What kind of movies do you need for the Spring Festival? The pros and cons of the Year of the Dragon.
The Spring Festival stalls have come to an end, looking back at the eve of the Spring Festival, there is a lack of super blockbusters, most of the movies are old faces, no premieres have been held, and the audience walks into the theater as if opening a blind box.
A large number of marketing strategies, led by "Jia Ling lost 100 pounds", were overwhelming, which once aroused the disgust of some viewers and were skeptical of this year's Spring Festival stalls.
However, unexpectedly, on the eighth day of the Lunar New Year, "Hot and Hot" set a box office record for a Spring Festival feature film, with a total box office of more than 784.3 billion, a new high in film history, and even the word-of-mouth has far exceeded the Spring Festival stalls in recent years, and the Douban score of several live-action movies was once as high as 8 points.
Jia Ling, Han Han and Zhang Yimou's "Article 20", which has been falling at the box office for several days, are all winners.
Under the hot surface of the Spring Festival stalls, some special phenomena have also been exposed. One of the most surprising is the large-scale wave of withdrawals. Directed by Han Yan"The Trilogy of Life"After the final chapter of "Let's Shake the Sun Together" announced its withdrawal from the Spring Festival file, other stressed films also chose to withdraw, including Ning Hao and Andy Lau's "Mr. Red Carpet" and two bland animated films.
Therefore, half of the 8 films released on the first day of the Lunar New Year were withdrawn. And none of these withdrawn movies broke 100 million at the box office.
Although the main creators and IP influence of the two animated films are far less than "bear infested", the comedy that Ning Hao and Andy Lau have collaborated on for 17 years has also been alienated by the audience because of their unique narrative style and entertainment industry themes, this alienation is Ning Hao's intentional choice, but the audience does not buy it.
Similarly, although Han Yan's "terminal illness" work is full of depth, due to the choice to be released during the Spring Festival, the market response was not ideal, it was an adventure, but it ended in failure.
Faced with this situation, they can only choose to fight again, although this is a glimmer of life, but that's all. They had to accept the challenge of the advertising costs they had already invested and how to win back the trust of their audience.
There is a common phenomenon in Spring Festival movies, that is, the excessive pursuit of comedy effects. In fact, the eight films in the Spring Festival file are all comedies, such as "Hot and Hot" and "Flying Life 2" are inspirational comedies with sports themes, while "Article 20" highlights reality through comedy elements in daily life.
Other films such as "Mr. Red Carpet", "Let's Shake the Sun Together", and "Bear Infested: Reversing Time and Space" have also incorporated comedy elements and emphasized their comedy in publicity.
Zhang Yimou said in an interview that the jokes of "Article 20" are even more than twice that of "Man Jianghong". Comedy films have always been favored in the film market, and only blockbusters such as "Changjin Lake" and "The Wandering Earth" can slightly shake the dominance of comedy in the Chinese film market.
Especially during the Spring Festival, comedy is the most convenient or even the only way to achieve "family carnival". Those who get "family fun" get the box office. For example, the "Bear Infested" series of movies often maintains a box office of around 800 million yuan because it allows a target audience (children) to create three or four tickets (a family) box office effect.
It is important to be wary that this commonly adopted comedy strategy may lead to homogeneity in the subject matter, content and emotion of the film. Taking the champion and runner-up of this year's Spring Festival box office as an example, "Hot and Hot" tells the story of how a woman who has been completely denied restarts her life through boxing, while "Flying Life 2" depicts a middle-aged man who has been ridiculed by the years and how he surpasses himself through racing.
The jokes of both films are the conflict between the protagonist and the world around him; However, in the second half of the period, the elements of comedy are gradually diluted and replaced by more positive emotional values such as inspiration, dreams and self, and comedy seems to become a packaging technique.
In "Article 20", Lei Jiayin and Ma Li's personal style and language art become the highlights of the film. They use comedy to interpret a cruel and poignant story, which alleviates the fear of the subject in the midst of laughter.
However, such a comedic approach may have weakened the artistic value and depth of the film, and also made people misunderstand the film's issues. In fact, Zhang Yimou**'s problem was not solved because of the comedy, but after Zhao Liying's character jumped off the building, the problem became more complex and profound.
Therefore, the reputation of this film is lower than Zhang Yimou's early and similar theme "Qiu Ju's Lawsuit", which also illustrates this problem.
Although the choice of Spring Festival movies is beyond reproach, it should also conform to market demand. However, if you rely solely on comedy to narrate, it may make the audience feel aesthetic fatigue, and it is difficult to have both industrial blockbusters, costume suspense, spy war and fantasy like last year's Spring Festival, as dazzling and colorful as fireworks, like Chinese New Year's Eve.
In fact, those withdrawn films that laugh loudly enough, are not pure enough, and don't resonate enough also reflect the imbalance between supply and demand during this year's Spring Festival, and the audience's taste seems to be only left with a combination of "comedy + emotion", lacking choices that are more inclusive, have a wider range of themes, and have richer genres.
There is no standard answer to the demand for Spring Festival movies, but we can at least expect less weirdness and more color.