With the popularity of "White Snake 2: Green Snake Robbery", it has aroused many people's childhood memories about the national comic.
Since the 1950s, Chinese animation has not only gained countless fans in China, but also taken the lead in the world to go abroad and won a high reputation.
"The Great Haunting of the Heavenly Palace", "The Strange Tan of the Heavenly Book", "Nezha Noisy Sea", "The Little Tadpole Finds His Mother"... Those years can be called the golden age of Chinese animation, and countless classic animation works were born.
Among them, compared with well-known works such as "The Haunting of the Heavenly Palace", there is a cartoon with a particularly innovative style that is rarely mentioned, that is, "Golden Monkey Descending Demon" in 1985, Douban is as high as 9.2 points.
The film won the Golden Rooster Award for Best Fine Art, the Outstanding Film Award from the Ministry of Radio, Film and Television, and the first prize for animated feature film from the Chicago International Children's Film Festival.
For many people, this national comic that has won awards at home and abroad is not only their childhood memories, but also an indelible "childhood shadow".
01, the "smorgasbord" of the journey to the west story
The producer of "Golden Monkey Descending Demon" is the Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio, known as "China Disney".
Before the advent of "Golden Monkey Descending Demon", Shangmei Factory had already produced a number of animation works with the theme of Journey to the West, such as the most classic "Haunting Heavenly Palace", the paper-cut animation "Pig Eight Commandments eat watermelon", and "Ginseng Fruit" slightly earlier than "Golden Monkey Descending Demon".
The "Golden Monkey Descending Demon" was originally a work that Shangmei Factory planned to launch on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, but due to the many performances of this theme at that time, Shangmei Factory decided to temporarily shelve it until 1982, when it was officially put into production, and finally polished after 3 years.
The story of "Golden Monkey Descending Demon" is mainly based on the chapter of "Three Dozen White Bone Essences", but the screenwriters of this film, Te Wei and Bao Lei, found that the content of the original work was too thin, and if it was completely adapted according to the original work, it was not enough to support a film, and the whole story also appeared incomplete.
Under the repeated deliberation and modification of the two screenwriters, the whole story has made two innovations on the basis of retaining the backbone.
The first is the further enrichment of the character image, such as Sun Wukong's more rational and mature personality in addition to his bravery and fearlessness, highlighting the worldly side of the "lust for beauty" of the Eight Precepts of the Pig, but the biggest change is the villain led by the white bone spirit.
The white bone essence, whose combat effectiveness is not outstanding in the original work, has been portrayed in this film: as soon as he appears, he has a powerful aura to make his subordinate demon soldiers obey;
After changing the human form many times, the two masters and apprentices set a trap to catch Tang Monk after Sun Wukong left, and her use of human weaknesses and cunning and changeable image gave her the qualification to "fight" with Sun Wukong.
In addition, the screenwriter also designed the four generals of the tiger, wolf, bear and snake under the white bone spirit, which further strengthened the strength of the villain camp, thus adding a more fierce confrontation between the good and evil factions and making the drama of the whole story more sufficient.
The second is the expansion of the plot, which perfectly "transplants" the stories of other chapters in "Journey to the West" into the story of Bai Bonejing, which can be called a hodgepodge of "Journey to the West" story.
As the main creator said, considering that the old man and the old lady in the "three changes" of the white bone essence in the original work are the same kind of characters and lack of changes, the "old lady" was changed to a little boy with a red belly, and this design is actually a copy of the red child.
Moreover, Sun Wukong's "three dozen white bone essences" did not eliminate the goblins, and when the Tang monks drove Sun Wukong away, they fell into the Buddhist temple "Heavenly King Temple" where the white bone essence changed, which is undoubtedly integrated into the two stories of the yellow robe monster and the fake Lei Yin Temple in the original work.
Later, Sun Wukong rushed back to save Tang Monk, killing Bai Bonejing's mother halfway and turning into her form, which is similar to the later chapter of the Golden Horn/Silver Horn King.
Although it sounds like a "hodgepodge", thanks to the meticulous arrangement of the two screenwriters, the integration of all the plots is chaotic and not chaotic, making the simple plot that was originally flat and directly narrated more wonderful and vivid.
02. Unique "Dark Opera Style"
"Golden Monkey Descending Demon" has very distinct era and national characteristics, which is inseparable from the animation "nationalization" and "modernization" that one of the directors, Te Wei, has been pursuing.
The film has a very strong opera style in the picture image, according to the director, this is actually influenced by the puppet show and opera of the previous "Three Dozen White Bone Essences", such as the shape of the White Bone Essence, which is the inspiration drawn from the opera.
Cloaked in a cloak and holding a sword, the demon is a little cool, and the white bone essence is constructed according to the procedural footwork of the opera stage from form to action.
But the film left the deepest impression on people, or the "horror trait" that scared many children into crying.
In fact, the episode of "Three Dozen White Bone Essences" in the 86th edition of "Journey to the West" is particularly creepy, which is still more than enough in the animated version.
Taking the opening scene of the film "White Bone Essence Point General" as an example, in the eerie demon cave, accompanied by the sound of drum music, the stone statues of various monsters have awakened, and the scene of groups of demons dancing wildly, the figure of the white bone spirit appears dangerous and mysterious in it.
The most classic is the passage where Tang Monks and others enter the Temple of the Heavenly King, where the statues of the four heavenly kings stand on both sides, flanked by arhats with different postures, which look extremely strange under the flickering candlelight, like hell.
This cartoon, which now seems to be somewhat "uncomfortable for children", has reached a peak in the rendering of the atmosphere, and even if it is seen by today's standards, it still has a sense of horror.
03, the last glory of art films
After the film was released that year, it was very successful, not only won the Golden Rooster Award for Best Art Film, but also received high praise at film festivals in the United States, France and other countries, and won many awards.
To impress foreign audiences, "Golden Monkey Descending Demon" relies not only on the story, but also on unparalleled artistry;
As the creators say, the whole film does not have much space to change empty and complex actions, but learns from the opera, "focusing on a smaller range of stage space," making the film more compact and good-looking.
In addition, the flowing and flexible ink painting style presented in the film scene also represented the highest level of Chinese animation at that time.
Unfortunately, "The Golden Monkey Descends" is almost the last glory of Chinese art films, and since then, there has not been a high-level animated feature film in China for more than a decade, until 1999's "Pauline Lantern" broke the embarrassing situation.
At the same time, Japanese animation is also rising rapidly, many animation masters, such as Miyazaki Hayao, Takahata, etc., began to create their own glory, and the status of Chinese animation as the hegemon of Asia also shifted to Japan from the 1980s.
Institutional changes, attempts at commercialization, and other factors have led to Chinese animation creators not being as distracted as before, regardless of cost, and they have begun to pay more attention to multi-episode animation production.
For example, animation classics such as "Black Cat Sheriff", "Hulu Brothers", "Shuk and Beta" were born in this period, although these multi-episode animations have also achieved good response, but they can not hide the decline of Chinese animation under the impact of the commercial wave.
The Golden Monkey Descends demons is the last adult-oriented Journey to the West anime of the 20th century.
In recent years, although Chinese animation has begun to get rid of the situation of young age and roughness since "The Return of the Great Sage", and "the rise of national comics" is no longer just a slogan, there is still a certain gap between it and the golden age of the past, both in terms of influence and level.
Decades later, works like "Golden Monkey Descending Demon" will surely withstand the precipitation of time, and the craftsman spirit contained in it is worth learning from today's animators! (Author: Pippi Shrimp)