Recently, the comedy film "The King of Bath" directed by Yi Xiaoxing and the costume fantasy film "Qingya Collection" directed by Guo Jingming have all been taken off the theater early due to the plagiarism storm. Director Yi Xiaoxing shouted injustice and pointed out that the Korean company touched porcelain, which was admirable, but the main reason was that the plagiarism was not mainly Korean comics.
"The Bath King" was first accused of plagiarism, which was suspected of plagiarizing the South Korean webcomic "Bath God". The copyright holder of the latter, South Korean production company Moonwatcher, issued a statement after the release of "The Bath King", saying, "Wanda stole our movie." We will continue to fight Wanda and director Yi Zhenxing (i.e. Yi Xiaoxing) over their business negligence and violations of copyright law. ”
According to South Korean media reports, moonwatcher said that in 2018, Wanda Media agreed to co-produce a movie based on the South Korean webcomic "God of Bath", and in July of the same year, it was decided that Yi Zhenxing (that is, beast Yi Xiaoxing) would be the director and screenwriter. In October 2019, Wanda withdrew its investment for internal reasons and cancelled its co-production contract with Moonwatcher and stopped participating in the project. Yi Xiaoxing, on the other hand, registered the original copyright in his own name for his adaptation of the localized film script, and intended to personally produce the film. Moonwatcher tried to appeal to Wanda and Yi Xiaoxing in April 2020 over co-production and copyright issues, but the two sides failed to reach an agreement.
The comic strip of "God of Bathing" tells the story of an unemployed young man Xu Shi who mistakenly entered a bathhouse on the way to avoid debts, and then found his life goal in the process of bathing for people, determined to become the top bath manager of the world's largest hot spring theme park "Kaneko Soup", and struggled for it.
From the perspective of the main story line, the movie "The Bath King" is completely different from the Korean comic "Bath God", but it also tells the theme of bath culture and aimless life with a goal.
The object of plagiarism of "The Bath King" is more like the comedy romance "Overboard" produced by MGM in the United States and directed by Gary Marshall, the same rich people play an embarrassing person, the rich people fall into the water for some reason, the rich people are temporarily abandoned by their families, and the embarrassed people deliberately confess to the rich people and punish them for hard work in the previous small festival, and the two have real feelings in the ordinary relationship, and finally have a happy ending. The difference is only that one is about husband and wife, and the other is about brothers.
In the first half of the film, Xiao Xiang, the second generation of the rich, has a conflict with Zhou Donghai, a bather, Zhou Donghai deliberately recognizes relatives, and the family gets along daily, etc. The plot is smooth and natural. But from the beginning of the fancy preparation bath competition, it began a slightly deliberate imitation of Stephen Chow's classic movie "Kung Fu", especially "God Eater" (yes, this is not called a tribute, it is called imitation).
Like the god of food having an epiphany about cooking, Xiao Xiang truly realized the truth about Zhou Donghai's bath during the competition, and finally won the competition. Some people call it "using the routine of 'God Eater' to perform the taste of 'great health care'".
"The God of Bathing" hopes to tell the appeal of the big truth, which is understandable, after all, it is only said that the bath is too low-level, and it is necessary to rise to the bath culture; the bath culture is still somewhat simple and straightforward, and it is not enough to impress people, so it is sublimated again, increase the depth, and add a little Zen.
The avenue is similar, martial arts is called "no trick to win the trick", "God Eater" is a bowl of "eclipsed soul rice" that returns to the truth, contains true feelings, and evokes people's happy memories. The answer given by "The King of Bathing" after self-sublimation is that "there is no way to scrub the bath", "technology is not the most important", and "communicate with guests with hands", but in fact, this is already contrary to the bath culture mentioned at the beginning.
Bathing in China has a history of thousands of years, from the initial "bath", that is, to help others scrub, to integrate into the theory of Traditional Chinese medicine to develop into "back rubbing", a very important point is to introduce the principle of meridian science, the formation of "thumb rubbing method", "one-handed push rubbing method", "two-handed push rubbing method" and other fixed methods, the "push, hold, press, point, mo, soft, rub, rational, knock, clap, hit, pinch, roll, shake" and other techniques to the extreme.
Yes, this is a "skill" that pays attention to skill, not because there are feelings for family members, feelings for guests, and feelings for the industry, which can make the back rubr fight back, reverse the world, and become the "Tao" of the bath master. For the bath, feelings are not the first, the first is always the technician's technique and technique. This is the first reason why the logic of The Bath King is not self-consistent.
The second reason is that "The Bath King" portrays psychology too crudely. Although the public has a certain understanding of the emotional impact of taste experience, like the "taste of the mother" that can never be surpassed, in "God Of Food", in order to make the transformation of the God of Food convincing, and finally sacrifice this bowl of eclipsed soul rice, the film carries out a lot of preparation and detailed depiction, until the inner pain and remorse of the God of Food are externalized into a deep touch of a white head overnight, it can be said that the film gives enough reasons for the bland char siu rice to win the championship because of the sincerity of the heart.
In contrast, in "The King of Bathing", Xiao Xiang recovers his memory, Zhou Donghai's lies are exposed, Xiao Xiang understands Zhou Donghai and represents his brothers in the bathhouse and other psychological twists, many of which are brush strokes and slightly blunt. In the end, the set of divinely helpful one-palm knocking on the back, although it was already very touching, was still slightly hurried, not to mention the hasty ending.
All in all, the bathing theme of "The God of Bathing", coupled with the main line of "Falling Water Marriage", coupled with the imitation of Zhou Xingchi movies such as "God of Food" and "Kung Fu", a smorgasbord platter is formed. The only sincerity that people feel in the whole movie is the introduction of the bathing culture in the north and south of China at the beginning.
Of course, the acting skills of Qiao Shan and Peng Yuchang are still remarkable. "Comedy old cannon" Qiao Shan needless to say, the interpretation of such a small person to the catch, basically contracted all the laughter output of this film. Peng Yuchang's performance is also good, the two cooperate tacitly, but his performance actually has nothing to do with comedy, only giving people the feeling of "silly and cute".
Perhaps, the sense of humor is really innate, is the appearance, voice, body shape, emotional intelligence, IQ of the collection, like Ge You, Huang Bo, Qiao Shan, Shen Teng, etc., Peng Yuchang to develop to this degree that makes people want to laugh at a glance, it is still difficult to see, he has not yet formed his own unique style.
Of course, without considering the problem of plagiarism, the drama is still OK to watch as a warm film, but if you hold the purpose of watching comedy, it may make people a little disappointed, most of the baggage is more awkward and deliberate, the biggest laugh in the whole film should be the discussion of the importance of hair to middle-aged people. However, after watching the movie, many people clearly stated that they will experience the bath culture, and "The King of Bath" has excellent ability to carry goods!
Finally, to say one more thing, the phenomenon of plagiarism is emerging in an endless stream, not only this film, but also the creation can not buy the copyright, ah, all kinds of rational courage can strengthen cultural self-improvement, self-confidence?