Have you seen the recent popular Korean movie "The Tomb"?
The number of local moviegoers exceeded 11 million, and the total box office exceeded 114 billion won, equivalent to RMB 600 million.
is the biggest "pride" of the Korean cinema market this year.
But when it was introduced to China recently, the Internet became a pot of porridge.
Someone ridiculed.
said that these ghost-hunting routines in the movie are all leftover from the games we played twenty or thirty years ago;
even a lot of Feng Shui culture in the movie actually originated from China.
Some people are busy "introspecting".
In the past 20 to 30 years, our censorship has become more and more strict, which has given Korean movies an opportunity.
Now even this kind of subject matter has been a hit.
Although these two factions have different views, they actually point to zombie movies that were very popular in the Chinese film industry.
In the 1980s and 1990s, zombie movies starring Lin Zhengying were all the rage, and many of them are still classics that you can never tire of.
The pioneering work was "Mr. Zombie" directed by Liu Guanwei in 1985.
This low-cost horror action film, which took in HK$20.09 million at the box office that year, not only successfully created the image of the Taoist priest "Nine Uncles", but also defined the "work nature" of the special profession of Taoist priests in Maoshan.
This career seems simple, but in fact there are many hidden secrets.
Their daily work includes: fortune telling, divination, feng shui, mourning, choosing auspicious days, and combining horoscopes.
But they also master some special skills, such as eliminating demons, subduing demons, catching ghosts, and exorcising corpses.
When they cast spells, they also use some complex tools and instruments, mainly incense, yellow paper, ink fountains, writing brushes, wooden swords, copper coin swords, glutinous rice, red rope, black dog blood, and rooster blood.
They usually have a fixed residence: Yizhuang, which is also the post station where the corpse exorcists stop and the place where the corpses are parked.
These seemingly simple and cheap costumes and scene designs provide reference for the creation of future zombie horror films.
The influence of zombie horror films in the 1980s even spread to countries such as Thailand and South Korea.
However, after entering 2000, with the death of Lin Zhengying and the decline of Hong Kong movies, "zombie movies" have gradually faded out of the horizons of Chinese people.
's occasional works, such as " zombie " directed by Junlong Mai in 2013, are just short-lived.
It was during this period that the Koreans, who were good at "appropriationism", succeeded in stealing from others and created a series of works with elements of old zombie movies, which were also successful at the box office.
"Broken Tomb" is one of the most typical works.
The film director Zhang Zaixian has done a lot of research on Asian religions and folk culture.
In 2019, he directed "Sabha", which used Buddhist elements such as Maitreya Buddha and the Four Heavenly Kings. The title of the film also comes from the Buddhist classic "The Great Compassion Mantra".
In "Breaking the Tomb", Zhang Zaixian is even more serious.
not only copied the props from Hong Kong-style zombie movies, but also directly transported the "zombie" there.
How much of this new-year blockbuster, which the Korean film industry is proud of, is real and how fake?
01. Comparing "Mr. Zombie" and "Broken Tomb", the difference is clear at a glance
First, let's take a look at what story "Broken Tomb" tells.
Witches Lee Hwarim (played by Kim Go-eun) and shaman Yoon Bong-gil (played by Lee Dae-hyun), who specialize in exorcising ghosts for clients, received a big order one day to exorcise the newly born son of Park Ji-yong, a wealthy immigrant to the United States.
Park Zhiyong's son has been crying non-stop since he was born. Doctors have tried all kinds of methods but can't find the cause.
Park Zhiyong ignored the opposition of his family and returned to China to ask siblings Hualin and Fengji to diagnose his son.
Hualin counted with his fingers and found out that there was a problem with the ancestral tombs of the Pu family's ancestors, and that the problem could be solved by destroying the tombs and moving them.
But the siblings are not good at reading Feng Shui and moving graves, so they find two foreign aids, Feng Shui master Kim Sang-deok (played by Choi Min-sik) who is good at reading Feng Shui, and church elder and etiquette teacher Go Yong-geun (played by Yoo Hae-jin). In this way,
formed the "Tomb Breaking Team" with four members, each of whom was paid as much as 500 million won (equivalent to 2.63 million yuan).
The ancestral grave of Park Geun-hyun, an ancestor of the Park family, is located in Xianglubong Peak in Gangwon Province on the border with North Korea.
The burial was very messy, just a bare small grave.
There is no name on the tombstone, only a series of numbers indicating the longitude and latitude.
Needless to say, it is very dangerous and cannot be moved, otherwise you will lose your life.
But the temptation of 500 million won was too great, and Kim Sang-deok's team could only bite the bullet.
In order to suppress the evil spirits in the tomb, Hualin found five workers who were born in the Year of the Pig to dig the grave.
Prepare five pigs at the same time, and then use the magic trick. It is said that the Yin Qi released when the tomb is opened can be transferred to the flesh of the five pigs, so that the workers digging the grave will be protected from the Yin Qi.
After a lot of trouble, the bones of Park Zhiyong's grandfather Park Genxian were dug out and cremated together with the coffin.
Park Geun-hyun's evil spirit was also put to rest, and Park Ji-yong's son was also saved.
This is the first half of the story.
Everyone, look at the process of these four people from accepting the commission, to looking at Feng Shui, setting up altars, and then digging graves. Is it the same as the plot in "Mr. Zombie"?
The only difference is that Zhang Zaixian is good at making a mess of folk culture, replacing our Taoist altar-building practice with the shamanistic dance of the gods.
If these are just imitations, then the emergence of "zombie" is an obvious copy.
Just a few days after the tomb was broken, one of the workers involved in the tomb breakup turned out to be possessed by evil spirits.
Jin Shangde had a vague premonition, so he went to the mountain to check the grave pit, only to find that there was another coffin buried vertically under the original coffin.
Uncle Jiu once said that a horizontal burial is called a "flat burial", while a vertical burial like this is called a "legal burial".
This big, dark coffin was like a nail driven into the soil.
The coffin was also tightly tied with wires, apparently to prevent the "living things" in the coffin from breaking out.
And this "living creature" is the protagonist of this film, a giant zombie from the Japanese island country.
Since then, the movie has entered the climax, the ultimate PK between the "Tomb Breaking Team" and the big zombie of the island country. The process of
's battle of wits was full of twists and turns.
The four of them all used their special skills that they had learned throughout their lives, and Hualin also invited two fellow disciples to come and help.
And the magic weapons and props they used can also be seen as references to "Mr. Zombie".
For example, Uncle Jiu used rooster blood to seal the coffin and glutinous rice to restrain the zombies;
Hualin also used glutinous rice and horse blood to sprinkle around the coffin to seal the zombies in the coffin.
Hualin’s fellow practitioners also used roosters, charms and paper charms in the process of suppressing ghosts.
In order to defend themselves, the four members of the team wrote verses from the Diamond Sutra all over their bodies. We have also seen this kind of slutty operation
in the 2022 Taiwanese horror film "The Curse".
But in fact, the earliest appearance of this design in Hong Kong films can be traced back to " evil " directed by Gui Zhihong in 1980. It is a representative work of the new wave of movies.
In "Mr. Zombie", when Uncle Jiu was fighting zombies, he often bit his fingers and smeared his own blood on the wooden sword to increase its magic power.
In the film, after Jin Shangde understood the theory of the five elements in Feng Shui, he also smeared his own blood on the pickaxe in his hand, and finally split the zombie in two.
So it can be seen from these that "Broken Tomb" not only borrows from Hong Kong horror films in terms of folk elements and props, but also the entire story frame is copied from "The Master Accepts the Commission" in "Mr. Zombie" The development line of "Discover Zombies-Destroy Zombies".
This is what is called "old wine in new bottles."
The great thing about director Jang Jae-hyun is that he was able to repackage this old story from the 1980s and add a theme that Koreans love to watch, thus capturing the hearts of Koreans.
02. The names of the four protagonists each have their own "metaphors", and the other details added in the movie are wonderful. They all hit the pain points of Koreans.
Anti-Americanism, anti-Japanese, and digging into the political shady world are the three major themes of Korean movies.
As long as you grasp these "three major themes", you can master the traffic password. Movies that match these themes can often be box office hits.
is like " crying " by Luo Hongzhen in 2016.
tells the story of the conflict between the three major religions in Korea: Shamanism, Shintoism, and Christianity. The story is confusing and particularly puzzling.
However, because the theme of "anti-Japanese" was recognized by the audience, it not only sold a box office of 49.85 million US dollars worldwide, but also won Luo Hongzhen the Korean Film Blue Dragon Award for Best Director.
both have an "anti-Japanese" theme. Compared with "Broken Tomb" and "The Cry", the story line is much more straightforward.
In order to make it easier for the audience to understand, he even split the movie into 6 chapters, namely: "Yin Yang and Five Elements", "Tomb", "Soul", "Touching", "Ghost (おに)" and "Iron Needle" .
The last chapter "Iron Needle" is the core of the whole story.
There is a popular saying among Korean people that "iron nails break the pulse".
According to legend, during the Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula, in order to cut off the "dragon vein" of the Korean nation, the Japanese colonists organized a special operations team to conduct a geographical survey in North Korea for more than a year in the name of drawing maps, and finally took control of North Korea. The dragon vein of the peninsula.
After that, they drove countless iron nails into key points in famous mountains such as Mount Kumgang, Songak Mountain in Kaesong, Jirisan Mountain, Daesongsan Mountain in Pyongyang, Bukaksan Mountain in Seoul, and Paldalsan Mountain in Suwon, as well as into the palace halls.
The steel used to make these nails comes from the blades of katana swords used by Japanese samurai. "The heroic spirits of the samurai of the Japanese Empire gathered together", and they wanted to use the spirits of their ancestors to suppress the Korean Peninsula.
In 1985, a group of mountaineering enthusiasts spontaneously formed a team called "thinking about us" and launched a "nail removal movement" in South Korea.
During the 27 years from 1985 to 2012, they visited famous mountains and rivers in South Korea and pulled out more than 360 iron nails.
This group of people is called the "Iron Hunters", which is the prototype of the "Iron Blood Group" in the film.
The "nail removal movement" reached its climax in 1995.
At that time, it coincided with the 50th anniversary of Korea's liberation. The then Korean President Kim Young-sam included "dismantling the iron needles left by the Japanese" as a major national project.
According to the policy address at the time, the South Korean government launched a nationwide investigation and identified and removed a total of 180 iron piles.
To this day, Koreans still firmly believe in the "island country Feng Shui invasion theory" and the "Japanese empire's broken line theory."
Director Zhang Zaixian saw this.
In the interview, he called emphasizing national consciousness, presenting patriotic issues, and eliminating the negative influence of Japanese culture "corn surgery" and believed that "only by uprooting it can new things emerge."
For this reason, director Jang Jae-hyun wanted to tell a story about a pro-Japanese faction being cursed.
The wealthy Park Jiyong family in the film are the descendants of Korean traitors during the Japanese occupation.
His grandfather Park Geun-hyun was a Korean traitor. After his death, he was buried by the fox demon Onmyoji Murayama Junji from Japan at the longitude and latitude "383417, 1283189" on Xianglu Peak in Gangwon Province.
According to legend, during the Japanese occupation, the Korean Peninsula was depicted as a tiger on the map.
Park Geun-hyun's tomb is located at the "tiger's waist", which is what the movie says "the fox cuts off the tiger's waist".
And this tomb of the Han traitor is actually used to cover the tomb of the "big zombie of the island country" below.
Below it stands a large coffin inserted into the earth, which is the iron needle used by the fox demon Onmyoji to "cut off the tiger's waist".
The film explains that this big zombie was a general of the Western Army who participated in the "Sekigahara Battle" during his lifetime.
Its prototype was Ishida Mitsunari, the commander of the Western Army who fought against the Eastern Army led by Tokugawa Ieyasu. After the defeat, he was beheaded in Rokujo Kawara in Kyoto. After
's death, his body was collected by Master Yuanjian of Dade Temple and buried in Sanxuanyuan of the temple. This is consistent with what the big zombie mentioned in the film as being "buried in Dade Temple".
The centipede-shaped helmet worn by the big zombie comes from Date Minoru, known as the "Oshu Warriors";
likes to eat ayu and melon, one is from Gifu, which is rich in ayu, a famous Japanese Warring States general. Oda Nobunaga’s hometown;
The second origin is from Tokugawa Ieyasu’s special preference for melons.
It should be said that Big Zombie is a combination of the image of Japanese Warring States generals.
After the general was beheaded, the fox demon Onmyoji inserted a samurai sword into the body through the gap in the neck. From then on, the samurai sword merged with the corpse, forming an iron needle that "cut off the waist of a tiger".
Therefore, for Koreans, the process of patriots "pulling out the iron needle" carries profound national emotions and symbolic meaning.
Let’s talk about the four people of the "Tomb Breaking Team". Their names also come from four patriots in Korean history -
Kim Sang-deok is the main contributor to the independence of the Republic of Korea;
Ko Yong-geun is a patriotic young man in the late Joseon Dynasty;
Lee Hwa-rim is A famous female independence activist in South Korea;
Yoon Bong-gil was an anti-Japanese martyr during the Japanese occupation.
These four people themselves represent the patriots among the Korean people.
They usually serve the rich, but in the face of the great rights and wrongs of national justice, these ordinary people are willing to give up their lives.
A lot of thought was obviously put into the poster design of the movie.
The part of the sky formed by the trees and silhouettes of people happens to be the shape of the Korean Peninsula.
It was these emotions that resonated with Korean audiences, which made the movie sing all the way after its release and win high box office.
03. Compared with meaningless scoldings, these are the key.
Let’s go back to the movie. Maybe netizens who have watched "The Tomb" will have some resentful emotions.
We have also filmed horror themes such as feng shui, ghosts, martial arts, and grave digging.
Let’s not talk about Hong Kong films. As early as the 1980s, we in mainland China also made movies such as "The Night Robbers at the Princess's Tomb", "The Lonely Ghost in the Black Building", and " Haunted House Beauty Head ".
To this day, Koreans have produced "The Cry", "Sabha", and "Breaking the Tomb";
The Japanese have produced "The Remnant", "Supernatural Curse", "Ghost Water Monster Talk" ;
Thais have produced "鬼影", "Ghost Wife", "Ghost Husband ";
Taiwanese film industry has also produced such shocking films as "Two Eyes", "The Thread" and "The Curse" work.
But we are still standing still, making no progress.
Some people attribute these to the reasons for review.
But in fact, the standards for film review in mainland China have been relaxed in recent years.
Films such as "The Death of Romance" and "Wide the Angry Sea" are very large-scale, and the review department still gave them the green light and stamped them with the dragon mark.
Therefore, Pi Ge feels that mainland filmmakers still have to find the reasons within themselves.
refers to some successful cases inside and outside the Chinese film industry, carefully creates scripts, and the theme must be positive and profound.
actually adds a high-end patriotic theme to commercial movies and sublimates the theme of the movie. Our mainland movies have already had precedents.
For example, Wu Jing's " Wolf Warrior 2" is at its core an action movie that expresses personal heroism.
But if the "battlefield" is moved abroad, and then the theme of "withdrawing from China" is used, under the banner of patriotism, its ideological nature and appearance are completely different.
Let’s talk about the science fiction film " The Wandering Earth 2".
The main story line is set in the future when the earth is facing the end of the world, which seems to have nothing to do with "patriotism".
However, the spirit of sacrifice and self-sacrifice shown in the film is in line with our national spirit.
Through the theme of science fiction, our national spirit can also be spread to the world.
So when it comes to folklore themes, Brother Pi thinks our filmmakers should also try boldly in the future.
like "Broken Tomb" combines patriotism and the battle between heavenly masters that audiences love to watch, and produces our own good works.
Text/Pippi Film Editorial Department: Hot Blood Danxin
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