via ShaunJonas
Hi everyone, this is SOOZY. Once upon a time, Hollywood blockbusters were regarded as the standard by Chinese audiences, but now times have changed: Among the top 10 Chinese film box office lists in 2021, only " Fast and Furious 9" and " Godzilla vs. King Kong " are shortlisted, even if the Expanding to the top 30, Hollywood productions only account for 6 - just 4 years ago, this number was three times what it is today.
drove the car into space and had a chaotic high "Furious 9" at the domestic box office is only half of the previous work
From "007: No Time to Die", "Dune", to "Batman", " Uncharted ", None of the Hollywood blockbusters released in China in recent years has achieved the expected box office results. Therefore, at the recent press conference on the theme of "This Ten Years in China", a foreign reporter asked: "Hollywood movies have not been selling well in China in recent years, is it because of stricter censorship?" So why are Chinese audiences no longer willing to Buying for Hollywood's "Lone Hero"-style movies? The reason behind it must be more than the simple self-confidence of the old beauty that "can't pull the shit out of the earth and be unattractive".
"TOP GUN 2" achieved good box office overseas, but Tom's outrageous plot of shooting down two Su-57s with F14 is still criticized by many military fans. Development History
Now when it comes to a Hollywood blockbuster, even elementary school students can write a rough script outline for it: a white, muscular, middle-class American male who is attacked by underworld forces (political struggles, terrorists, alien technology, etc.) He is surrounded by at least one beautiful woman with bulging forward and backward and teammates with different skin colors and orientations, and gradually realizes his self-worth. After experiencing cool fights, racing cars, gunfights, and hand-to-hand combat, he finally defeats his opponents and saves the country and the world. Even the universe - this is not the routine of Hollywood movies, but it can be called the standard routine of American movies.
From the Revolutionary War to the Westward Movement, from the Civil War to the two World Wars, as well as the large and small local wars after World War II, we can see that there is basically nothing in the short history of the United States for more than 200 years. The days of cessation have led to the high worship of individual heroes with high military values in the national nature, and this value is naturally projected on the cultural product of movies.
"The Great Train Robbery" (1903)
In 1903, a movie called "The Great Train Robbery" was released in the United States. Although it was only 10 minutes long, it included the industrial revolution, police and bandit themes, Western films and other diverse themes, telling the story of the sheriff's struggle with the gang of thieves who rob the train, are regarded as the origin of the American one-man movie. About ten years later, MGM , Paramount , 20th Century Fox and many other film companies gathered in Hollywood and began to turn movies into a streamlined industrial product. Sending it to the screen also made the brave and suave western cowboys become the first-generation heroes of the American people.
"Red Dead Redemption" (1964)
By the 1950s and 1960s, the traditional western was on the decline, and audiences and studios needed new heroes to save their American dream. In 1951, "The Old Man and the Sea" written by Hemingway and became popular, making Santiago, an old man who had experienced ups and downs and never gave up, popular in the United States, and also established a new generation of "Tough Guy" (Tough Guy) image. Under the influence of World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, the "tough guy" protagonists began to be tied to the war theme, holding a Gatling , carrying a floating gun on their back, and a muscular man who could handle a division by one person became a hero. a frequent visitor on the screen,Representatives are Stallone , Schwarzenegger , Bruce Willis and so on.
"First Blood" (1982)
Although this kind of war tough movie still appears occasionally to this day, it still inevitably fell from the altar. The turning point occurred in the 1980s, during which a lot of science fiction literature was born. It has also spawned many movies with corresponding themes, such as " Blade Runner ", "E.T. Alien" and "Tron" in the 1982 fairy fight we talked about a while ago. Compared with artificial intelligence and the sea of stars, the end The fact that machine guns chug is nothing new; the most deadly is the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the war tough guys lost their biggest "imaginary enemy", forcing Hollywood to find other cash cows - yes, today's superheroes .
In fact, famous superheroes like Batman and Spiderman were made into movies very early, but subject to special effects and technical level, they only served as foils in the era of "war tough guys". Until 2008, the movie " Iron Man " made by the half-dead Marvel at the time was released, and nearly 600 million box office was cut worldwide, which not only saved Marvel itself, but also opened a new era of American lone hero movies.
"Iron Man" (2008)
But peel back the packaging and the gimmicks and you'll find that, from cowboys to war men to superheroes, their traits have never changed: gifted, free-spirited, adoring Freedom, absolute justice, cool and unrestrained, accompanied by beautiful women... It won't be long before superheroes will also be replaced by some species, and this species must also represent the unchanging values of personal heroism in the hearts of Americans.
From imitating to self-made
The domestic heroes on the big screen
is not only the American people who like "tough guy", we also love it. Movies can satisfy people's original desire to pursue visual pleasure, and the image of a tough guy with a male gaze can make people feel comfortable, safe, and enjoyable - one word summed up is "cool". In the article "Semiotic Research of Chinese Film and Television Stars", Dr. Li Qijun once exemplified the images of tough guys in domestic films in different eras of the last century:
in the 50s, heroic tough guys: Zhao Dan, Sun Daolin
in the 50s, Hong Kong and Taiwan tough guys ：王引、柯俊雄、欧威
60年代，军人硬汉：王心刚
70年代，功夫硬汉：李小龙、成龙、李连杰、古天乐
80年代，粗犷/亦正亦邪硬汉：
杨在葆、陶泽如、李幼斌、任达华、王庆祥、周润发
90年代，警察硬汉：
尤勇、于荣光、张丰毅、李向南
《精武英雄》（ 1994)
can see that these "domestic tough guys"Temperament, life experience, skills, and deeds are all with Chinese characteristics. But the impact of Hollywood blockbusters is fatal. In 1994, China Film and Warner Bros. reached an agreement to introduce the first Hollywood blockbuster " ". At that time, the average ticket price of Chinese movies was 6 yuan. "The End of the World" sold for 15 yuan. It was only released in 6 cities including Beijing and Shanghai, and the average monthly salary was a few hundred yuan. It won a box office of 25 million; in 1996, it was the top of the Chinese box office 8 out of 10 were occupied by Hollywood films. Since then, State Film Bureau was forced to use an executive order to set up a "domestic film protection month" to restrict Hollywood blockbusters.
"The End of the Dead" (1993) Chinese version poster (see the watermark for the source)
Whether it is "seeing the wise and thinking together" or needing to live, since the audience eats this set, domestic films can only bite the bullet and shape China's "loneliness" Heroes", and the most representative of them is the " Wolf Warriors " series, Wu Jing very cleverly uses the Chinese family and country feelings to neutralize the American style of the "lone hero" theme, plus the grandeur The excellent scenes and excellent production helped make "Wolf Warriors" a double harvest of word-of-mouth box office, and the sequel is the box office champion in Chinese film history.
"Wolf Warrior 2" (2017)
But at the end of last year, "Wolf Warrior 2" was succeeded by " Changjin Lake ", which is actually a signal that domestic "hero movies" are changing - in In the field of "order" films, "Changjin Lake", " Red Sea Operation " and "Yao Bai" released in recent years have achieved quite good box office results; while in the "fusion category" At the film level, works such as "Hello, Li Huanying ", " Me and My Motherland ", " I'm not the God of Medicine " and other works that focus on the life stories of ordinary people have also received support from the audience.
"Operation Red Sea" (2018)
It is worth talking about " Wandering Earth ", which is not only a milestone in Chinese science fiction movies, but also quite represents the current trend of "domestic heroes". If it is an American to shoot this story, it must be how the protagonist group achieves the breakthrough from the id to the superego, several elites save the world, and so on. Although "The Wandering Earth" is based on the Chinese rescue team, all the details of the whole film are about how people all over the world fight together. The scene where people from all over the world turn the car and work together is to push the whole film to a climax. , this is the "community with a shared future for mankind", and this is the pattern of the Chinese people.
"The Wandering Earth" (2019)
Why is the Hollywood blockbuster
no longer a hit in China?
High technical and industrial standards, top special effects and production level, mature lens language skills, these are the advantages that Hollywood has led the world film industry for decades, even today - but it is obvious that they This set will not work in China, at least. The first reason for
lies in Hollywood's own lack of progress. We might as well count the hottest blockbusters in Hollywood in recent years: "Spider-Man" 123, "Reunion" 234, "Furious" 789... Either a sequel or IP re-development, in Hollywood's popular movies, Original content has largely disappeared. For capital, IPs that have been verified by the market have a higher chance of making money, but the price is the aesthetic fatigue brought by the same roles and the same routines to the audience.
Even if "Spider-Man: Homeless Heroes" comes up with the gimmick of "three generations in the same frame", it cannot save its homogenization attribute
Hollywood used to be Warner Bros. , MGM, Paramount and other 8 giants Film companies are fighting a fierce battle, but now with large-scale acquisitions and mergers, the top film companiesIf the volume is reduced, everyone will spend their innovative energy on following the trend. For example, he played a "Marvel Universe" from Disney, Warner followed a "DC Universe", Legend followed a "Monster Universe", and even Sony would join in the whole "Spider-Man Universe" without Spider-Man "...If this kind of homogenization strategy can make a refreshing movie, I can explode a "microcosm".
From "Venom" to "Dr. Night", Sony has successfully made the "Spider-Man universe" without Spider-Man to a pulp
The second reason is the distorted interpretation of "political correctness" in Hollywood blockbusters. Captain America can be black, mermaids and Snow White can be black, and today's Hollywood blockbusters have become a pot of simmering for all kinds of people and LGBTQ sexual minorities.
But Hollywood's extreme selection of roles is expressing its respect for these people from the heart? No, I just want to make your money. At that time, Marvel's "Black Panther" was a global hit, but it has actually revealed that Hollywood is only doing superficial work: since the entire movie focuses on black superheroes, Wakanda has the world's top technology, why still To duel shirtless in a primitive way? Because in the eyes of the elites, this is the original impression of black people being backward and barbaric, so "Shang Qi" will be rejected by us when we see through its true colors. It is not wrong at all.
"Black Panther" (2018)
Under the combined effect of the lack of innovation and the superficial pursuit of "political correctness", the current Hollywood movies are American-style model dramas packaged with special effects, full of American-style hypocritical preaching— - The key is that, in the past, the private goods were hidden and tucked, but now they are directly and blatantly thrown at your face. Take the final chapter of the movie " Resident Evil " as an example. Let's not say whether it has anything to do with the original plot of the game. The audience has been chasing after so many years. Armageddon at the end, and you end up making a dystopian political didactic film - I didn't have a choice before, but now I want to see a good film that we've made.
"The King of the Sky", supported by the Aviation Industry Corporation of China, will be released at the end of this year and tells the story of our own Chinese pilots. The difference with the values makes these Hollywood elites "follow the yin and violate the yin" and reveal their true self. In 2020, mainland China surpassed the United States to become the world's highest-grossing film market; in the same year, the new crown epidemic swept the world and became the first world-class disaster faced by mankind in this century. Who is the savior in this disaster? Not superheroes, nor boundless "political correctness", nor the old-fashioned "Western universal values ", thousands of people are the saviors - we have all grown up, sorry, no one compares We understand China better. Written by
/ Lao Cui
