Two days ago, Sir was dumbfounded by a piece of news:
Chen Sicheng was talking to Villeneuve. At the
event, Bullfrog talked about his impression of Chen Sicheng, and then said, "I haven't seen Chen Sicheng's movie, but many people told me about your movie, and I will watch it when I get home."
Maybe it was just a scene talk.
But Chen Sicheng quickly replied: "There is no need to read them all."
ha?
sir has seen many humble, arrogant and narcissistic directors.
I have never seen someone so self-deprecating.
Speaking of which, Chen Sicheng's movies have always been quite controversial, so much so that the more successful they are at the box office, the more "unpopular" they are in the fan circle, such as "The Disappearance of Her " and " Chinatown Detective 3" ", in exchange for a box office of 3 to 4 billion, it only received a passing rating from Douban.
I guess if Bullfrog really picks those "famous" movies to watch.
will also be confused.
but.
What's interesting is that no matter how we evaluate him, whether the last one was good or bad, as long as Chen Sicheng's movie comes out, there will always be many people rushing to watch it.
is like the "Tang Detective" series.
The movie version of "Detective Chinatown 3" has a score of 5.3. After the online drama version was launched, it still gained a lot of attention.
Why?
sir Today, we will use this web drama that has just concluded to talk about the subversion and attempts of the "Tang Detective" IP this time.
and the accompanying gains and losses:
Detective Chinatown 2
01
"Detective Chinatown" has changed?
Let me talk about my impressions of this drama first. To be honest, sir’s first impression was actually not satisfactory.
What are the features of the web drama version of "Tang Detective"?
two words: "cunning" and "secret".
" strange ", the atmosphere is more adult.
Just like in the first movie, those bizarre surveillances in the early morning, the Buddha statue bowing its head, the sudden appearance of blood stains in the room of the beautiful woman... it exudes a strange atmosphere all the time.
Such weirdness is rare nowadays.
So Sir still remembers that in the mind of young detective Lin Mo (played by Qiu Ze), the "Mandala Dance" between the rooftop and the victim was very strange.
This is refreshing for the audience.
And " secret " refers to both the carefully crafted secret room conspiracy and the small and rigorous processing of story clues.
This is also what the audience is looking forward to most.
Therefore, the combination of a tough-guy detective story with a strong cinematic feel and the femme fatale Ivy (played by Zhang Junning) who has attracted countless fans also makes the first half of the "Tang Detective" online drama have a "film noir" color.
Yes.
The return of reasoning content is the foundation for the "Tang Detective" web drama to still make the characters of the new series stand up even after several movies.
But unfortunately.
When we open "Tang Detective 2", especially the first two stories, we will find that the focus seems to have quietly changed:
The proportion of mystery drama has given way to new style attempts in IP type development. What does
mean?
Friends who have watched the show must have a big feeling: this time, Lin Mo's episode of "Tang Detective 2" has deepened the "cunning" style, like a stage play full of sound and pictures.
In terms of hearing, it has a fast-paced "gong and drum" sound effect, which sets the stage for the debut of each element - the first case of the mental hospital adventure, in the first 5 minutes, the client is missing, Lin Mo sneaks into the hospital, Strange patients emerge one after another.
Visually, the web drama "Tang Detective 2" makes extensive use of mid-range shots, focusing on the environment and scenery, and often has symmetrical compositions. Highly saturated tones enhance the "comic feel" of the series.
The overall effect is more like a large-scale "Chinatown Escape from the Weird Hospital" first-person puzzle RPG.
Piano room, back mountain, critical illness area, psychiatrist's clinic, copy copies one by one.
The side tasks [bringing back a piece of the little finger from the mass grave] and [escape with important NPC Sakura] were also done one by one. A design like
actually enhances the "cunning" rendering.
is the opposite.The "secret" component of
has also been weakened.
For example, in order to exaggerate the weirdness of the atmosphere, the director had to put the characters' motivations in a secondary position, so that when you read the story, you always have an illusion:
"Why is Lin Mo always getting into trouble?"
Even when the action scenes of secret adventures become the main course, and reasoning becomes story-telling information description, the story is over, and people can't help but wonder:
"Why is it so easy to guess?"
Although the director of Lin Mo's chapter also explained it , I had hesitated before about making a 180-degree turn, but I still adopted a more conceptually confrontational answer setting.
But the audience couldn't accept it.
and this.
This is also the main reason why this "Tang Detective 2" has been criticized for the first 8 episodes, so many people don't have the patience to watch the end.
but. What
sir didn't expect was that the latter two stories showed another kind of temperament.
is correct.
This time "Tang Detective 2" is divided into two. The first 8 episodes tell two stories, with Lin Mo as the focus, but the protagonist of the two stories in the next 8 episodes is Kiko:
crimaster ranking No. Five hacker girls.
Logically speaking, this is a difficult role to play.
After all, the online world is different from reality. What
kiko is good at is only computer skills such as stealing and searching, which is far from the word "reasoning" we expect.
but. The final effect of
is that, whether it is an amusement park case or a fast payment factory case, while the scene becomes daily, the design of reasoning and trick also returns to the original style of .
simply put.
They all have clues of the core conspiracy at the beginning, and they can all be revealed in the last episode. This adds a lot of viewing pleasure and guessing fun.
Moreover, Tang Tan’s most obvious advantage is not given up - imaginative visual display . In the
episode, there are a lot of visual expressions that fit the identity of the Kiko hacker:
's battle with the firewall turned into a digital "parkour";
entered the victim's house and reorganized the space to visualize the memory exploration;
The social network of high school students is embodied as the "coat" of the characters;
also has several real and virtual time and space transitions that increase the smooth look and feel.
In addition, the portrayal of new characters:
For example, the newly appeared upright police officer and the upright official assistant Tina, who is dissatisfied with Kiko, used every opportunity in the play to create some cute character details.
Other important roles, Rong Zishan boldly achieved a more adult expression in the role of "bad boy".
all make this story much richer.
Different from Lin Mo's line, Lin Mo and Ivy's temptation is unclear between true and false love, and the confrontation between Kiko and his ex Ouyang shows even more complexity.
They are not only a confrontation of ideas.
made a comeback again by triggering a small emotional trap of preying on each other, and the calmness and wait-and-see during parting were just right.
This has made the audience’s evaluation of the final case rise.
So overall.
is completely opposite to the trend of opening high and going low in the first film. This one is completely "open low" and only regained the audience's favor at the end.
So here comes the question: Why does
such a "bizarre" situation happen?
02
Chen Sicheng’s choice
is of course related to Chen Sicheng.
Last year, "She Disappeared" proved a strategic shift in Chen Sicheng's movies, that is, , the hot spot of in the catch era.
The web drama "Tang Detective 2" also adopts the same approach.
Compared with the original reasoning of the secret room, this time, it began to move towards the core selling point of the social school.
After all, basic reasoning can only trigger a small carnival, and arousing public emotional resonance is the basis of "success".
It can also be seen that while the main creator is creating a stage-like environment, he also wants to give the characters and the social implications behind them a more realistic sense of reality.
For example, the first case.
The mental hospital is a metaphor for marginalized people. When the unstable self appears in the dangerous outside world all the time, how can we prove that there is not a bigger mental hospital outside?
The second case tells the story of the spiritual massage of the current hopeless mood by the cult organization, and also includes a large number of conflict-type hot spots:
class poverty makes it difficult to see a doctor; the intergenerational conflict of the old and homeless; the housewife being cheated; the silence and the silence of the East Asian father. Misunderstanding; otakus are addicted to female anchors...
sir always remembers a touching detail:
The mother-in-law who suffered from brain cancer could only place her soul on the cult. After participating in the cult's killing ritual, she escaped to an abandoned amusement park and sat on the Ferris wheel. Just one night there.
Every time I turn on the flashlight, I fantasize about seeing the faces of my daughter and granddaughter.
This light and darkness is like the old man's damaged life, and also like the last fragile spider thread called "hope".
The third case "Amusement Park" focuses on gender issues.
It uses a story similar to the Epstein Loli Island incident, talking about the sexual exploitation of young girls by powerful forces.
At the beginning of the story, there is a scene where the exaggerated male police officer made some unfriendly remarks to the female victim and was stopped by the upright police officer:
The exploitation of women through the gaze permeates every corner of the incident, whether it is the murderer or the police, the upper class or the lower class. Harm each other.
The fourth case "Golden City" is also full of ordinary people who are trapped in loan and money crises.
is almost a replica of our reality.
From this, we can also clearly see the narrative trend of "Tang Detective 2": The protagonist detectives who almost have "superpowers" are more down-to-earth.
and this.
is one of the reasons why many people find it difficult to accept it at first glance.
for example.
Many viewers are wondering: Is Lin Mo from the first two cases OOC? Where has his original wildness and calmness gone? Why are you so reckless every time you enter these private organizations?
Yes, as mentioned before, on the one hand, it is because the character motivations are sacrificed for the plot conflict.
but on the other hand.
In fact, we also discovered that whether it is a mental hospital or a cult, it is a recurrence of Lin Mo's subconscious shadow.
He will also repeatedly revert to the little boy who hid in the closet and witnessed his parents being killed when he was a child.
In short:
In this web drama, he shows more of his helplessness and panic like ordinary people.
And Lin Mo, like most people in the mental hospital, cannot escape the cage-like power that labels them as "madmen".
As for kiko, who wears gothic makeup.
also adopted the same character creation method this time. She took off her "business clothes" and turned into a cool girl in life.
For example, we will know more about Kiko's daily life:
Her original name is Wang Shengnan. She complains about her nagging mother and misses her deceased sister. She works just to collect money to pay the rent for moving (the price is worthy of Hong Kong).
And the last scene.
She can also transform into the girl from the bun-tou sweet shop that is seen every day, and listen to the detective uncle's playing and singing with her family and friends.
This puts these "heroes" on the ground.
so you see.
These changes actually have a certain direction. They are the strategies chosen by dramas to enhance the sense of reality and connect with the present..
is no longer limited to castles in the air mysteries.
so that you and I can truly relate to it.
but.
Unfortunately, although the idea is good, the final effect is often unsatisfactory.
An example: a cult.
In "Tang Detective 2", there is a story about a cult. It is said that the cult uses drugs to hypnotize and control its members, making those already miserable members once again become a tool for the cult to make money.
This is similar to " Weekly Elimination of Three Evils ".
but the problem is.
If you really compare it with "Zhou Chu", you will wonder:
Are the settings in the drama too superficial?
looks at a detail.
Ashin, who brought the "drug control" method in the drama, has only been in the church for two years, but in this meditation meeting, the leader has been controlling the congregation for six years. So, before the introduction of drugs, how did the leader What about those who control the congregation?
was not mentioned at all.
sir feels that it is impossible for Chen Sicheng's team to not consider such an issue. After all, his team has screenwriters who are professional in writing reasoning.
so the result can only be.
Maybe they failed to pass the photo shoot, or maybe they had to give up due to the current situation.
after all.
is different from the film approval of "Zhou Chu". Our current situation is that we can neither tell the religious story of the real local culture nor allow the protagonist to have excessive behavior.
can only make the shaping of cults absent. The same is true for
.
You will see a lot of plot jumps, substantial cuts in duration, and some lip-sync mismatches.
final.
We just saw a variety of emotions at the bottom of society, forcibly bound up in an imaginary cult organization.
Such a result is indeed regrettable.
is also a drama series that deals with social issues and common situations faced by them.
but sir thinks.
Compared with these, another issue in the "Tang Detective" universe is even more critical, that is, how does balance commercialization and expression depth? Where should go in terms of emotion and innovation?
03
How long can "Tang Detective" continue?
Chen Sicheng once said this: "The most stable and consistently profitable movies are called movies, not the kind that only sell for a week or two, or live and die in a month or two." The background of
's words is 10 years ago, when he was sent to study in Hollywood and saw the realization that DreamWorks' "Skyliner" was so profitable.
was also in these 10 years.
He devoted himself to the big screen and tried to create a series of "stable" IPs, such as the "Northern Ireland" series and the "Manslaughter" series. In the end, relying on IPs such as " Chinatown Detective " that have become popular in the field of domestic reasoning, he made a lot of money. There was a lot of food.
The focus of "Tang Detective". It is precisely because of the creation of comedy + action + reasoning + love genre hybrid model .
is "rich" and "stable". There is nothing wrong with
's approach. After all, for mass entertainment, "appreciating both refined and popular" is always the highest goal.
What a pity.
As types become more and more "rich", it is difficult to maintain the "stability" of works at the original expected level.
In order to reach a larger audience, various choices were made in the "reasoning" that should have been carefully crafted, which has also resulted in the current situation of the Tang Detective series having mixed reputations.
So you can see.
After three movies, the reasoning content is decreasing, the audience's controversy is increasing, but the box office is higher than the last one.
Yes.
Of course we admit that Chen Sicheng's choice has expanded the audience of the IP "Tang Detective" and brought something that was originally a niche category to the public.
This is his ability.
is also a rare success of pure original IP in China in recent years.
but at the same time.
sir can’t help but wonder, is this road going further and further?
for example.
Why are netizens so controversial about the "Tang Detective" series? If an IP doesn’t suit our needs, is it the end of the world if we don’t look at it? Why continue reading while being disappointed?
may be exactly that.
They still have expectations for the construction of the "Tang Detective" universe. How do you say
?
In fact, at the beginning, "Tang Detective" brought a new kind of romanticism and youthful color that was different from the previous detective themes.
It is not like most old-style criminal investigation dramas. It jumps to the land of Thailand, allowing the fledgling detective to use the depth of his own character to overlook the overall situation.
Therefore, it also has a certain degree of imaginative creation.
may seem a little "middle-class", but it can also make a refreshing sound:
For example, at the end of the fourth case of the online drama "Golden City", there was a question about whether young people should divide up the big payment platform to "rob the rich" "Relieve the poor", a choice that makes wealth equal for all.
Yes, it is childish, but it is also bold.
This little bit of topic development made everyone think that the last case was the best of the season.
Yes.
For viewers who have been chasing this series and have not given up so far, our expectation for "Tang Detective" is that it can dream back to the beginning and find the kind of detective universe that teenagers wanted to create to redefine human nature and justice. ambition.
We are still looking forward to the return of these detectives who stand in front of the abyss to those moments that excite fans:
Zhang Zifeng's smile that shocked the audience.
Xiao Yang’s soul question.
Lin Mo's "ultimate move" of smell explosion.
and Qin Feng’s determination to adjust New York City’s architecture with his bare hands in the Memory Palace. Is it possible for
?
Speaking of this, sir thought of an "old news":
In April 2023, Chen Sicheng announced at an event that the next work would not be the sequel to "Detective Tang" as everyone thought, but the history, "Detective Chinatown 1900" 》.
He said that he had been thinking about how this series should go for a long time, so he simply went back a hundred years ago and went to Chinatown at that time to see if there would be more possibilities.
This is a big deal.
is more like a new attempt.
Because it can be seen that Chen Sicheng seems to never want to repeat the fixed characters, plot mode and family-friendly tone of the "Tang Detective" movie again.
is just like this web drama.
He still wants to find out the different possibilities of this IP.
of course.
None of us can predict the outcome, and even Chen Sicheng himself cannot be sure what the next step will be like.
but at least.
We still see a little hope of "returning to text".
After all, what he is thinking about now is not to harvest more box office based on the existing success, but to try to restart this series and return to its original level.
sir doesn’t know how long it will take until this day.
But it’s like a plot of this online drama.
Liu Haoran Qin Feng bids farewell to Kiko, not knowing when they will meet again.
This seems to be the introduction to "Tang Detective 4".
The boy watched the girl's twin ponytails disappear into the traffic on the Japanese street, gradually moving away.
thinks about their last encounter.
He asked her: "When will you have time, let's go to Beijing to see it."
She replied without hesitation, "I will soon."
sir also hoped.
The day when we will reunite with the original appearance of "Tang Detective" will not be too far away.
The picture in this article comes from the Internet
Editorial Assistant: Tu Yile
