On March 16, "New Sesame Official", a remake of Stephen Chow's classic comedy, premiered in theaters. The box office on the first day was only 1,300 yuan, and there were constant negative reviews. Two months ago, the movie version of the TV series " Flower Thousand Bones " was launched and was rated as the "worst start of the year" by cctv6 in 2024, with a box office of only 5 million yuan. On New Year's Eve, with the drama version of Dongfeng's movie " Twinkle Twinkle Stars ", the complaints that evolved from "Zhang Wansen, it's snowing" to "Zhang Wansen, don't snow" are still fresh in my memory. Along with the ridicule of "nine out of ten remakes fail", the number of remakes in China's film and television drama market continues to increase. Some creators are showing off their "nostalgia card" again and again, just waiting for the audience to take the bait.
When feelings and remakes collide, careful craftsmanship can completely breed high-quality works, and there is no lack of excellent case support in this regard. There is no crime in making a remake, but when bad money drives out good money, the audience's confidence is shattered to pieces. After a long period of "willing to take the bait" baptism, the audience has to associate "emotional movies" with "bad movies". Mecca, vice chairman of the Chinese Writers Association, believes that we must be wary of the intensifying "remake wave" and the original spirit must not be lost.
The ever-increasing "remake craze"
Behind the "remake craze" are not only driven by commercial interests, but also stimulated by the audience's increasing aesthetic needs and the need to re-inherit classics. Remake refers to the creative form of re-shooting after purchasing the copyright of film and television works that have been released/broadcast. This creative form has been around for a long time. Transnational remakes, classic remakes, film and television drama remakes, and the overwhelming offensive have created a new force.
Times have changed, and the remake's shooting techniques and visual effects have reinterpreted classics to meet the audience's increasing cultural and aesthetic needs. Different people will have different interpretations of an influential story or character, and it is normal creative behavior for the creator to wish to interpret it in different forms. "Journey to the West" starring Stephen Chow is a creative remake based on "Journey to the West ", presenting the audience with another understanding of the story of Journey to the West and the role of Monkey King. Although some remakes have been successful, there are more adaptations such as "The New Deer and the Cauldron", "The New Dream of Red Mansions", " New Romance of the Three Kingdoms ", " New Tianlong Babu " and other adaptations that have inconsistent styling, stiff plots and obviously insufficient care. People will inevitably call it a waste of a classic, and it will also spoil people’s impression of the remake.
Why do similar remakes of dramas keep coming online? This starts from the characteristics of the remake itself, which is low risk, low production difficulty, and high attention. The reason why a classic becomes a classic is because it has withstood the test of the audience, the market and time. Repeating its path is relatively a safer choice. From a business perspective, remakes of classics not only save time in content conception, but also make it easier to determine the plot interpretation and production cycle in advance. Since the original work already has a broad audience base, the remake will have its own discussion traffic from the moment it is released, saving a lot of publicity and distribution costs. On the day of its official release, before word of mouth spreads, it can reap a lot of box office revenue. For example, the movie " Love Apartment ", which was adapted from the drama version, even if the box office continues to decline, can still earn 100 million yuan at the box office on the day of its premiere with "Youth Memories Killing"; the movie "Twinkle Twinkle Shining Star", which is adapted from the drama version 》Despite frequent complaints on the Internet, the final box office exceeded 600 million yuan.
According to scholar Zhang Jianye, starting from 2015, major film and television companies and Internet platforms began to frantically purchase and hoard various IPs. Even though some capital was withdrawn from the film and television market in 2018, the large backlog of inventory still made these IP broadcasts not , it doesn’t matter if it’s not broadcast. He believes: "Even if it is at the end of the war, the remake will still exert its residual heat in the domestic TV drama market for a long time. Although it is 'nine times out of ten' or even 'nine times out of ten', it is also the industrialization of Chinese TV dramas." An inevitable phenomenon caused by the carnival of advancement and capital.”
Although the audience continues to question and criticize, remakes of film and television dramas are still coming one after another. This decline is particularly obvious in the film track. In 2023 alone, there will be nearly 10 remakes of movies, and most of them are remakes of overseas movies. , such as " Super Family " with a Douban score of 3.7 is a remake of the Russian movie "Super Power Family", and " Rescue the Suspect " with a Douban score of 5.8 is a remake of the Korean movie " Seven Days ".
's lack of excellent texts is revealed
The 2022 "China Remake Drama Market Research Report" released by Yien shows that from 2019 to the first quarter of 2022, the user popularity of remake dramas dropped from 40.3 to 26.3, which is a significant drop. It is a fact that remakes of film and television dramas have been cold. With this On the contrary, it is the remake of the classic work that has become popular again and again.
As an old drama from 20 years ago, "Marrying the Right Man in the Wrong Sedan" tells the story of a wealthy businessman's lady and a martial artist's daughter getting married on the same day. The story of two people who mistakenly sat in each other's sedan chair and finally achieved a beautiful marriage. Although the Douban score was not low, it did not reach the height of 8 points. In September 2023, the remake of the drama "The Happy Event in Sedan Chair" was broadcast, and netizens expressed their opinions on the casting and props. While the details are so noisy, the reputation of "Marrying the Right Man in the Wrong Sedan Chair" has also skyrocketed, with a Douban score of 8.6. There is no harm without comparison. With the help of the remake, the original plot, makeup, and characters are valuable. It immediately stood out and was inevitably recalled and appreciated by the audience. Just as after the movie version of "A Thousand Bones" was released, many netizens recalled the drama version of "A Thousand Bones" and exclaimed: "The master played by Huo Jianhua was still "Too picky" "I'm sorry Huo Jianhua, I was too loud to you".
remake seems to have taken shortcuts and enjoyed the influence created before the original version. But it is not easy to stand under the predecessor's tree to enjoy the cool. If you can't shoot Well, it is easier to expose shortcomings. Facts have proved that a large number of remakes not only fail to surpass the original version, but are criticized by the audience because of the cliché content, which reflects the preciousness of the original version. The remake has become a "bad film", with poor reputation and expressiveness. Unsatisfactory, one after another of low-level works gradually made the audience lose confidence, and the remake fell into a dilemma.
Whether it is interpreting classics or borrowing from foreign works, frequent remakes in the film and television circle use old texts, which exposes the The lack and weakness of one's own creation has encountered a creative bottleneck. If things go on like this, it will breed the creator's inertia of thinking, weak originality consciousness, and the reduction of excellent texts. Under the halo of remakes, quickly reaping the dividends of the original work and then exiting is tantamount to self-destruction. Self-destruction.
A successful remake is more difficult than an original.
Is a remake simply borrowing other people's stories? In fact, it is not. A successful remake is more difficult than an original. Zhang Jianye said that originality is like "raising a tall building from the ground" because the audience There are no preset expectations for it, and the error tolerance will be higher. The original work at the time of the remake was already a majestic three-dimensional tall building. We obtained its drawings and built a new building. It seemed to save time in creative development, but we had to take into account all aspects and strive to build something similar but different from the "old building", strong and beautiful. And it is widely accepted as the perfect "new building". This is obviously much more difficult than "building a tall building from the ground". Not to mention that the remakes of TV series and movies are also affected by huge time differences, which is no less difficult than building a skyscraper with a villa blueprint.
The continuous decline in the reputation of domestic remakes of film and television dramas is not unrelated to the misunderstanding of relevant capital and creators about the difficulty of remakes. The success of classic works relies on the support of a first-class team. Some remakes of film and television dramas just use the shell of the story to invite popular stars who lack acting skills to support the scene. They don’t pursue “watchability”, only “good-looking”, and don’t work hard on refining the plot or characterization, but only focus on the effect of convincing people and the image of actors... In this case, the remakes of film and television dramas “lose money and make noise” and frequently “turn over” "It is inevitable.
The remakes of excellent film and television dramas all have their own unique ideological core, and they are not as simple as copying. Remaking foreign classics requires careful control of actors and photography, as well as adding a local perspective and adapting to local culture. The remake of
requires some ingenuity in plot interpretation."The Legend of the Condor Heroes" has been remade one after another. The three versions of 1983, 1994 and 2008, with Guo Jing and Huang Rong each having their own merits, have become youthful memories of different age groups. If there is really no great transcendence and there is some innovation in form, it can still be considered qualified. For example, the short-form version of "A Dream of Red Mansions" and the 2017 version of "The Legend of the Condor Heroes", even if they are not very brilliant, have gained a good reputation because they respect the original work and have no magical modifications.
Although remakes have become an established production model, we all understand that only with originality can there be a new beginning. The audience expects good works, and the market also calls for good works. Even if they choose to remake, the creators must fully consider the requirements of the times, regard creativity as their core competitiveness, tell "Chinese stories" that are in line with Chinese aesthetics, and respond to the audience's desire for high-quality works. Only in this way can they find a new artistic world in remakes.
(Dazhong Daily·Dazhong News Client Reporter Zhu Ziyu, Intern Zhang Qi)
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