Net Xiaoyi: At present, fantasy-themed online movies are showing a rapid upward trend. In this issue, let's take a look at the "upward" journey it is going through.
Chapter 1
Fantasy movie "Climbing"
Net Xiaoyi: Please briefly comment on the creation of fantasy-themed online movies.
Li Wei: When you sit down and watch a movie, the normal sequence is to enter your eyes, into your ears, into your brain, into your heart. There is no doubt that fantasy movies can successfully attract public attention and entertain the public, first of all, they have a first-mover advantage in "eyes and ears". Intense and shocking visual effects allow users to quickly immerse themselves in the context of the story, feel the strong emotional stimulation that accompanies the story before experiencing the deep meaning of the story, and “get into the brain” as the story progresses and the meaning deepens. Heart", is brought into a dual satisfaction of the senses and emotions.
Tin Snare: In terms of absolute numbers and box office performance, fantasy films are the indispensable main force of current online movies. In recent years, fantasy online movies have experienced several iterations of themes, from zombies and Taoist priests, to myth rewriting, and then to monsters and monsters. Each iteration puts forward higher requirements for the level of realism and excitement of the visual effects. It is also the development trend of special effects and blockbusterization of fantasy-themed online movies, which has pushed up the box office of online movies year after year.
2020 online movie split account box office champion, runner-up "Qi Men Dunjia" and "A Chinese Ghost Story: Human Love" are the pinnacle of visual effects fantasy blockbusters. But in terms of aesthetic style, there have been different pursuits.
"Qimen Dunjia" is a remake of the movie of the same name. On the basis of the continuation of the original story "Fog Hidden Gate", it tells the story of a righteous but unqualified hunter Zhou Tong. After obtaining the true biography of Qimen, A story of revenge for the father and eradication of evil for the world.
From the perspective of narrative structure, "Qimen Dunjia" does not have much breakthrough. Zhou Tong, who bears a family feud, became the son of heaven, and after going through the "Hero's Journey", he finally confronted the mad demon Bi Fang head-on. Similar battle lines between good and evil can be found in many fantasy movies.
But in terms of visual effect aesthetics, "Qimen Dunjia" has made a different attempt. When the movie shows the madman Bi Fang, it still follows the conventions of online movies and pursues a gloomy, terrifying and bloody visual effect style. However, when performing the "Fog Hidden Door" spell, the creators used their imaginations to combine the elegant feeling of traditional Chinese martial arts with visual effects technology, and showed the audience strange skills such as formations and imperial objects. In particular, the scene where Mr. Tianlao was driving a fish in the water to embellish Zhou Tong, which was splendid and dreamlike, was impressive.
"A Chinese Ghost Story: Human Love" is also a remake of a classic cinema movie, with an investment of more than 40 million, setting a new high for the cost of online movies. The story of "A Chinese Ghost Story: Love in the World" still revolves around Ning Caichen and Nie Xiaoqian, the classic episodes of meeting in the original story and gradually developing love, and classic characters such as the old demon of Montenegro and the demon hunter Yan Chixia one by one. recovery. As far as an online movie is concerned, it can be regarded as a no-brainer to retell a classic story in a proper manner.
However, in order to attract the audience's attention, "A Chinese Ghost Story: Human Love" gave up the work on the main line of emotion, but instead strengthened the fragrant and weird elements in the visual effect, weakening the growth of the characters and the appeal of the story. In the fantasy action scenes that require the creator's imagination, there are not many new ideas, but full of blunt visual stimulation. This kind of fantasy big for special effectsIn the short term, the film may reap a considerable box office with its feelings and blockbuster gimmicks, but the audience will not always pay for repeated visual stimuli, and no matter how fantastic the story is, it must resonate with the real emotions. To a certain extent, the market high point that "A Chinese Ghost Story: Human Love" has climbed has also become a milestone in the development of fantasy-themed online movies.
Chapter 2
From "scaring" to "intimidating"
Wang Xiaoyi: What kind of changes are fantasy-themed online movies going through behind a boom?
Tin Snare: During 2020-2021, the development of fantasy-themed online movies has ushered in an inflection point. From the perspective of market performance, fantasy-themed online movies in 2020 climbed to a high point at the box office.
According to statistics, the top five online movie box office rankings in 2020 are "Qi Men Dunjia", "Ghost Blowing Lanterns: The Secret Collection of Xiangxi", "A Chinese Ghost Story: Human Love", "Hai Da Yu", and "Ghost Blowing Lantern: Longling Cave" , are fantasy special effects blockbusters. Among them, the box office of the first three films broke through the 50 million mark.
But by 2021, among the top five online movie box office rankings, there are only two fantasy films, "The Legend of Xing'an Mountains Hunter" and "Ghost Blowing the Lamp: Yellow Leather Grave", both of which are folk-oriented thrillers, downplaying the importance of fantasy. The pursuit of visual landscape and special effects. In general, in the past two years, fantasy-themed online movies have jumped out of the vicious circle of special effects comparisons to a certain extent, and have gradually embarked on a new path of deviating from reality and emphasizing narrative.
Compared with "Qi Men Dunjia" and "A Chinese Ghost Story: Human Love", the scale of visual effects of these two fantasy films has been significantly reduced, and there are no all kinds of invisible monsters and monsters. They chose to follow the path of folk horror films, highlighting the sense of mystery, horror and ritual visually, while the story draws nourishment from folklore and pays attention to the deliberation of narrative structure. This type of fantasy-themed online movie partially replaces the visual stimulation with the singularity and twists and turns of the story, satisfying the audience's imagination and expectations for this genre. At the same time, the visual style of deviating from the virtual to the real also avoids the infinite increase in costs caused by the blind pursuit of special effects.
"The Legend of Xing'an Mountains Hunter" is based on the legend of "Huangwei Hunter" circulated in the northeast, with the last generation of Huangwei hunter Liu Erye as the main line character, telling the story of him being asked by the villagers to go down the mountain to investigate the massacre, which led to the A series of stories of wild gossips.
The whole movie is divided into three units: "Yaoyan", "Lovesickness" and "Cause and Effect", which respectively tell the story of the Malaysian monkey's revenge against the greedy doctor, the hard-working woman who fell into madness due to the loss of her husband and the loss of her son, and the murder of a poor boy to replace the gangster family business. A story that can stand on its own. However, in terms of story structure, the main creator did not use a simple platter form, but was good at disrupting the timing and creating a bizarre illusion that deviates from the truth through the narration of the people in the play, making the three stories intertwined, complex and intense.
In the film, Liu Erye, who is determined and resourceful, plays the role of a fixed star. As a witness to many strange things in the forest, he can always see people's troubles through the appearance of strange talk. When the audience, under his guidance, jumped out of the weird and confused, and gained insight into the complex human heart, this fantasy story had a positive direction.
"Ghost Blowing Lamp: Yellow Leather Grave" is a well-reputed film in the "Ghost Blowing Lamp" series of online movies. In this series of online movies, the adaptation style used to take the underground supernatural adventure in the past. The main point is the battle between the protagonists and all kinds of monsters, poisonous insects and monsters. But "Ghost Blowing the Lamp: Yellow Leather Grave" has changed its course and told a story of superimposition of illusions. In the
movie, Hu Bayi and Fatty Wang "crossed by mistake" in order to save the frightened ThrushIn Huang Daxian Temple, under the guidance of Uncle Zhao's ulterior motives, they found the door to enter the underground world and broke into a mansion of Yin and Yang built by bandits to cover the sky. Here, because of the effect of ecstasy incense, they are caught in a dangerous multi-layered illusion nesting... This story also flexibly uses folk elements to set off a thrilling atmosphere, but what is even more thrilling is the indistinguishable situation between reality and illusion in the film. And the brain-burning "matryoshka" hallucination.
Compared with "Qi Men Dunjia" and "A Chinese Ghost Story: Human Love", the visual effects of these two fantasy films have been significantly reduced, and there are no all kinds of invisible monsters. They chose to follow the path of folk horror films, highlighting the sense of mystery, horror and ritual visually, while the story draws nourishment from folklore and pays attention to the deliberation of narrative structure. This type of fantasy-themed online movie partially replaces the visual stimulation with the singularity and twists and turns of the story, satisfying the audience's imagination and expectations for this genre. At the same time, the visual style of deviating from the virtual to the real also avoids the infinite increase in costs caused by the blind pursuit of special effects.
Wang Xiaoyi: What's new about fantasy-themed online movies this year?
Tin drum: In the first half of 2022, folk thrillers have officially become the mainstream development direction of fantasy-themed online movies. Among the top ten works in the box office, fantasy themes occupy six seats. Among them, only "Orochi 3: Battle of the Dragon and Snake" is a monster film with visual effects. The remaining five films—"The Strange Talks of Yin Yang Town", "Opening the Coffin", "The Strange Talks of Longyun Town", "The Old Nine Gates of Qingshan", "The Village Fox's Wife"—all contain rich folk thrillers and even horrors element.
In this batch of folk fantasy films, we can clearly see two different creative tendencies of "scare" and "heart attack". The former, in pursuit of visual stimulation and terrifying effects, focused on the interpretation of ghostly illusions and otherworldly techniques. Such works may temporarily attract audiences with their creepy audio-visual effects, but they often encounter difficulties in the "unlocking" stage, that is, the dramatic transformation that turns monsters into ghosts. The latter focuses on narrative attack. Although there are many fairy tales, foxes and ghosts, they generally adhere to the general direction of eccentricity, and are good at creating suspense and horror with narrative tricks.
was launched in June this year, and "Fox Wife in Mountain Village", which has achieved good results in both the box office and word of mouth, is a representative of the folk fantasy film that "attacks the heart". This work continues the narrative style of trickery in "The Legend of the Hunter in Xing'an Mountains", and restores a period of the Republic of China period with the structure of "Rashomon". In the story, the opera troupe who was going to cross the river to sing a red event in Laogou was trapped by the wind and rain and spent the night in a broken temple. Along with them sheltering from the rain, there were also a group of domineering patrols, murderous locks, and unidentified women... After the "blind" piano player opened his mouth in surprise, they opened the chat box. In different people's stories about the legend of the fox wife, the audience gradually pieced together the truth: how can there be ghosts and gods in the world? Some have always been unpredictable and uneasy.
"Fox Wife in Mountain Village" and "Legend of Xing'an Mountain Hunter" are from the same creative team. Compared with "The Legend of the Hunter of Xing'an Mountains" a year ago, this time around the story of the fox wives' strange talk, there is less forced preaching, and more smooth posts. Although there are still several visual presentations of folk phantoms in the film that can be made lighter, they have basically achieved "out of the realm of illusion and escape into the world".
Chapter 3 How
Towards the " High Light Moment"quo;
Wang Xiaoyi: We talked about in the last issue of that among the current online movie themes, fantasy-themed online movies that show the characteristics of East Fang and traditional Chinese culture have not yet ushered in their own highlights. Then ask the teacher to give pointers to the little friends, how to exert their strength and go further?
Li Wei: fantasy-themed online movies should go back to the story itself. Only "good stories" are worth telling and users are willing to watch them. With the help of the development of science and technology, we can create "fantasy" that we can't even imagine in our dreams, and we should inject a vivid insight of society and humanity into the visual impression, not only indulging in sensory perception, but also indulging in inner experience, and at the same time. "Good visual effects" and "good story" make a good fantasy film.
Tin Snare Drum: In the context of the film and television industry in recent years, 's flexible volume and short production and broadcasting cycle are still its model advantages. As the main body of the online movie market, fantasy movies have turned from special effects to returning to narrative imagination, which is a development of the advantages of the online movie model.
However, the use of fantasy narrative imagination cannot only hold on to "fairy foxes and ghosts". When we see that there are two works in the name of "Something's Weird Talk", which are listed in the top ten online movie box office in the first half of this year, we should be vigilant against the excessive development of folklore themes.
From a macro perspective, the rise of domestic folk fantasy online movies in the past two years is also potentially related to the pan-Southeast Asian horror movie trend dominated by international streaming media platforms during the same period. Today, multiple branches of urban fantasy, including parallel time and space, body swapping, and time looping, are gaining momentum in pop culture narratives in multiple languages. If the creators of fantasy online movies in China want to leave the "Red Sea" of folk narration, they might as well try to attack such urban fantasy seas.
At the same time, imagination is not limited to the field of narrative, and imagination in special effects is equally important to the creation of fantasy themes. At present, the fantasy online movies that mainly focus on visual effects on the market have made breakthroughs in the amount of special effects and visual scale, but they always have a strong sense of game and imitation in aesthetic style.
Oriental Fantasy has a unique visual system. No matter how dazzling the Western-style "light saber" showdown is, it can't be directly used to express "the sword is 30,000 miles across", and how romantic it is, how to train a dragon and travel can't be applied to show Haoran riding a crane south. In the field of online movies, we have many special effects and fantasy films, but there is always a lack of special effects films that can establish the oriental fantasy visual system and are full of imagination. This peak is still waiting for online movie creators to conquer.
Net Xiaoyi: Generally speaking, fantasy-themed movies have experienced the spectacle of visual effects in the early days, and have reached the inflection point of returning to narrative and moving from fiction to reality. However, as the saying goes, "Those who travel a hundred miles are half-ninety". If you want to be more accomplished in this subject, in addition to making efforts to local visual effects and aesthetics, you must continue to improve your narrative imagination and the content of the story itself. Only by cultivating both inside and outside can we break through the bottleneck and reach a higher level.
