©️Mirror Entertainment 文丨Yuan ShixuOn July 14, "Mission Impossible 7: Deadly Reckoning (Part 1)" was released in mainland China, two days later than in North America. As the most watched spy war action movie in the past ten years, "Mission: Impossible 7" has a good reputation, with a score of 8.2 on Douban and a freshness of 99% on Rotten Tomatoes. However, the high word-of-mouth feedback at home and abroad did not result in a high box office return. The box office in the mainland was only 184 million in the first week of release. It is predicted that the box office will continue to decline. According to the American entertainment weekly "Variety Show", the production cost of "Mission: Impossible 7" was as high as 290 million U.S. dollars. It has experienced many difficulties such as real action shooting, epidemic control, multi-location location, and upper and lower co-productions. Helplessly, "Tang Brother" Tom Cruise insisted on the filmmaker's spirit of real shooting, just like the last afterglow of the action film industry, which made the outside world see clearly the darkest moment that Hollywood is about to face. The Hollywood IP masterpieces represented by "Mission: Impossible" are no longer favored by the film market under the impact of the audience's thinking transformation.
American narrative is no longer popular American narrative is no longer popular Ethan Hunt played by Tom Cruise is the absolute protagonist of the "Mission: Impossible" series. This is a set of successful templates that have been tested by the market. Through the mysterious and calm agent traits, the positive portrayal of righteousness, and the romantic and suave male perspective, it successfully brings the audience into actions to save the world, and experience the refreshing feeling of going through life and death and then coming back to life. competing on the same stage Facing the crisis mirror entertainment (ID: jingxiangyuler) original Generally speaking, blockbuster movies need enough conflict points to cover up some logical mistakes. As long as the action is exciting, the actors are good-looking, and the scenes are grand, and each new marketing highlight is delved into, they can capture the hearts of fans and pay for their familiar IP stories again and again. "Terminator", "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "Fast and Furious" series are typical examples. "Mission: Impossible 7" is no exception, and it even plays very well. The biggest highlight of the Mission: Impossible series is the super-difficult action stunts that Tom Cruise personally plans to achieve every time. He insists on a movie reality view unique to action stars: presenting the hair-raising visual spectacle scenes of action movies in the form of real shots, which is quite the legacy of Buster Keaton, a master of comedy stunts in the silent film era. In the face of unprecedented dangerous stunts, the 62-year-old Tom Cruise personally refused CG special effects, which is unique in today's unprecedented technological film and television industry. In "Mission: Impossible 7", a shot combination of riding a motorcycle down a cliff and completing a BASE jump has been planned and prepared for several years. As an action star, Tom Cruise has become an expert in the field of extreme sports, and he is worthy of the title of "the last superstar in Hollywood". "Mission: Impossible 7", which is full of sincerity, has gained a high reputation from the media, but it has encountered Waterloo in more intuitive box office data. Is Tom Cruise untouchable? Or is the consumer subject changing from generation to generation, and the current audience has forgotten the legendary story of Ethan Hunt? It is true that Tom Cruise, who is more than a year old, is much less aggressive, and his love scenes are not as good as before; there are too many previous films in the series, which has also raised the threshold for viewing movies to a certain extent ("Mission: Impossible 6" was released five years ago); "Mission: Impossible 7" integrates the current hot topic of artificial intelligence into the play, which seems to be innovative, but is actually conservative. The imagination of "smart body" thinking stays on the setting of big data algorithm to deduce the future.Modern society has reached the technological node where AI changes life. People are living in the moment when ChatGPT is reshaping the Internet. For the so-called "one key to change the world" in the main plot of "Mission: Impossible 7", they will only feel that it is commonplace and old-fashioned. In order to intensify the obvious contradictions, the movie gave up deeper text discussions, and the ultimate goal is to serve Ethan Hunt's heroic action to save the world. American-style individual heroism narratives are slowly losing their market appeal around the world. The film formula of superstar + action spectacle is no longer effective, and Hollywood is unable to maintain an evergreen box office. Tom Cruise's "Mission: Impossible 7" is just a small boat capsized when the Titanic capsized. The box office forecast of "Mission: Impossible 7" continues to decline, which is in stark contrast to the box office decline of "Three Thousand Miles from Chang'an", "In the Octagonal Cage", and "The Vanishing Her". The three films of rely on publicity and marketing to continuously open up the audience, guide social hot spots, and increase the box office in an advanced way. Rather than saying that Chinese filmmakers understand Chinese audiences better, it is better to say that feelings are not as valuable as emotions. Hollywood series of movies that use IP as a selling point are far less attractive than mainstream commercial movies that can mobilize social discussions. 's first hit in the summer, "The Missing She", hit the sensitive nerves of current gender issues, and with the marketing slogan of "Treating the Brain of Love", it triggered a movie-watching boom; The themes of are very different, but the marketing strategies are similar. Emotions are the biggest selling point. Whether it is anger, sadness or emotion, the most important thing is to stir up discussions on social platforms and attract the attention of a wider audience. As a result, the three domestic films in the summer file have found their own positions in different aspects, dividing up the territory of the Chinese film market, and narrowing the market space for imported films. In fact, not only "Mission Impossible 7", but also Hollywood blockbusters in recent years cannot escape the fate of sluggish box office. Among the top Hollywood series, "Avatar 2" and "Fast and Furious 10" also encountered a box office crisis in the mainland. These two films focus on family affection, not for money or profit, but only for family members. This is the output of a standard American family concept. It is undeniable that the Hollywood film industry is indeed still the world's first echelon. With its gorgeous special effects, it has promoted American films to the world, and also pushed the box office of Hollywood films to a climax, winning high box office around the world. However, the core of the story based on American values does not meet the movie-watching expectations of the younger generation in China. Hollywood still insists on its own cultural output, which ebbs and flows, and the dislocation of supply and demand makes the movie market no longer an era where blockbusters are king. Mainland China and North America have always been competing for the actual status of "the world's number one box office". Naturally, they are the two most important distribution regions for Hollywood's big-budget movies. The proportion of Hollywood in the film market in mainland China is getting smaller and smaller. Audiences vote with their feet when buying tickets, which shows a change in moviegoing psychology.Chinese films have begun to dominate the aesthetic tastes of Chinese audiences. The emergence of the new mainstream film model means the combination of the main theme values and commercialized plots. is also shooting "Mission: Impossible 8", which was originally scheduled to be released on June 28 next year. Now, due to the screenwriter's strike, filming has been suspended. Since the production cost is as high as 290 million US dollars, "Mission: Impossible 8" will face the greatest box office pressure. Even with action superstar Tom Cruise leading the lineup, the prospect is not optimistic. In this general strike, apart from actors and screenwriters fighting for salary levels from the producers, the threat that artificial intelligence may replace actors and screenwriters has become the main reason. The producer tried to get SAG to sign an agreement to transfer the portrait rights of the actors, and use the new AI technology to scan the faces of all actors. The digital copyright of the generated modeling belongs to the film and television company, and all income obtained by using this copyright has nothing to do with the actors. Therefore, this is not only the first industry-wide strike in Hollywood in 63 years, it is also considered the first collective action of human beings against the threat of artificial intelligence. The intellectual and physical crisis in "Mission: Impossible 7" corresponds to the reality of Hollywood on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. If the intelligent body in the story developed ideology and tried to use violent means to control the world in one fell swoop, then the artificial intelligence in reality is controlled by the people at the top of the pyramid, and greed drives capitalists to use artificial intelligence to further squeeze the labor value of film and television practitioners. The so-called heroes are Ethan Hunt who acted out of personal justice; but the so-called real life is those screenwriters and actors who protest and support for their own rights. Hollywood's crisis marks that a type of assembly line business model is gradually being eliminated, but this crisis contains new possibilities. As a 27-year-old IP, "Mission Impossible" was released at this time, just like surviving in the cracks, and its fate is intriguing. Although "Mission: Impossible 7" failed at the box office, it does still represent the spirit of a traditional film, and it is the dedication and love of traditional filmmakers. Tom Cruise, who took the risk himself, may be the last person to practice this production model-after all, this method is neither economical nor practical. It is conceivable that if the portrait rights no longer belong to the actors, then the superstar's worth will be no different from that of the group performers. Who will do the thankless action stunts?
