behind-the-scenes interview: "I especially want to soar a little longer in a character's world." I was just curious, when I entered such a character in such a long episode, she had so many character changes, character growth, what kind of state I would be. ”
▲ Zhang Ziyi played from a teenage girl in "Shangyang Fu". Graph / Network
Late "Shangyang Fu"
In "Shangyang Fu", Zhang Ziyi, who was 38 years old at the time of filming, played the 15-year-old Wang Yan, the 40-year-old Zuo Xiaoqing played a girl who had just reached the age of marriage, and the 35-year-old Liu Yun played a lady of the same age. The actors missed the age of the characters in the play. It's like a subtle metaphor, because the TV series itself, too, missed the moment that suited it best.
Zhang Yimou once said that Zhou Xun and Zhang Ziyi are the most standard movie faces, and their faces are inherently suitable for living on the big screen. Their acting careers have also undergone wonderful hookups in recent years. When Zhou Xun first appeared in the TV series "Ruyi Zhuan" broadcast in 2018, he also happened to play a 15-year-old Qing Sakura. Similar to the discussion after the broadcast of "Shangyang Fu" now, the public has already experienced it, and people were also controversial at that time, Zhou Xun, who has passed 40 years old, does not match the feelings of young girls, and the TV series that is known as the movie Café Fan has not shown any extraordinary texture.
▲ Zhou Xun was also controversial for playing a young girl when he first appeared in "Ruyi Zhuan". Photo / "The Tale of Ruyi"
If it only falls behind "Ruyi Zhuan", the public will not be aesthetically tired. However, in the 3 years that "Shangyang Fu" was backlogged, Chen Kun and Ni Ni's "Tiansheng Long Song", Tang Wei's "Daming Fenghua", and Zhang Zhen's "Chen Xi Yuan" were broadcast one after another. Hunan Satellite TV spent 600 million yuan to buy "Tiansheng Long Song", but its ratings went all the way down, reaching 0.16 at the lowest time, ranking in the top 10 of the real-time list, and finally being cut from 70 episodes to 56 episodes. Audiences have long been disenchanted from the tv series premieres of film actors.
Around 2010, the popularity of female frequency IP broke out, and major film and television companies bought IP and began to set up projects. The TV series adapted from these IPs have also been broadcast since 2015, and they all have a common feature, that is, with the heroine as the core and the growth of women as the main line. The phenomenal success of "Flowers and Bones" broadcast in 2015 has made this type of drama have a special classification, the big female lead drama.
Although Shangyang Fu tries to emphasize the tone of its main drama, it still cannot hide the essence of its big female protagonist, and it is even the most shallow Kind of Mary Sue drama in the big female protagonist. The prince, the three princes, the young lord of the Helan family, and the male protagonist all fell in love with the female protagonist shortly after their appearance. The power plot drama revolves around the jade seal and the drug like a child's play. Such a plot may still be favored 3 years ago, but the market has experienced the successive impact of "The Biography of female doctor Mingfei", "Chu Qiao Biography", "Fu Shao", "Yan Yuntai" and other big female protagonist dramas, and the big female protagonist drama of "Shangyang Fu" has not been able to attract any waves.
According to the existing response, "Shangyang Fu" may be like another "perfect" series, which becomes a proof that Zhang Ziyi also wants to "make up the bustle of the world".
Can you not act in TV series, do not transform, and become a simple film actor? At the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, Zhang Ziyi gave a similar imagination. But she also realized, "As professional actors, we all want to make works with depth and energy, but as business people, who wants to make such works?" ”
She can only fall into a long wait, waiting for a role worth playing to appear. But just like Zhou Xun said to Qin Hao when he filmed "Ruyi Zhuan": "Where is the good movie now?" Zhang Ziyi was still trapped in a dilemma.
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