Author / No Thoughts
When the familiar melody sounded, we knew that the handsome man had come to save the world again.
Suits, ties, luxury cars, beauties, heaven and earth, cornices, and all kinds of unknowing high-tech weapons are the standard features of secret agent films.
But in addition to the above qualities, the most important thing in the secret agent film genre is to find an actor who matches the charm of these invincible. Like Tom Cross, like Matt Damon, like Colin Firth, like Daniel Craig.
On Friday, the latest 007 film starring Daniel Craig and the finale of his role, 007: No Time to Die, was finally released in China. As a long-standing super agent of the British Empire working for the intelligence agency MI6, James Bond, code-named 007, has so far played six roles in 25 films, spanning nearly 60 years.
This film is not only Daniel Craig's last appearance in 007, but also Bond's return to the big screen after six years of absence. Especially since the outbreak of the epidemic last year, the film has also undergone many file changes and postponements, and finally insisted on the opportunity of the big screen screening to officially say goodbye to the audience.
On the occasion of the release of 007, it has once again brought the genre of secret agent films back to the audience. All along, this genre has a good box office cap in China, in addition to the 007 series, such as "Mission Impossible", "Ace Agent" and other series also have a wide audience in China. With the continuous development of genre films, secret agent films themselves are often integrated with other genre elements, and many new types of special agent films have been born.
Today's article, let's talk to you about the secret agent film.
The genre development of secret agent films
Agents, as the name suggests, are people who do special work. Generally refers to personnel working for the security, military, and political systems, also known as the secret police.
Since it is a special work of a secret nature, the identity of the agent is often classified, generally related to the security of the state and politicians. The agent characters we see in the movie, Wen can be proficient in foreign languages to steal intelligence, Wu can be a hundred enemies, but also can understand the psychological activities of others, secret joints, whereabouts become a mystery. To put it simply, you basically have to know everything.
Familiar secret service organizations such as the CIA, MI6, the Soviet KGB, and the Israeli Mossad are known as the "World's Four Intelligence Agencies." In addition, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) common in Hollywood blockbusters, and the Chinese Nationalist Military Command Bureau (BIS) and so on.
The emergence of agents has an important relationship with the early world pattern and geopolitics. In the 19th century, Britain took the lead in completing the Industrial Revolution and became the world's first colonial power, which also opened up a turbulent political situation throughout Europe, and the people's sense of crisis was increasing. In the 20th century, with the boom of the publishing industry, spy novels also came into being, becoming the most important genre of popular popular literature in the folk, and also laid a broad mass foundation for the emergence of secret agent films.
Since then, the world pattern has been in constant conflict. If the outbreak of "World War I" and "World War II" became the most powerful catalyst for the production of secret agent films, then the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union for more than four decades provided a solid hotbed for this genre.
Some scholars believe that the 1928 German director Fritz Lang's "Spy" may be regarded as the earliest source of this genre, and the 1931 "Witch Marta" starring Greta Garbo is a representative of the early American secret agent films, but the real promotion of the secret agent film to the world depends on the British.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the development of secret agent films ushered in a peak. The first installment of the 007 series, Dr. 007 No, was created in 1962. In the 1980s and 1990s, with the end of the Cold War and the drastic changes in Eastern Europe, the creation of secret agent films was relatively calm. Until the outbreak of the "911 Incident", the secret agent film began to usher in a new boom, and the United States became the main force of this period.
In the new century, secret agent films have also begun to derive many new branches, and on the basis of new social hotspot events, the confrontation between traditional capitalist countries has been transformed into a challenge to evil forces such as nuclear weapons, terrorism, extremist religion, and online black technology.
In addition, with the continuous improvement and subdivision of the concept of genre films, secret agent films are inextricably linked to another batch of films with the images of spies, bodyguards, killers, assassins, etc., on the one hand, and on the other hand, they show a strong symbolic style, such as the mysterious atmosphere that comes with the body. The development of the Internet and cutting-edge technology has made the secret agent film keep pace with the times and many new possibilities have been born.
The domestic release of the secret agent film market ecology
As an important part of the cultural export of the Western world, secret agent films have a huge audience around the world, especially in Chinese mainland.
Shooting sir sorted out some of the secret agent theme films that have been released in China since the 21st century, and got the following table.
First of all, it can be seen that although there are some films released before 2010, the box office results are difficult to verify, but on the whole, such films still have a relatively good market performance, basically can get more than 100 million box office results, and even a few 1 billion + super blockbusters. With dazzling visual effects and action scenes, a dazzling array of black technology weapons, and a dazzling array of supermodels, it can be said that these films are an excellent endorsement of the entertainment value of commercial genre films.
Secondly, for the genre of secret agent films, having an IP effect will have a great bonus to the box office of the film. In addition to the "007", "Mission Impossible", "Ace Agent" mentioned at the beginning, it also includes the classic "Spy Shadow", "Men in Black", "Tiger Courage" and so on. After a long period of audience establishment, this kind of film has already gained a large number of loyal fans and has a relatively strong feeling.
One of the most obvious examples is Mission Impossible, which maintains the excellent results of each film surpassing the previous box office, and of course, the high reputation is also an important factor in its ability to gain market favor. And Brother Atang is more than 60 years old, personally on the visual "spectacle" of climbing the Burj Khalifa with his bare hands and picking up the plane, which has become a major golden sign of the series. The audience walked into the theater to see what incredible skills this omnipotent man from heaven and earth had. These have been fully internalized into the benefits of the IP. Therefore, the higher the ip value, the better the market feedback that can be obtained.
In addition, it can be seen that hollywood secret agent films have also begun to innovate, especially in terms of genre mix and theme development. For example, "City of a Thousand Stars" combined with space science fiction, "Extreme Agent" combined with extreme sports, "Agent Bean" combined with comedy, "Transformation Agent" based on animation genres, and even "Red Flame Battlefield" with the elderly as the protagonist.
Finally, in addition to the above imported films, such as Marvel's "Agent Carter" and "Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D." and other American dramas, they have also gained a number of fans on the Internet. In recent years, with the continuous development and refinement of Korean genre films, it has also contributed a number of box office double harvest of agent films, such as "Iron Rain", "Agent", etc., starring Yuan Bin ,"Lonely Agent" has also been introduced to China, and the reputation is also quite outstanding.
What else is possible for a secret agent film?
As long as it is a genre film, it must have its own set of established paradigms, and secret agent films are no exception.
To put it simply, although the type of secret agent film has been innovated and integrated to varying degrees, what is not changed is that no matter how the protagonist changes and how the theme changes, in essence, the commercial attributes of the secret agent film and the narrative mode of personal heroism are always consistent.
Nowadays, the secret agent films with women as the protagonists have gradually occupied a considerable part of the market, especially in the Hollywood market, people have begun to tend to watch movies with big female protagonists, those films that are bold and fierce, agile, and kill female killers, female spies, and female agents who kill negative people all over the world often get good market attention.
The reason is that, on the one hand, this is related to the feminist trend and "MeToo" atmosphere that is more and more popular in the current era, women are no longer responsible for the beautiful "vase" and the sex symbols that are watched in this type of film, and they are no longer the objects that men are responsible for saving, and action movies are no longer the privileges of men, and women's action scenes can also be both dashing and sharp. On the other hand, when the traditional action film genre with men as the protagonists is becoming more and more trapped, the emergence of the big heroine anti-killing film has also provided new development ideas and directions for action movies, and even various subtypes under their branches.
What about domestically? Is there such a genre as a secret agent film in China? Is there any soil suitable for the development of the secret agent film genre?
At the end of the last century, China actually created a series of films with the theme of secret agents and spies, such as "Kawashima Yoshiko" with female spy Yoshiko Kawashima as the protagonist, and a series of films such as "Female Spy" and "Assassination of Wang Jingwei" with the war of resistance and civil war as the historical background. This kind of film is actually more realistic, to some extent more like a political thriller, with a strong ideological color. The agents or spies in the film are very fundamentally different from the flying and omnipotent super agents in Hollywood.
After entering the new century, the special agent films that everyone can see in China are basically from abroad, and the domestic special agent films are basically in a relatively blank state.
Of course, it is not completely absent, such as "My Secret Agent Grandpa", "Agent Amira", "Agent" and other films, although the title of the film contains the word "agent", but the protagonist's profession is basically still playing the edge ball. For example, "My Secret Agent Grandpa", although it has earned 324 million at the box office, in fact, the protagonist is not a secret agent in the strict sense, but a retired military officer. Moreover, the reputation of these films is often not satisfactory.
The main reason is that the nature of the work performed by the agents is basically the content that needs to be strictly confidential, and there are relatively strict censorship standards and subject matter restrictions for this area in China, and there are relatively few real portrayals or introductions to such people or occupations.
However, in Hong Kong and the co-production part, there have been some works worth mentioning, such as some works made by Jackie Chan, "Who Am I", "Agent Next Door" and so on. Such films often place the protagonist's professional background abroad, on the one hand, avoiding domestic policies and regulations, on the other hand, it is more in line with the audience's cognition.
In addition, if the concept of secret agents is relaxed, in fact, domestic spy movies can basically meet this category. For example, the TV series "Latent", the movie "The Sound of the Wind", "East Wind and Rain", and this year's May Day "On the Cliff", show the story of the agent. However, compared with Western secret agent films, domestic such films will be more realistic, less grand visual effects scenes and high-tech weapons, and the proportion of related elements such as action, science fiction, and adventure has also decreased.
In any case, the above films still laid a certain thinking for the genre of domestic films to develop secret agents. That is to say, domestic secret agent films need to find their own path, how to translate the story of agents to other similar identities, not only to meet the needs of localization, but also to ensure the commercial attributes and entertainment value of the film itself.
With the continuous improvement of the industrialization level of domestic films, types such as special agent films that rely more on special effects technology can also find their own volume and development model in China, which also puts forward certain requirements for the industrialization level of China's film industry. Finally, co-productions may also be a way to consider the development of the agent type of domestic films.
In short, as secret agent films continue to be in line with the current era, I believe that this genre will bring us more surprises in the future, and we also look forward to the day when we can give birth to our own Jason Bourne or James Bond.