I don't know how many people like me, love and hate domestic science fiction.
In the Spring Festival file of 2019, "The Wandering Earth" broke the ground to give Chinese science fiction fans a dumpling, and thought that domestic science fiction would spring up one by one like mushrooms after the rain.
As a result, a large number of so-called "domestic science fiction" emerged and fed us a mouthful.
Recently, though, a domestic science fiction film caught my attention.
At first I noticed the movie because of a cool poster.
"Life is information, and negative entropy is food" is from Schrödinger's famous book "What is Life".
In this book, Schrödinger proposes the concept that the essence of life is a message.
For example: Why are we instinctively afraid when we see a snake? It's because our DNA contains the gene for fear of snakes, and that gene is the message our ancestors have given us.
In addition to the text, the poster screen is also expressed, and in the center of the picture is a naked person, she curls up like a newborn baby, there is a feeling of giving birth to a new life, or expressing the unknown sense of life form, which also hints at the possibility of alien life like "Venom" in the film.
Combined with the name of "Space Community", my interpretation of this sentence is that there may be advanced creatures in the universe like humans, and after they have transmitted some kind of information to humans, human reactions will determine the future fate of human beings.
Old fans know that for visual animals like me who are addicted to exquisite production and have a paranoid pursuit of pictures, this kind of movie I will definitely pay attention to.
This film, called "Space Community", has won two major awards before it was launched, the Austrian International Film Festival Best Foreign Language Film and the Kiev International Film Festival Best Film Award.
This is even more interesting, domestic science fiction has won the international award for the first time, driven by strong curiosity, I found a lot of "Space Community" information, found that this movie has a setting that fascinates many science fiction people - space exploration.
As far as science fiction is concerned, whether it is the earlier "E.T. Aliens" and "Star Wars", or the "Avatar" and "The Martian Rescue" in recent years, even superhero movies like Marvel and DC can find the shadow of space elements to a greater or lesser extent.
After all, as far as current technology is concerned, outer space is still a mysterious existence.
In order to find out whether "Space Community" is worth watching, I did an in-depth study of this film and helped you clear mines by the way.
Because in the past few years, although there have been some remarkable new science fiction works in the Chinese film market, more are the semi-finished products of "domestic science fiction" on the head, which is actually a variety of mysterious operations.
For a science fiction fan, this cost can win the award, is to give all domestic science fiction people a revelation: a good film does not have to be a big IP, nor does it necessarily have to hire a certain big-name actor, China's science fiction must adapt to the soil of Chinese films, otherwise it is a "four unlikes" that cannot imitate the essence.
Although the current production level of domestic science fiction is not comparable to that of Hollywood, at least it must have an attitude of being at the highest level.
Just like no one thought that Guo Fan and Wu Jing could take "The Wandering Earth" to "kill" a blood road in the Spring Festival file, now may not be the first year of domestic science fiction, but it must be the "spring" of domestic science fiction.
If you want to dig out good domestic science fiction, you are not completely copying Hollywood, throwing money to invite stars, nor are you stuck in your own way and not seeking innovation.
Instead, it is necessary to polish with heart and hold the attitude of "inviting the audience to dinner" in order to make a good film that the audience can buy in this environment.
Because the difference between science fiction films and other films is that in addition to the script, good science fiction films need a strong sense of technology and professional people to turn those wild ideas into pictures that the audience can see.
As for how to make a good science fiction film, there is a most direct criterion for judging - picture construction.
As soon as Interstellar came out, it sparked a discussion about black holes among science fiction fans around the world, one of the reasons why Christopher Nolan made almost the best efforts to restore real black holes.
Although CG can achieve any effect, it is precisely because of this that many scenes are easy to violate the principles of physics and fail to achieve the sense of reality for pursuit.
So in the process of filming "Interstellar", the whole film did not use green screen shooting, when shooting the black hole scene on the set, the production team built a huge projection curtain wall and a 1:1 spaceship model, when the actors performed in the spaceship, the outside of the window was the cosmic scene projected by the curtain wall.
It is also in the case of almost complete realism that there is a better performance of the actors, and there is also the birth of a classic.
I looked up the production of the movie "Space Community" and found that more than half of the shots in this movie involved visual effects production.
The visual effects design is the perfection and continuation of the early creation, and is an important part of determining the temperament of the film.
Judging from the design of the spaceship in the film, this is not a spaceship in the traditional sense. The hull of the spaceship is like a huge brick, covered with impact craters, and it seems that it has not experienced much suffering, and it should be a big story.
This strange shape is very different from the traditional spacecraft, completely unlike the planetary spacecraft such as the Millennium Falcon, this rough design, the huge industrial engine, and perhaps this thick shell can cope with the impact of space.
This shows that in the setting of this movie, human space technology has made great progress compared with the current level, breaking through the traditional "rocket launch", but it has not yet reached the level of equality with alien civilizations.
In addition, the setting of high-level life forms in the film to alienate into fungal creatures is very interesting, for a science fiction fan, since the advent of Spielberg's "E.T. Alien" in 1982, almost all the aliens in the movie are like this.
His diminutive stature, sagging skin, oversized eyes and flat forehead are exactly the same as those of a hominid who has not yet evolved.
Venom is a bold attempt, but Venom is not an alien in the traditional sense, but a virus that, like viruses in medicine, needs to attach to the host to survive.
In the setting of "Space Community", aliens break through the stereotype of "human template" and become "alien life forms" from "aliens", which resemble venom, but are not as simple as venom parasitic humans, but exist in a more advanced and more hidden way.
This is different from almost all science fiction concepts, because in the existing science fiction works, aliens are nothing more than changing skins and colors, but they have never broken through the main body of "people". It can only be said that this is a very bold and novel attempt.
In addition to the concept design, special effects are definitely the soul of science fiction films.
There are also some novel ideas in the special effects production process of "Space Community".
For example, in the design of the art setting, the film has made many different attempts and changes, including the life capsule in the spaceship, the bridge, etc. are very recognizable, with a strong "Asian flavor". From the picture point of view, the art design of "Space Community" is different from the traditional European and American science fiction film Gothic architectural style, but instead adds more "oriental elements", and the color of the whole film looks mainly based on dark tones such as gray blue and army green.
Many times, the domestic science fiction is criticized for a lot of budget, but the film is full of "fifty cent special effects", and I have no idea where the money is spent. For now, although "Space Community" does not have a big card division and no original IP, it spends its budget on special effects, concept design, and art setting, and this down-to-earth production attitude is gratifying.
In general, although "Space Community" is a brave attempt by Chinese science fiction people, there are many breakthroughs and many new concepts.
But the road to science fiction has never been achieved overnight, and the development of science fiction in Hollywood has gone through decades to go from the original science fiction to today's step.
China's science fiction films started late, and indeed there are many immature works, but there are also classics such as "The Wandering Earth", and the efforts of generations of science fiction people are to hope that "The Wandering Earth" is not the last short-lived.
For those of us who hope that Chinese science fiction is getting better and better, and Chinese movies are getting better and better, the road to science fiction is long and difficult, and it requires patience, confidence, and one brave attempt after another.