On December 30, 2023, the annual Hong Kong film "Goldfinger" will be released. This film is adapted from the "Caring Case" that caused a sensation in Hong Kong in the 1970s and 1980s. The case involved as much as 6.6 billion Hong Kong dollars, and the legal fees exceeded 200 million Hong Kong dollars. What is even more shocking is that during the investigation of the case, four lives were involved. This case remains a mystery to this day and is one of the most significant among many strange cases in Hong Kong. Although this subject is well known to many Hong Kong people, it has never been made into a movie. Until February 20, 2021, Emperor Group and the film's main creators held a new film press conference in Hong Kong and announced the filming plan of the film, which will be directed by Zhuang Wenqiang and star Andy Lau and Tony Leung. As soon as the news came out, it attracted the attention of many Hong Kong film fans, because this is the second collaboration between two well-known actors since "Infernal Affairs 3". Hong Kong film fans are not only looking forward to the two acting competitions, but also looking forward to "Goldfinger" being able to once again bring Hong Kong films back to glory like "Infernal Affairs" did.
Although this film tells the story of Hong Kong in the past, director Chong Man-keung does not want to fall into the old Hong Kong film model. In an exclusive interview with a reporter from Nandu, Zhuang Wenqiang revealed that when editing "Goldfinger", in order to stay within the box, he drastically deleted a large number of scenes that would be familiar to the audience. He emphasized that in the world after the epidemic, global audiences have watched a large number of films and their standards have improved. Therefore, the familiar elements of Hong Kong films are increasingly boring to audiences. This phenomenon not only occurs in Hong Kong films, but also in Hollywood films. American scholar David Bordwell believes that the secret of Hong Kong movies is that "everything is excessive and everything is crazy." However, this kind of high-concentration dramatic stories are slowly being abandoned by audiences in the post-epidemic era. Where should the future of Hong Kong films go? Chong Man-keung tries to answer with "Goldfinger".
1
There are many human stories in the world of finance
Nandu Entertainment: "Goldfinger" is partly based on the real event "Jianing Case". It is still an unsolved case. You need to fill the gaps behind the unsolved case. How do you balance fiction? And realism?
Zhuang Wenqiang: just thinks of ways to fill the gaps, so it is possible to adapt. The good thing about adapting a story is that there are a lot of unknowns about the story itself. This case cannot be said to be an unsolved case. There are many things that we outsiders don’t know, so I used my brain to create this story based on speculation. Even if someone knows the truth, I don’t think they will come out and say that the story is far from the truth. Instead, I am thinking about how to maintain the integrity of the story, regardless of whether it is true or false. What we filmmakers and movie audiences want to know most is whether these things will make an interesting story in the movie.
Nandu Entertainment: The most attractive thing about this movie was that Tony Leung and Andy Lau collaborated again. In this kind of movie about the confrontation between good and evil, the actor's room for performance and the audience's impression are often tilted towards the villain. When you originally wrote the story, you had Have you ever worried about the imbalance between the two characters? Did they do any extra drama?
Zhuang Wenqiang: First, when I wrote the script, I didn’t think it was the two of them. I only approached them after I finished writing, because the script had already been there for a while. So you ask me if I have balanced the scenes between the two of them. I should say this. In the movie, they have more opportunities to be together than in my original script. As for whether I will balance it, I rarely do this. You said that villains are usually more eye-catching. You should think of it this way: if a character has enough three-dimensional and rich connotations, he will be outstanding. Of course, the audience definitely wants to see something more obvious, and it will be easier for everyone to discuss it.
We have been cooperating for such a long time. Before starting the production, we had already discussed the styling design, the whole story, and told them my opinion. I really like to chat with actors about the same thing, because after the actor assumes the role, he will see a lot of things that I can't see. Do you think they will add drama themselves? This time it’s less so. This time the whole structure of the script is very strict, and the whole story is dramatic, leaning towards finance, which they don’t know much about.The characters in previous Hong Kong films were very impulsive, quarreling at every turn, and pulling out guns at every turn, but this one is relatively more mature. The characters are scheming and hiding things in their hearts. The structure of the drama makes it less likely to happen in Hong Kong films in the past. happened.
Andy Lau added a line to his character.
Tony Leung added a bit of Liang style to his character.
What impressed me most was Andy Lau (Andy Lau) telling me, "Men will become evil if they are rich, and women will be rich if they become evil." After hearing this, I thought it was of course good, and it was better than the line I originally thought of, so I added it; The character of Wai Tsai (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) was not originally like this. He was originally more gloomy and degenerate (low moral character). As he was acting, one day he added the idea of an "atomic bomb" and asked me if it would work. I asked him why he took the extra time like this, and he said that he suddenly felt that the character should be like this, and that the character's energy should be more exposed for others to see. He reminds me all day long to tell people not to touch him because he is afraid that he will hit people if he gets involved in the drama. He felt that when he acted, he became an untouchable (untouchable) person who could not be offended. At the beginning, I also doubted whether it was really going to be so exaggerated, so we shot an insurance version in the first week. After we watched it in the second week, we decided not to shoot the insurance version and follow his direction. That's the drama they added.
Nandu Entertainment: Compared with your original script, are there many changes in the current film? In what ways has your understanding of the entire story deepened?
Zhuang Wenqiang: The first script of depends on when you say it was first. If you say that the script in 2017 must be different from now, because there was an epidemic in the middle, we couldn't find the scene, so I rewrote it along the way. . But my original idea has not changed much. If I think something is interesting, I will still let it happen if it should happen. However, some plots may have taken two or three scenes to tell, so I will condense them into one scene.
Nandu Entertainment: When you wrote the series "Eavesdropping", you already had a lot of details about the financial industry, and "Goldfinger" also involved financial fraud. For you, what is the special charm of the financial world?
Zhuang Wenqiang: Why I filmed this story is because there were many stock market crashes in Hong Kong when I was a child, which had a lot of impact on my life. Someone in my family bought stocks, and my friend's parents ran away, so I started to have some interest in finance. After I learned about it, I found that these things happened repeatedly, not only in Hong Kong, but all over the world. I wrote this story not entirely because I was interested in finance. I feel that not many people would commit robberies today. There are still many movies about drugs, finance, and technological crimes, because these things are happening now. In fact, I don’t buy stocks very much. The stocks I see are not products, but human nature. I have asked people who are very rich in the stock market. In addition to selling stocks, they also sell real estate and heavy metals. They said that what they sell is actually hope. Hong Kong's property prices are notoriously expensive, and people who can't afford a house are scolding them. But do you think those who can afford a house want it to fall? Of course they don't. What real estate developers in Hong Kong actually sell is the hope that if you spend money to come in, the value will increase. The human part here is worth writing into a story.
Nandu Entertainment: In addition to general information collection, were you influenced by other movies or TV series when shooting this movie?
Zhuang Wenqiang: "The Great Era" is my favorite TV series. I like the whole writing style. I say all day long that if you want to learn screenwriting, you should watch "Big Time" until you understand it. In principle, everything that can happen to human beings has happened in "The Great Era", and all types of things have been done in "The Great Era". I really can't think of anything else. (Nandu Reporter: Do you have Martin Scorsese's "The Wolf of Wall Street"?) "The Wolf of Wall Street" is about a group of people who sell things, and they claim that garbage can be sold very expensive. I only watched "The Wolf of Wall Street" once in a movie theater or on TV. I watched "Wall Street" more often when I was in middle school. "Wall Street" is actually about trading, about stock traders.What I have watched more in recent years is "The Big Short". The reason I watched it many times is that "The Big Short" was too deep. Many people couldn't understand it at the time. I watched it repeatedly to remind myself not to write too deep things. The audience cannot understand how to make something very deep simple.
The movie "The Big Short".
2
Our entire play was designed to have a stage feel.
Nandu Entertainment: The lighting in "Goldfinger" is warm yellow, which often gives people a sense of illusion. What are the camera requirements for this movie?
Zhuang Wenqiang: The design of our entire play is stage-like. After the script came out, when I discussed it with the photographer and art director, I had a vague feeling that they thought my script was too hard, with many very realistic techniques, and at the same time, I also included a few singing and dancing scenes. Because of the epidemic, we couldn't find the scenery, so we had to build the scenery ourselves. Setting up the scenery by yourself means setting up the stage. We decided to start with the office of Cheng Yiyan, played by Wai Tsai, as a stage for character performances, which is why we have such an exaggerated office. For most of our extras, we ask the dance teacher to arrange, not the assistant director. So when you see their movements, they have a sense of stage. Of course, they are not asking them to dance in an exaggerated manner, but they will look aside together when they hear the command, and when they start, they will take one step with their left foot first.
The lighting in "Golden Finger" is warm yellow, giving it a stage feel.
Nandu Entertainment: There are several English songs interspersed in this film, such as "too darn hot", "money, power, lies" and "let's get to the top". The song titles obviously correspond to specific passages in the film. I would like to ask why you chose them. Are these English songs instead of some familiar classic Cantonese songs?
Zhuang Wenqiang: is not selected but newly created. Classic songs are very expensive, such as "can't take my eyes off you" during the scene where Wei Tsai was lifted up. It was very expensive. I told my young screenwriter all day long about which song would be included in the script, and then we asked for the price, which was an astronomical figure. I also want to buy a song by Elton John. No need to ask, the starting price is 2 million (one million lyrics, one million music), and maybe the lead singer will be added. In addition, it will be calculated according to the international copyright. To be honest, if you ask Faye Wong or Eason Chan to sing a song, it will cost several million. The content of the song corresponds to specific paragraphs, which is what our music director Dai Wei thought about.
The scene where Tony Leung was lifted up was "can't take my eyes off you".
Nandu Entertainment: In the end, Cheng Yiyan said, "If you hadn't arrested me back then, all the stock investors would have become rich now." Cheng Yiyan tied the interests of Hong Kong people together, and his downfall can be said to be a shared disaster. Do you feel like this character is a "necessary evil" in a way?
Zhuang Wenqiang: You are right about , which is why such people are bound to appear. First of all, you need to understand what kind of industry finance is. For example, if you are a media company, you sell information, but finance sells money. They really treat money as goods. To put it simply, for example, if the interest rate of Japanese yen is low now, they will borrow Japanese yen and buy U.S. dollars. The interest rate is 1% on Japanese yen and 5% on U.S. dollars. As long as the price difference during the exchange process is less than 5%, it is a pure profit. . What they were doing was a financial transaction, but Cheng Yiyan in the movie was outrageous because when he went to borrow the money from the bank, he told the bank that he was borrowing the money to make twice as much money back. The bank wondered if it would not be able to get it back. . The bank will negotiate and ask if it can pay more interest since it has borrowed so much money. The bank is actually doing business. Borrow 1 billion, but pay back 1.1 billion in the end, so that the bank will be willing to lend, so Cheng Yiyan takes 1 billion to invest in other things. "Necessary evil" doesn't mean they do it specifically, but it's the way they always do it. You might say that they have made so much money, why not use their own money? If it were you, would you do this? The money is already in your bag, but you wouldn't. "Necessary evil" here actually means that this is how our world works. It just depends on when everyone is not happy. When the world is working, you fall into it.They don't want to lose. It is best to keep appreciating, but with "gravity", this kind of thing is impossible to happen. I predict that this kind of thing will continue to happen in the future, and it will become bigger.
Nandu Entertainment: Liu Qiyuan finally asked himself "Is it worth arresting someone for more than ten years?" He said "That's not the calculation." In fact, he did not answer the question directly, but questioned it. Do you think Liu Qiyuan finally protected him? What?
Zhuang Wenqiang: Do you think there is really no answer to ? This question is also a question I ask myself all day long. Is it worth spending so much time making a movie? Once the audience has finished watching it, what’s the value? After collecting so much money and spending so much money, spending one or two hundred million to make a movie, why not spend your time doing more meaningful things? This is where I find myself unable to stand, and it has something to do with Hong Kong where I am.
Hong Kong talks about being professional all day long, but Hong Kong is a place that doesn’t respect professionalism very much. I have already mentioned it at the beginning of this movie. The character of Wai Tsai and the character of Brother Hua (Simon Yam) said, "I originally wanted to build a building in Hong Kong, but I didn't expect to become a speculator." Brother Hua scolded him, "Don't dream. Well, Hong Kong is not a place for dreaming.” That's what people around me told me when I first started reading about movies. I originally studied engineering to become an engineer, and then I paid my own tuition to study film. Hong Kong is such a place, they don't think pursuing ideals is a big deal. Liu Qiyuan, played by Andy Lau, is a person who pursues professionalism. He used to be a policeman, but later switched to icac, and then went to arrest corrupt policemen. Think about what he is carrying behind his back. Cheng Yiyan still laughed at him at that time. Andy also thought about this issue. He asked me about it at the time, and I told him, "You are just a professional." His character believes that law enforcers should enforce the law, and this is professionalism. In fact, this character failed twice. The first time he caught the corrupt policeman, but in the end, all the corrupt policemen in Hong Kong were pardoned. But this was also fate. The policeman who was once investigated by him later saved him; the second time, After checking the civil servants and the merchants, they all failed. Cheng Yiyan was only sentenced to three years in the end. How can you not ask the question of whether it is worth it, but if you ask me the answer, the answer really is that you can’t calculate it like that, you can only do it. This is the same as my idea of making movies. If I try to make a movie every time it has any value, I won’t be able to make it.
3
I cut out all the familiar things
Nandu Entertainment: Many people will compare "Goldfinger" with "The Wind Rises Again". The original version of "The Wind Rises" lasted more than 6 hours, but it was finally cut to 2.5 hours. Was the 2-hour duration of "Goldfinger" set from the beginning, or was it cut to 2 hours in the end for market reasons? When the DVD comes out in the future, will there be an extended version?
Zhuang Wenqiang: I'm not exaggerating about . My first version was 3 hours, and then I cut some scenes and it became 2.5 hours, and I cut out some love scenes. After reading it, Zhang Shuping helped me cut it into the current 2-hour version. There won’t be an extended version. In fact, the final thing you make already determines how you tell the story. I challenged some things this time. I gave up many elements of previous Hong Kong films, such as adding an emotional line and some grudges. In fact, I filmed it, but I still gave up. I have observed in the past few years that people don’t really want to see these things. The same goes for "Oppenheimer", whose emotional line is only lightly mentioned. The film is much more complicated than ours, it's about atomic physics, it has more characters than we do, and it has three interrogations that are cross-edited. When I watched "Oppenheimer", we had already finished editing it. What I saw was that everyone was actually facing the same problem - we all chose to give up the old way of expression. For example, I cut out the scene where several brothers were sitting together drinking and calling each other brothers. Looking back at these scenes now, it really doesn’t work. I feel so sad (and ugly).
Nandu Entertainment: Will "Barbie", the global box office champion in 2023, also have another way out?
Zhuang Wenqiang: "Barbie" is even more outrageous. It is actually four stories. It is also a slogan-style movie that keeps shouting slogans.(Nandou Reporter: Do you personally like movies like "Barbie"?) It's hard to say. When I went to the cinema to watch movies in the past ten years, I noticed that many people in the mainland played with their mobile phones while watching movies, as if they were watching the movie live. I wasn't used to it at first, but now I'm a little used to it. I found that making movies requires greater sensory stimulation to stimulate the audience, and the plot cannot be delayed. The movies I have loved in recent years, such as "The Worst Man in the World", are very good movies, but no one watches them. "Past Life" has basically no story, but why do so many people resonate with it? "Sunday Holiday", a father and his daughter go on a trip. It was shot in a home theater style, but it still had a great response. The recent "Fudu Youth", this movie actually has no story, it is just watching Wu Kangren's performance. Some people will come out and say that there is no story. Three years after the epidemic, our entire concept has changed. Audiences around the world are watching movies at home. They have seen both good and bad movies, both big and small productions, and even very offbeat movies that they would not have seen before. Three years later, the most terrible thing happened. "Mission: Impossible 7: Reckoning (Part 1)" failed. The failure of this movie is a big revelation, it can't be a bad movie, it is simply the ceiling of action movies on the planet, but why don't people watch it now? "Fast and Furious 10" is not like this, and "The Expendables 4" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark" are not like this. Moreover, "Mission: Impossible 7" also talks about AI, which is not without new things. All traditional commercial films are no longer viable, and all that is viable now are somewhat alternative films, such as The Rise of a24. The most popular movie recently is "Freedom", which is about human trafficking. It is shot very cleverly. It seems to be an action movie but there is no fight.
Everyone’s movie-watching habits have changed, and they no longer want to go to the theater to watch familiar things. The clips I cut out are things that everyone will find familiar. What is more regrettable is that I cut out the background story of the character Asa. In fact, her character Zhang Jiawen met Cheng Yiyan before she was imprisoned, and she will also meet with her later. The killer has connections. But I was afraid that people would think it was something familiar from "Wushuang" again, so I cut it out.
Zhuang Wenqiang said that it was a pity that the background story of the character Asa was cut out.
Nandu Entertainment: Under such circumstances, what creative directions do you think Hong Kong films will have to break through in the future?
Zhuang Wenqiang: You haven't seen "Diary of a Youth" yet, don't worry, you can see it later. The story-telling method of "Diary of a Youth" is really different from the previous ones. It must follow the story. Let the story be as dramatic as it should be, rather than forcing drama. I used to often say that Hong Kong films are "all over the top and all crazy", but if you watch them too much, you'll get tired of them. Maybe in a few years, people will like them again. The problem with several previous Hong Kong action movies was that the characters were too over the top, and the audience began to feel that the characters were not like that.
Nandu Entertainment: In recent years, there has been a nostalgia for Hong Kong in the past few years in both the Mainland and Hong Kong. Do you think this nostalgia trend will in turn affect everyone's understanding of a new batch of Hong Kong creators?
Zhuang Wenqiang: In the future, if you interview the creators of "Diary of a Youth" and "Under the Day", you will know their differences. If you ask me whether it will have an impact, I will say that it will not have a big impact. When will it have an impact? If you do something and it is very profitable, it will have a great impact. But I don't think that's going to happen.
Written by: Nandu reporter Liu Yifan
Pictures: provided by the interviewee
