Hunan Daily · New Hunan Client Reporter Hu Xueyi
During the New Year's Day, the movie "Twinkle, Twinkle Shining Star" ranked first in the New Year's Eve box office with a pre-sale score of "over 100 million", and currently has exceeded 600 million. In addition to the overwhelming marketing promotion, the film's success is essentially due to its theme of love and the perfect ending of the story, which "poke" people's hopes and expectations of going to love without regrets in the New Year.
The line "Zhang Wansen, it's snowing" has awakened countless netizens' youth memories that are sour, sad and full of regrets. The surprise of the movie is that in the easter egg, the actor Zhang Wansen finally appears behind the heroine Lin Beixing. The reunion in the snowy day is a happy ending where the secret love finally goes in both directions, and it makes up for the "regret" at the end of the drama version.
Extended drama version: Lovers still love each other in parallel time and space
Secret love meets the campus, regret meets the time and space cycle, which is about the same as "The Beginning" meets "Want to See You".
In 2022, the fantasy and suspense romance drama "Twinkle Twinkle Shining Star" was aired and suddenly became a hit, transforming into the "ceiling of secret love dramas". The main plot line of the drama version can be summarized as the story of Lin Beixing accidentally deleting the text messages in his old mobile phone and returning to the past, and reacquainted with his former schoolmate Zhang Wansen, thus embarking on a wonderful journey of time and space salvation. Different from the "back to the past" type of redemption in the drama version, the film opens up a new storyline of "parallel time and space": a sudden concert accident separates Zhang Wansen and Lin Beixing from life and death. Zhang Wansen travels through parallel time and space, just to prevent the tragedy. occurrence, guard Lin Beixing.
Based on the plot of the drama version, the story told in the film seems to still be "I will always love you no matter how the stars flow." It is exactly the same as the drama version and the movie "Want to See You". Love is the theme, the motivation for saving each other, and the basic logic to explain the cycle of time travel. No matter in which time, space, or stage, lovers will always meet and fall in love, and they will risk their lives for love. Although "love doesn't know where it starts," those expressions and actions full of love fill the story itself.
Stories about love since ancient times have never lacked loving audiences. The elements of fantasy and suspense can even make love leave no regrets, in line with people's expectations for love, just as the happy ending of the film gave fans a perfect explanation.
But the disadvantage is that the plot design of the male protagonist on the moon at the beginning of the film is a bit abrupt. Many netizens thought that they had entered the wrong set of "The Wandering Earth". Although there are subsequent plots in the film that echo the appearance of the moon, they only have explanatory power in terms of the male protagonist's desire to land on the moon, and cannot explain the meaning of the moon to the female protagonist.
In addition, there are plot "bugs" such as "concert name", "supporting character Gao Ge and Maizi's story line", "the heroine goes to the bar to save money", etc. Some are talking about love for the sake of talking about love, and some are forcing conflicts in order to create conflicts. , is the "regrettable" part of the film.
Just what I wanted: The "difficult feelings" of youth have finally been settled.
Someone once said: "Secret love is a person's chaos." Those youthful throbs, ignorant emotions, and the "difficult feelings" of unmarried couples are all echoed in the movie. In the
film, one is a boy with excellent academic performance but emotionally clumsy, and the other is a girl who is so-so in studies but brave and sincere. Both have their own understanding and expression of love, whether on campus or on the road to growth in life. Zhang Wansen's gaze that wanted to look but then looked back was hot and cautious, while Lin Beixing's straightforward optimism was generous and dazzling. The characters of these characters, coupled with the actors' delicate and natural acting skills, can't help but make people immerse themselves in their own secret love experience. Watching the hero and heroine in the film travel through time and space because of regrets, choosing to protect each other even though they may sacrifice themselves. Such a look of "pure love" plays right into the audience's mind, and seems to have put an end to their own regrets.
The audience tasted the surprise of "he" among the many "be" aesthetics, which was both fresh and memorable.The miss between Shen Jiayi and Ke Jingteng in "The Girl We Chased Together in Those Years", the passing of Huang Yuxuan and Li Ziwei in "Want to See You", the sadomasochistic relationship between Fang Hui and Chen Xun in "The Year in a Hurry"... Film Market They often like to use non-"happy endings" to deepen the audience's impression. Just the obsession that is difficult to fulfill is enough to make people sigh. Their youth, like the youth of countless ordinary people, is regretfully and fruitlessly pulled back and forth. The popularity of "Twinkle Twinkle Star" is different from the youth emotional film and television works in recent years. It staged a fairy tale ending of "the prince and the princess finally lived happily together" and also gave the audience the feeling of "eating CP" Huge space.
Beyond the movie: The "buff" of ritual and emotional marketing is stacked
If the popularity of the movie is the long-tail effect of the drama version, then the promotion method of ritual and emotional marketing adds "buff" to the film's box office.
13: The "Exclusive Confession Session" at 14:20, the "Long Time No See" Session at 14:20, the "I Like You" Session at 15:20, and the "Starry River" Session at 16:20... special times and sessions, full capacity meet the audience's expectations. Spending the New Year with your loved one in the cinema, extending your love and growing old together, is a romantic carnival ceremony. The promotion of the movie aims at "ritual sense" and "emotional marketing", playing with popular Internet memes, and firmly grasping the preferences of young people today.
At first, the marketing model focusing on "snow resort" attracted novelty, and the pre-sale box office exceeded 200 million. However, after terms such as "snow resorts are embarrassing", "fire hazards" and "ticket refunds" became hot searches, the marketing effect was greatly reduced. In the theater, the unstable snowmaking machine may cause "heavy snow", or "partially falling snow", or "failure and replace it with manual snow pouring". The romantic atmosphere instantly turns into a "disaster scene", causing some movie fans to They "dig their toes into the ground" and their movie-watching experience deteriorates.
Furthermore, the "famous snow scene" between Zhang Wansen and Lin Beixing in the film did not last long, but it became the main focus of the film's marketing, making people say "they were fooled". Although the "level of fraud" is not as good as "The Last Night on Earth", it has also contributed to the decline of the movie's reputation to a certain extent.
Precision marketing that caters to social emotions is a necessary condition for the success of a film. If there is a misalignment between the content of the story and the promotion and distribution, the audience will definitely not "buy in" for it, and it will even affect the industry ecology including film producers, theater platforms, etc.
(the picture in this article comes from the Internet)
