Text | Reading Entertainment, Author | Zero One
" White Snake: Floating Life " released on Chinese Valentine's Day this year is the most important animated film in the entire summer season.
On the one hand, " Chang'an Thirty Thousand Miles ", also produced by Light Chasing Animation, grossed 1.8 billion at the box office last summer and is one of the biggest dark horses of the year; on the other hand, the "White Snake" series is also the "light chasing animation" development "Turning Point", 2019's "The Origin of the White Snake" received both word-of-mouth and box office success, lifting light-chasing animation from the early box office reception of "Little Doorkeeper", "The Adventures of Atang" and "Cat and Peach Blossom Land" in one fell swoop, and also laid the foundation for the subsequent development of light-chasing animation. Determination to focus on the field of Chinese culture and traditional mythology.
From " White Snake: The Origin of " in 2019 to the present, the main works produced by Light Chaser Animation include " New God List: Nezha Reborn " for the Spring Festival in 2021, and " White Snake 2: Green Snake Tribulation" for the summer release. "", " New God List: Yang Jian " in the summer of 2022, "Chang'an Thirty Thousand Miles" in the summer of 2023 and "White Snake: The Floating Life" in this summer's summer. On the first day of
's release, "White Snake: The Floating Life" won the Japanese crown with a box office of 94.28 million, but it was only ahead of " Catching Baby " which was released for nearly a month by a slight advantage of more than 1 million, and its attendance performance was relatively mediocre. The next day, the single-day box office of "White Snake: The Floating Life" was surpassed by "Catch a Baby". At present, Lighthouse AI predicts that the total box office of "White Snake: The Floating Life" will be 526 million yuan, the box office of its predecessor "Green Snake" will be 580 million yuan, and the box office of "The Origin of White Snake" will be 470 million yuan. The trilogy series will all be released in the summer season.
"White Snake: The Floating Life" scored 7.1 on Douban, which is higher than the current score of "Green Snake" of 6.8 and lower than the current score of "White Snake: Origin" of 7.8. Taopiao Piao and Maoyan scored 9.4 and 9.5 points respectively. Taopiaopiao's ticket purchase evaluation has a positive/negative rating of 9094/429. The overall reputation performance is on the higher side for the summer season.
Judging from both word-of-mouth and box office, the performance of "White Snake: The Floating Life" did not bring many surprises. In the view of Duyu, the main reason is that has many restrictions due to its unique position in IP planning. - In the planning of the entire light-chasing animation "Mythical IP Series", "White Snake: The Floating Life" plays the role of " The role of "gluing" not only pays for the overly jumpy setting of "Green Snake", but also reflects some of Chai Guang's "re-understanding" of market preferences after the huge success of "Chang'an 30,000 Miles".
"Extraordinary" top-level visual aesthetics
There is no doubt that the greatest advantage of "White Snake: The Floating Life" is the visual aesthetics of the film. It is not an exaggeration to call it the pinnacle of current Chinese comic movies. The visual upgrade of
videos is comprehensive - the facial expressions of
characters are smart and natural, and the accurate expression of emotions is very skillful. The smooth movements of the characters, the fluttering of clothes and hair, the impact of external environments such as light and rain on the characters, and all the details are extremely fine. In the view of Duyu, it is the first-class level among current Chinese comic movies and even international animated movies.
scene modeling is very detailed. For example, the panoramic scene of the scene that refers to "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" is very stunning. Since the story takes place in Hangzhou in the Song Dynasty, the beautiful scenery of the West Lake and the wine shops and markets are presented in their respective aesthetic styles, with appropriate composition, natural use of traditional cultural elements, and overall It has formed a pleasing national style aesthetic charm;
In terms of the presentation of action scenes and fighting special effects, the innovation and aesthetic tone of "White Snake: The Floating Life" are particularly valuable. Different from the pile of various light pollution special effects common in 3D Chinese comics, most of the plots of "White Snake: The Floating Life" do not overemphasize the existence of "special effects", but through differentiated arrangements in lens language, aesthetic design, and action design. Let special effects become the driving force for narrative emotional expression.
For example, Xiaobai's entry into Kunlun with two swords is a key action scene in the mid-term. The overall lens language design is extremely excellent, almost making the audience unable to take their eyes away. The emphasis is on speed, agility, time and the sense of crisis; and the many actions in Fahai In the play, the special effects presentation emphasizes a huge majestic momentum to complete the character creation of Fahai, a tough, stubborn and hateful character; there is also an audio-visual performance of the "Bao Qingfang" singing opera in the play, the level is even closer to "Show off skills".
Compared with the previous works in the series, "White Snake: The Floating Life" maintains a high level of visual quality from beginning to end, and rarely adheres to the aesthetic expression of "special effects cannot overwhelm the guest", which is in line with the current aesthetic style in the field of 3D fantasy dramas. gap.
A slightly "mediocre" new mythology
But compared to the significantly improved animation technology and aesthetic expression, the difficulty in creating "White Snake: The Floating Life" is obviously more in the story.
Looking back at the mythological IP series of light-chasing animation, we will find that "White Snake: The Floating Life" is the only movie directly adapted from the traditional mythology, "White Snake: Origin", "New God List: Nezha Rebirth" and " "Yang Jian" and "Green Snake" both started from scratch, only borrowing the general settings of the mythical characters, and the rest were all original creations;
in "White Snake: The Floating Life", the film crew needed to reinterpret the well-known story of White Snake and Xu Xian, On the basis of classic texts such as "The Legend of the White Snake" that are familiar to the public, and with "White Snake: Origin" and "Green Snake", it is necessary to build a narrative logic that can be justified. This may be much more difficult than improving visual expression. .
As for the new retelling of mythological stories, the bias of the public opinion market is extremely "ambiguous" - The public seems to respect both innovation and restoration. They hope to see something different from the old legends, but they are also interested in "magic reform". "Extremely sensitive... The scale is really difficult to grasp. It's no wonder that almost all animated films with mythological themes have chosen to avoid the original story text and choose to tell the story of Nezha, the Great Sage, and Yang Jian in another time and space.
But for Light Chasing Animation to create the "White Snake" series of IPs, the entanglement between White Snake, Xu Xian and Fahai corresponding to "White Snake: The Floating Life" is indispensable. Chaiguang chose to create "The Rise of the Green Snake" first, bringing to the forefront the plot of the green and white snakes flooding the Jinshan Temple. This is probably because it is difficult to adapt this familiar traditional myth and it is not easy to please the market.
Judging from the results, "White Snake: The Floating Life" chose the safest way - to replay the story plots we are most familiar with, plus new characters, new settings and new styles from the White Snake series. Therefore, the audience will follow this film like a running account, seeing scenes such as the first meeting of the broken bridge, stealing official silver, eradicating the plague, realgar wine and white snake appearing in their original form, white snake stealing fairy grass to save Xu Xian, etc., and at the same time, Xu Xian's character is enhanced. , Bao Qingfang Master, Xu Xian’s brother-in-law Li Gongfu, Fa Hai and other original scenes.
The character of Xu Xian is a very thin and fragile character in the original text of the myth. In the animation, in order to strengthen the two-way love of this pair, Xu Xian's brave and tenacious side is greatly enhanced. Xu Xian's character is similar to that in "White Snake: Origin" It echoed the previous life of the film, and also gave Xiaoqing and the audience a firm answer to the question "Is Xu Xian worth it?" However, in terms of specific expression, the film has an abrupt turn, causing the character Xu Xian to become "tool-like", which is in stark contrast to the vivid characters of Green Snake, Li Gongfu and other characters in the play.
This also makes the emotional expression of the film fall into the cliché-returning to the strong emotional drama of "I am willing to die for you" to prove true love, but the story still fails to establish enough richness and credibility for this "intensity" The details are authentic, and the result is that Xu Xian's characterization is further blurred and instrumental.
As for the conflict between Fahai, White Snake, and Xu Xian and the final answer, "White Snake: The Floating Life" did not come up with an answer, but arranged the suspense to the follow-up Xu Shilin. Chasing Light's creation of this IP is obviously There is more planning.But this also further makes the script of "White Snake: The Floating Life" even weaker, lacking an emotionally climactic ending.
Light-chasing animation is still the "backbone" of Chinese comic movies
Although there are shortcomings in the narrative, and the new retelling of traditional mythology is indeed difficult to satisfy everyone, "White Snake: The Floating Life" is still an extremely excellent animation overall. Movies have a very complete aesthetic and artistic system.
In the current Chinese film market, there are three major companies with great influence on animated films:
. One is Huaqiang Fantawild, the company behind the "Bear Bears" series. One film a year is almost unbeatable, focusing on the creation of one IP. In the 2024 Spring Festival, "Bear Bears Reversal of Time and Space" won a box office of more than 2 billion, announcing that this IP has gradually expanded its audience from an early age to an animated film IP, becoming Animation movie ip for all ages.
The second is Enlight Media, which laid the foundation with Caitiaowu Pictures in the early days. With the 2019 " Nezha: The Devil Boy Comes into the World ", it won 5 billion+ box office in one fell swoop, which also allowed a large number of investors to see the potential of animated films. In 2020, " Jiang Ziya " took advantage of the popularity of " Nezha " and was able to win a box office of 1.6 billion+ despite insufficient reputation. "Big Fish and Begonia" set a box office record of 2D animated movies at the time with 574 million, and " "The Great Protector" is also a phenomenal niche animated film.
After "Jiang Ziya", Enlight Media's animated film projects fell into a long "empty window period". No key projects will be released in 2021 and 2022. Projects will pick up in 2023, and "Deep Sea", which bravely entered the Spring Festival stalls, earned 900 million + box office, overseas distribution has also achieved considerable success, and the small and medium-cost "Tea No. 2 Middle School" has won 380 million.
Since 2024, except for "Heavy Rain", which only earned 10 million+ at the box office, there have been no other new animated films. There has been no news after the withdrawal of the first fairy tale "Xiao Qian", and "Nezha 2" has not yet been completed. The third of
is light chasing animation. The biggest shortcoming of Enlight Media's animation is that the project operation is relatively chaotic and the progress of major projects is slow. Five years have passed since "The Devil Has Come" became a hit, and the second part has not yet been produced. In addition, there are many animation projects that have been stillborn. This is probably the result of acquiring various studios at that time and working independently. .
In contrast, the biggest advantage of light-chasing animation is that it advances in an orderly manner and pays equal attention to production capacity and quality.
Light Chasing Animation has more failures than successes in chasing market hot spots. If there is no persistence in its ideals, this company is likely to run away after the first three movies received mediocre market response. However, Chasing Light not only persisted until "White Snake" ": Origin" reversed, and in the following year, it used the efficient output of an animated film to conduct diversified attempts in animation theme creation, which is worthy of recognition.
mythology + steampunk, mythology + modernity, and the traditional culture of Tang poetry have stabilized the line of White Snake IP. The unconventional IP of "New God List" has also achieved at least a mid-level income of about 500 million, and also ushered in "Chang'an Thirty Thousand" The accumulated experience in "Li" has soared into the sky.
Through the reinterpretation of classic stories, light-chasing animation has explored a lot of modern narratives and worldviews of traditional mythological stories. The works of light-chasing animation show a high degree of diversity and innovation in subject selection, narrative techniques and style presentation, thus attracting audiences of different ages and interests.
For the current domestic animated film industry, the exploration of light-chasing animation is actually the issue that everyone is most concerned about - how difficult is the original story of , how to control the new ideas and scale of the new mythology, and the animation of traditional culture Show how to choose aesthetic expression... The pits that light-chasing animation has stepped on, the ravines that have been filled, and the various processes are also the experience wealth of the Chinese animation film industry.
