's "Hot and Spicy" failed to meet the audience during the movie's release, and eventually became the "pre-heat content" before the movie's online broadcast. Starting from April 16, one episode will be online every day, 4 All sets have been updated.
First of all, I support "Hot and Spicy" and I support Jia Ling. The participation of women in this industry is too low. Not only are there few female directors, but this is also true in other positions. "30+ actresses have no roles to film" was once said Among the topics discussed, there are few women in photography, lighting, props and other departments. Even when a female figure appears in the lighting team, she will be called "Light Sister" and become a beautiful scenery of the crew.
"Hello, Li Huanying" and "Hot and Spicy" gave Jia Ling phenomenal success. She is better than most male directors. The success of the two movies is inevitable. It touches the audience, brings emotional value, and conveys sincerity and true feelings. These are Jia Ling's special skills. In "Hot and Spicy", she lost 100 pounds, appealed to girls to love herself, and was tenacious. The fighting spirit made the movie a success again.
I have watched the four-episode documentary "Hot and Spicy", and all the controversies, questions about the movie and Jia Ling's choice have the answers. It now appears that the original announcement to postpone the release of the documentary was not because Jia Ling was trying to calm the controversy, but because the documentary just confirmed the various criticisms of the film and Jia Ling.
The documentary and the movie were shot at the same time. At that time, Jia Ling and her team failed to predict the trend of public opinion after the movie was released. Four episodes of the documentary were released. It is no exaggeration to say that the character of Jia Ling in "Hot and Spicy" completely collapsed. .
Generally speaking, behind-the-scenes documentaries of movies are the behind-the-scenes of the movie shooting, the creative execution process, and the director and other main creators’ understanding and interpretation of the movie. Jia Ling repeatedly emphasized two points in the four-episode documentary.
The first point is "bitterness". Jia Ling divides the first three episodes with three keywords: adventure, transformation, and sprint. In fact, it can be summed up in the keyword "bitterness of losing weight".
The documentary has been focusing on body shape from the beginning, how to gain weight to 210 pounds, how to lose weight quickly, how to reach the plateau, how to train for 8 hours a day, and even how to eat, how to massage, and how to eat a meal at night. Gummies with melatonin, how come they have to be dehydrated and sculpted in the end...
You must know that the biggest controversy about "Hot and Spicy" is that the audience thinks that the movie hypes up the body and uses weight loss as a selling point, but the quality of the movie itself does not match it. It was so successful at the box office that even the director Wang Jing at the time wrote a joke. If the documentary had been released at that time, it would have strengthened and confirmed the criticism of netizens. The first three episodes were almost all about recording every bit of weight loss! Just imagine, if the documentary had been released as scheduled before, how would Jia Ling deny netizens' doubts about her hype about weight loss?
The second point is "pain". The fourth episode of the documentary, "Boxing," mainly amplifies and emphasizes Jia Ling's pain.
It can be seen in the documentary that Jia Ling asked the professional boxers to fight as hard as possible and directly hit her on the head to increase authenticity. The coach even said that she had a "slight concussion" and could not be beaten anymore.
There is another detail. When Jia Ling was communicating with the boxer, she said that if she punched her eye, it would definitely turn purple. Jia Ling said that it didn’t matter if it was swollen, since the fight would be finished tomorrow anyway. Jia Ling wanted to use this sentence to prove that she had really been beaten, but it also revealed that after three rounds, she had only received one real beating.
Jia Ling used all this to emphasize her pain, which is equivalent to emphasizing her sincerity and dedication. However, in my opinion, this exactly reflects her shortcomings in creation and mental problems. Furthermore, it is the complete collapse of the hard-working character.
On the one hand, as a director and starring role, don’t you deserve the hard work and sincerity you have put in? Only in this way can it be worthy of the movie tickets worth tens of dollars in the hands of the audience and the box office of more than 3 billion. This is an equal exchange.This is like an employee who originally could not contribute much value to the company (the quality of the movie is not that high and not that eye-catching). His original reference income for the same position is 8,000 yuan, but his salary is 80,000 yuan. Is this right? Work even harder?
Taking a step back, when did the efforts of filmmakers become something that can be marketed repeatedly and constantly boasted about? This is no different from saying about a certain actor, "She's so awesome and knows her lines by heart." Since you are in this business, you should do your part well. Since you have decided to use the topic "Hot and Spicy", you should Losing weight, training, and getting beaten, this is what filmmakers do, right?
On the other hand, Jia Ling is indeed a bit pretentious.
She has been intensifying the hardships of filming and her own pain. She has been training for a year, but she still behaves like an amateur in the boxing ring, while the professional boxer standing opposite obviously does not dare to exert too much force for fear of putting her Injured...
The emphasis in the documentary reflects Jia Ling's self-pity and self-pity. She takes herself too seriously. At the same time, she has never experienced any big storms, big setbacks and tests. To put it bluntly, What sounds good is that an actor with no foundation in action does things beyond his ability, and when he encounters some difficulties, he starts to complain, ask for sympathy, and beg for candy from the audience.
Compare it to "Guild Wars". "Devil Director" Lin Chaoxian made great efforts to torture Peng Yuyan and Nick Cheung. Peng Yuyan's body fat rate dropped to 3%, and he collapsed while filming a fighting scene. He worked out for two to three hours a day, practiced boxing for four to five hours, and received more than 200 punches a day. His nose and ears were so swollen that he couldn't sleep, and his legs were all covered in bruises. Bruises...
Nick Cheung was not much better. He also trained for a long time, was dehydrated and could not drink water, and his little finger was even kicked and fractured during filming. They put in more pain and effort, but they didn't publicize it too much, and they didn't make a documentary for the audience to see!
Because of these and other problems, the documentary "Hot and Spicy" also received a polarized reputation after it was released. One netizen who rated it as a three-star commented that it was bloody. She wrote:
"I regret watching this documentary. I felt pretty good after watching the movie. The documentary exposed the truth from the beginning to the end, with a crowd of people following and waiting on her, her breakdown, her suffering, her weight loss goals, and her efforts. Tens of millions of viewers and billions of income paid for the effort to regain her femininity. The temptation of money made people crawl at the feet of this fat woman (who would not have even looked at her on the street) and took her hand with her. Throw away the small objects that you don’t want to take, study, discuss, and hold them in front of the camera to record, massage her muscles on the front, back, and bottom with your hands meticulously, give her caring skin contact, and record everything she wants to eat and drink every day. She drank a few sips of water and cheered enthusiastically just because she could vaguely see some texture on her thick back just to lose weight to an ordinary figure that an ordinary person could maintain. It was also because of the fat she had accumulated over more than ten years of indulging her appetite and greed. Jia Ling can turn such a natural private behavior into such a "feat" of commercial success. She is so smart and lucky that it is hard not to make people envious. "
So, "Hot". "Hot" is a phenomenal movie, but it is difficult to become a timeless work. As for Jia Ling, after the controversy of "Hot", she should think carefully about how to position herself as a director and actor. She is praised too highly by capital. , we must also learn to see ourselves clearly.
