Presumably, most of the post-70s and post-80s generations had a period of mixed video hall time when they were young. At that time, we experienced the earliest time of watching movies in these video halls.
In fact, when Hong Kong films were released in Hong Kong, most of them were pronounced in Cantonese. But the versions we saw in the video hall were all dubbed versions Chinese.
So, how did these dubbed versions of Chinese come about? I believe that many people are not clear, today we will introduce this history.
1. Why do Hong Kong films have Chinese version of dubbing?
About the Chinese dubbed version of Hong Kong films, first of all, do you know why it is called the Chinese version? Why not call it the Mandarin version?
From Chinese this statement, we can make it clear that most of the Chinese versions of Hong Kong films are related to Taiwan. Many people think that the Chinese version of Hong Kong films in that year was to facilitate the distribution in the mainland, so they had to be dubbed, which is wrong. The Chinese version of the Hong Kong film was originally intended for screening in the Taiwan market.
Speaking of which, we can't help but talk about a common sense that many people don't know. In fact, the prosperity of Hong Kong films in the 80s and 90s of the last century, the golden age of Hong Kong films, its roots were in Taiwan.
Many people don't know much about this, Hong Kong movies in the most prosperous years, sold well throughout East Asia and even Southeast Asia, including Taiwan, and even in the film markets of Japan and South Korea, the box office of Hong Kong movies was very high.
Hong Kong had a population of only 5 million in the 1980s, and if you think about it, it is impossible to feed so many stars.
In the case of Jackie Chan, his film remuneration in the early 90s was as high as 20 million Hong Kong dollars, which was the 90s. At that time, Jackie Chan was interviewed and personally admitted that he was paid 20 million yuan for making a movie and "talked less"
But if you think about it, Jackie Chan's box office in Hong Kong at that time was at most about 40 million, which is already the level of box office champion.
Then he alone will take away 20 million pieces of remuneration, if the box office is only 40 million, the sub-account box office is less than 20 million, how can the investor make money?
Therefore, Jackie Chan's high salary has never been supported by a market in Hong Kong, but by Taiwan, supported by the box office of Japan, South Korea and the entire Southeast Asian region. I will take the box office of several jackie chan films in 1985 as an example.
Here we want to emphasize that the above Taipei box office does not represent the box office of the whole Taiwan region, but only the box office of Taipei city. The box office in Taiwan province as a whole is generally about twice that of Taipei, so basically, the box office of a Jackie Chan movie in Taiwan is definitely higher than the box office in Hong Kong.
So from the example of Jackie Chan, we can see how important the Taiwanese market is to Hong Kong movies and Hong Kong movie stars, right?
Of course, not all Hong Kong movies, not all Hong Kong stars have the appeal of Jackie Chan. Especially in the Japanese and Korean markets, basically only a few people such as Jackie Chan have box office appeal.
But Taiwan is different, everyone is Chinese, the same language, and there is no cultural barrier, and the story of Hong Kong movies is not a problem for Taiwanese audiences to understand.
But surely you can't speak Cantonese anymore, right?
So that's the origin of the Chinese version of Hong Kong films. Hong Kong films will be dubbed into Chinese versions if they are to be released in Taiwan.
If you have seen the DVD disc player disc back then, you know that there are 2 choices for binaural channels, one is Chinese, and the other is Cantonese. Even the songs released by Hong Kong singers are available in Cantonese and Chinese versions.
I believe that we have watched these songs mv, we can see that there are Chinese, Cantonese 2 versions at the bottom of the screen, such as Andy Lau's classic song "Thank You for Your Love".
This is the origin of the dubbing of Hong Kong films Chinese.
2. Starting from Zhou Xingchi and The Royal Dubbing Shi Banyu, how many misunderstandings do you have about Chinese dubbing?
When it comes to the Chinese voice actors of Hong Kong films, the most famous is definitely Stephen Chow's royal voice voice Shi Banyu.
Shi Banyu played the nonsensical comedy characteristics of Stephen Chow's films to the fullest, especially his demonic laughter, which even became his unique symbol. Even Zhou Xingchi couldn't make that strange laugh.
So why do you want to find Shi Banyu to voice Stephen Chow's movie?
I'm wrong, big mistake.
Stephen Chow's Chinese, or Mandarin is very good. After all, if you think about it, Zhou Xingchi's mother first went to Hong Kong from the mainland, her Mandarin is very good, how can her son's Mandarin be bad?
If you don't believe me, you can find some videos of Stephen Chow at the TVB Celebration Party in his early years, such as his singing of "I Am Chinese" in 1988, and his Mandarin pronunciation is very standard.
Not only Stephen Chow, in fact, many Hong Kong stars were very good at Mandarin at that time, but the Chinese version of Hong Kong films released in Taiwan still had to find others to dub them.
For example, Jackie Chan, until his 2006 movie "Baby Project", Chinese dubbing or looking for someone else.
There are 2 interesting points in this table, one is that the mainland actors, gao yuanyuan and Chen Baoguo played by the characters Chinese voiced by themselves; the other is that Hong Kong actors including Jackie Chan, Koo Tianle, Tse Ting Feng and Wu Yanzu, Chinese dubbing are all others.
Regarding the matter of mainland actors, we will talk about it below. Now just talk about Jackie Chan, Nicholas Tse and others, they are like Stephen Chow, Mandarin is very good, so why don't movies released in Taiwan let him dub himself?
That's a good question, because it was part of the assembly line system of the Hong Kong film industry. This has been a tradition of the Hong Kong film industry system for many years.
Perhaps many current audiences do not quite understand how tight the Hong Kong film shooting cycle was back then. Not long ago, Wang Jing made a guest appearance on the "Round Table Pie" program, mentioning that in 1990, he had just finished filming a movie in the Christmas file, and then the boss called and said that the Taiwanese side (boss) urgently named a movie starring Chow Sing Chi and Andy Lau, who were the hottest recently, and prepared to be released in the New Year file (Spring Festival).
This movie was later known as The Trickster. Everyone thinks, Christmas to Spring Festival, that is, more than a month, less than two months, to make a movie.
Do you think it's possible? Wang Jing said that the neuropathy, the boss said that the people there were all the flowers sold, not to shoot.
Wang Jing said that it had to be the scalp, shooting during the day, shooting at night, hurrying up and catching up, less than a month to shoot, plus post-production, and finally finished shooting in the Spring Festival.
So you see, the rhythm of Hong Kong film shooting back then was strange. Stars like Andy Lau have to shoot up to a dozen times a year, and many times they are in this crew during the day, catching up with another crew at night, and spinning continuously.
Just think about it, Andy Lau has been so desperate, there is no time to rest, your film post-production, to prepare for the release in Taiwan, to match the Chinese version of the sound, you then call Andy Lau to personally dub, is there still human nature? You might as well kill him.
Post-production, dubbing also takes time, right? Andy Lau has no time at all. So I had to ask Taiwan to find a special voice actor. Therefore, when Hong Kong movies were released in Taiwan, all the Chinese versions were looking for Taiwanese professional voice actors.
Shi Banyu is one of these professional Taiwanese voice actors.
There are many more such professional voice actors. For example, Liu Xiaoyun, who once appeared on the "Sound Immersion" program, gave Qiu Xiang, played by Gong Li in "Tang Bohu Dian Qiu Xiang", and Ru Shuang, played by Zhang Min in "Wu Zhuangyuan Su Qi'er", all of which were dubbed.
In short, the Chinese versions of Hong Kong films in that year came from this way.
The post-70s and post-80s friends think about it, the Hong Kong films we saw in the video hall that year, and the Chinese we heard, is it not the same as what we said? Yes, this is a Chinese with a Taiwanese flavor.
3. The decline of Hong Kong films and the gradual disappearance of Chinese dubbed versions
The things of this world have never lasted long.
Hong Kong movies used to be so popular, selling well in Taiwan and selling well in Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia, but then the golden age of Hong Kong movies passed.
On the question of why Hong Kong films have declined, I have said a lot before, the main reason is actually one, Hong Kong films lost the former Taiwan market, lost the markets of Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia, only rely on the box office of Hong Kong in one region, can not feed Jackie Chan these superstars, so later Why did Jackie Chan and others go to Hollywood to develop?
It's very simple, because Hong Kong can't afford to pay 20 million yuan here. So naturally we have to find a way to find a place that can afford to work hard.
As for why Hong Kong films will lose the Taiwan market and the Japanese and Korean markets, this is another big topic, not to be expressed for the time being.
However, no one could have imagined that after 2002, the mainland film market gradually began to take off, and by around 2005, the box office of the mainland film market had far exceeded the Hong Kong box office.
Yes, you read that right, mainland movies didn't surpass a tiny Hong Kong until around 2004.
Hey, Jackie Chan and others looked at it, they couldn't mix in Hollywood, or the motherland was better, so they came back. His 2004 film The New Police Story was one of the first Hong Kong films to be fully released on the mainland. Later, in order to recognize Jackie Chan's patriotic spirit, the 2005 Golden Rooster Award film emperor was awarded to Jackie Chan.
Jackie Chan took the lead, so the former Hong Kong film superstars, including directors, what Zhou Xingchi, Xu Ke, all came, Jet Li was originally a Beijinger, naturally also returned.
Therefore, the focus of Hong Kong films gradually went north.
So after 2005, co-productions between the mainland and Hong Kong were popular. The former Hong Kong films have gradually disappeared. There is no longer the kind of pure Hong Kong film that only has Hong Kong actors, and the later Hong Kong films are all co-productions, all of which are Hong Kong actors and mainland actors working together, and these films have been dominated by the mainland film market from the beginning. This is completely different from the previous Hong Kong films of the 80s and 90s.
Once Hong Kong films, mainly based on Hong Kong, shooting and creativity, all the main creative centers were completed in Hong Kong, the shooting process was Cantonese, and later in Taiwan to complete the Chinese version of the dubbing.
However, most of the co-productions after 2005 were themselves shot in the mainland, and the stories and ideas were also aimed at the mainland film market. So during the filming process, I was ready to dub Chinese and Cantonese 2 versions.
Remember the Baby Project mentioned above? In the scenes of Chen Baoguo and Gao Yuanyuan, all the Mandarin lines are dubbed by themselves, but the Mandarin lines of Hong Kong actors such as Jackie Chan still look for other voice actors.
However, with the further expansion of the mainland market, the Hong Kong film market is becoming less and less important, and many Hong Kong actors participate in the film, the investment is from the mainland, so more and more films in the future, the actors themselves are on the battlefield, using Mandarin soundtrack.
Let's still take Jackie Chan as an example, basically starting from "Myth" in 2005, and later "Big Soldiers and Young Generals" these mainland investment-based films, Jackie Chan's Mandarin films are all his original voice starred, basically the shooting scene has been used in the original sound.
Most of the other Hong Kong actors involved in mainland-funded films have basically starred in their own soundtracks.
Of course, there are some exceptions. One of the most prominent is Zhou Xingchi. His last two films, "Kung Fu" and "Seven on the Yangtze River", still invited Shi Banyu to voice, which is really because Shi Banyu's voice was too impressed in the minds of mainland audiences, and Zhou Xingchi did not want to break this habit.
Therefore, the dubbing of the Chinese version of the Hong Kong film has gradually become a historical term.
However, there are still some residues, that is, those so-called pure Hong Kong films, or use Chinese dubbing. For example, this year's summer file "Sweeping Drugs 2", this movie is mainly Hong Kong investors, released in Hong Kong or Cantonese, the version released in the mainland still uses dubbing, including Andy Lau and other leading actors have used dubbing.
But in fact, Andy Lau's previous films in the mainland, such as "Lost Alone" and "Rescue Mr. Wu", are all his original voices.
In addition, now some Hong Kong films are released in Taiwan, and some will still use the version specially matched by Taiwanese voice actors, after all, people can't see the Mandarin version of our side. However, these examples are very few and far between, after all, there are very few so-called pure Hong Kong films every year, and there are only a dozen of them every year.
Therefore, it is rare to see the term Chinese version again, which has dissipated behind the historical storm.
Looking back at the history of Hong Kong films Chinese dubbing for more than 30 years, it is also the change of Hong Kong films and the development of Chinese films.