Text | Zhou Rui
"It would be nice if the box office of "Mulan" could break 200 million on the first day, or 150 million would do." Fans of the live-action version of "Mulan" said so. But everyone knows that this possibility is unlikely. After
pre-exposed the content of "Mulan" on the Disney streaming media Disney+ online, the domestic word-of-mouth of "Mulan" plummeted in a short period of time, and the Douban score dropped from the initial 5.9 points (starting on September 5) to the current 4.7 However, Tucao "Mulan" has even become a kind of "political correctness" in the public opinion market. The collapse of
and directly affected the box office conversion of "Mulan". Although the pre-screening popularity of "Mulan" has been rising all the way (as of September 10, Maoyan wanted to watch 204,000 people, and Taobao tickets wanted to watch 1.14 million people), but the film pre-sale box office was a little cold. China movie box office data showed that, as of In the early morning of September 11, the pre-sale box office of "Mulan" was about 13 million on the first day.
"Mulan" was officially released today. The theater lineup accounted for 42.95%, and its zero-point box office was 1.65 million. This result is not the worst among Disney's real fairy tales. 1.65 million is already higher than the 2019 Maleficent 2 ""’S 1.05 million, and the first day’s single-day box office totaled 51.18 million, and the combined box office accounted for 42.55%. "Disney's first Chinese princess" has a considerable gap in momentum. As of writing time, today's movie market has not exceeded 100 million.
The movie market in September was even more deserted after the "Creed" and "Mulan" were "dumb". Although the key to "Eight Hundred" was extended to October 21, this is only the end of the box office market that lacks new film support. The fate of the box office market in September seems to have been finalized, and the miracle can only come to the National Day stall.
"Magic Color" + "Westernized Narrative", the "Waterloo" of the Chinese Princess
Currently, the evaluation of "Mulan" in the domestic public opinion market is still not very optimistic. Searching for the name of Mulan on Weibo, the engine automatically correlates the topic of Mulan's ugly rating, and also on social media platforms such as Weibo, WeChat, Douyin, Kuaishou, Station B, and other social media platforms that analyze the reputation of "Mulan" Manuscripts or short videos of Waterloo.
This aspect may indeed be due to the fact that "Mulan" shot by Disney does not meet the expectations of domestic audiences. From the perspective of film culture elements, the makeup, clothing, architecture and other bugs that appeared in the trailer of "Mulan" movie are more obvious in the film. Disney once again proved that Hollywood cannot fully understand the elements of oriental culture and aesthetic concepts. .
In terms of movie content, the setting of "qi" in the movie and the witch and fairy played by Gong Li make this oriental story bring western magical colors, while the values, emotional expressions, and ways of thinking of the characters remain unchanged. It is a Hollywood model, "Mulan" is a western story under the eastern shell.
Actually, may be Disney's consistent approach to "Mulan". When the animated version of "Mulan" appeared in 1998, Disney also first "magicized" the story and added the character "Mushu Dragon", a cute pet dragon with mana and personality; then it took American values as the The core tells the story, giving Mulan the characteristics of playfulness, courage, and self-pursuing, and portrays her as an American woman with an oriental face.
At that time, some people also believed that the animated version of "Mulan" did not really understand the essence of the ancient story of Mulan's military service for his father. Magic, cute pets, love, and the pursuit of self-worth. The animated version of "Mulan" is a movie with Hollywood commercial films of American modern values.
However, animation creation has more space and tolerance than live-action movies. It is allowed to have more imagination. Moreover, as a commercial animation, the animated version of "Mulan" is a commercial animation that maintains Disney's golden animation from plot, screen to music, etc. The standard that era 2D works should have. The addition of Mushu Dragon has become one of the biggest highlights of "Mulan" in the animated version. For 10 or even 20 years since the movie was released, some people commented with affection that "Mushu Dragon is so likable."
So the domestic audience accepted this work and regarded this animation work as a classic under the childhood filter.
But this set of concepts is put on the live-action movie, and there is a big problem. In the live-action version of "Mulan", in order to ensure the reality of the story, and to be close to the oriental cultural background, the first thing to live-action is to remove the Mushu Dragon. because they believe that "the dragon has never been regarded as a young mascot in the Chinese perception." This concern is of course reasonable, but it also means that compared to the animated version, the live version is destined to weaken some of the comedy and magic, and will be more realistic.
But Disney was unwilling to make "Mulan" into a boring historical costume film, so additional creations were made on the characters , Hua Mulan was not enough, so she could use "qi" to play Gong Li. The villain, half of her face painted white, so that she can use witchcraft and illusion skills, and her combat power is invincible. At the same time, although the characters are designed with oriental faces, their behavior patterns and thought expressions are still Westernized, so that domestic audiences do not understand the behavior motives of some characters in the process of watching movies.
This puts the live-action version of "Mulan" between reality and magic, with a sense of contradiction. For domestic audiences, Mulan’s story has long been well-familiar. The original story content alone is not attractive. However, the live-action version of "Mulan" lacks the appropriate magical comedy elements like the animated version to ease the atmosphere. As a result, the reputation of "Mulan" quickly collapsed.
On the other hand, after the word-of-mouth of "Mulan" collapsed, all kinds of complaints on the Internet continued. Regardless of whether the audience actually watched "Mulan", these two sentences can be regarded as keeping up with the trend of the Internet, and the negative orientation of public opinion undermined "Mulan"'s previous market sentiment.
In reality, a considerable part of the audience said after watching "Mulan", "It is not as bad as expected, it is just ordinary, as always Disney" "Liu Yifei fits this image of Mulan quite well, compared to the wit in the animation. Lively, the live-action version of Mulan is a character who looks weak in appearance but strong in heart, who wants to live his own life in a repressive and conservative patriarchal society."
"Creed" and "Mulan" successively "slipped", the box office upset in September?
and "Mulan"'s word-of-mouth Waterloo, the box office has been affected, for the entire movie market is even worse.
was originally affected by the epidemic, and the film market in September this year was unprecedentedly cold. Except for the domestic blockbuster "Yubai" left over from August, there was not a large number of domestic films on the market.The domestic seeded players rushed to the National Day stalls. The movie market in September is only expected to support Warner Bros. Nolan's "Creed" and Disney's "Mulan".
But the day fails. "Creed", which was first released in early September, has not yet recovered the cost of at the domestic box office of 300 million. The Douban score fell to 7.8 and the global box office of 152 million US dollars. This is very different from what the public expected that "Nolan movie hits the global box office".
and the situation of "Creed" in China is very similar to that of Ang Lee's " Gemini Killer " in 2019. The former two films use superb narrative techniques to explain what should be a traditional commercial spy film unexpectedly and even somewhat mysterious. ; The latter is the use of pioneering film technology to try to find a path to a new era for the film industry.
The box office results of the two films were not as good as expected. They are neither worthy of the reputation of international directors, nor are they worthy of high-cost investment, but they are of great significance to the film industry and even film professionals. The works symbolize the world's first-line directors. The spirit of exploration-how to tell a story in a newer, better and more exciting way? 's box office failure also appears to be a glorious defeat. Even the times may give these movies preferential treatment, and future audiences may give them new evaluations.
still reserved space for "Creed" in the box office market. Although the proportion of films in the film is gradually decreasing, it still remains above 10%. Perhaps the cinema hopes that "Creed" can explode more long-tail value, and fans have an endless stream of popular science and analysis of "Creed". Even if the threshold of "Creed" prevents the film from sinking to third- and fourth-tier cities, you can only hope for the core Repeated viewing under the mentality of pilgrimage and puzzle solving can increase the box office of the movie.
The current box office trend of "Mulan" is higher than that of "Aladdin" (28.14 million on the first day), Maleficent 2 (36.59 million on the first day) and Dumbo "(The box office of 12.89 million on the first day), has entered the upper circle in the Disney real-life fairy tales, but the "Chinese princess rescue" time that the industry is looking forward to has not yet arrived.
and the two-day weekend of "Mulan" is still around 40%, there are not many movies to choose from on the market. Compared with the long-released "Yaobai" and the high-cold "Creed", theaters will still hope Put it on "Mulan". As of press time, the pre-sale of "Mulan" has exceeded 10 million in two days at the weekend, and the results are still not too good. Maoyan estimated that "Mulan" had a total box office of 291 million, while the media on the lighthouse estimated a total of 449 million.
is even more worrying in the second half of September. Except for "Kikujiro's Summer" which was re-screened on September 25, the fan recognition and IP recognition are higher, and the rest is "The Train to Spring". Small-scale movies such as "Mai Luren", " A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood " on the import market are limited by biographical content, and the box office volume will be too large. But "Avatar", which was rumored to be re-screened in September, still has no news.
current cat-eye data shows that the cumulative box office in September reached 1.008 billion. In the past five years, the monthly box office in September has been around 2 billion to 3 billion. According to the current movie market's fixed list and box office trends, the box office in September this year may return to around 2012. In August, "Yabai" set off a box office boom. "Creed" and "Mulan" failed to continue. In the cold air, everyone can only wait for the arrival of October.
