A great idea, coupled with good execution, can make a great film.
"A Quiet Place" released in 2018 is a typical example of this. We all know that movies are the art of light and shadow. Good movies often have supporting execution plans such as good soundtrack, good photography, and good editing. Among them, soundtrack and sound are essential forms of presentation. However, "A Quiet Place" went in the opposite direction and made a fuss about sound.
For many thrillers, jump scare is the most common scare method. Usually something suddenly appears in the film, such as something popping up or flashing on the screen, or the sound suddenly changes. Large, sudden abnormal noises, or sudden explosions, collapses, etc., among which sound accounts for the majority. However, "A Quiet Place" chose to make the lack of sound a scary point, which is surprisingly successful.
When people are frightened, they often hold their breath and make no or less noise. "A Quiet Place" takes full advantage of this to create a psychological thriller.
However, the use of sound to create a thrilling effect is not the fundamental reason for the success of "A Quiet Place". The most fundamental thing is the universal values behind it, namely family, love, and hope.
"A Quiet Place" is a story about a family that escapes for their lives under the pursuit of alien creatures. Regardless of the sound settings, there are actually many versions of the story of escape from strangers in Hollywood, such as " I Am Legend " starring Will Smith, "Finch" and " Road to Destruction" starring Tom Hanks. "", " Doomsday" starring Viggo Mortensen, the most touching part of these films is the protagonist's belief, Will Smith's search for hope, Tom Hank The fatherly love shown by Si and Viggo Mortensen is more touching than the apparent path of search in the story.
What really touches people in "A Quiet Place" is how the parents played by Emily Blunt and John Krasinski take care of their children, the mutual support between the entire family, and how the father After the sacrifice, he still followed his last wish and continued to look for opportunities to survive. The love and hope conveyed in the film is what really touches people, and it is also the fundamental reason why the film has a great reputation and box office.
This is the execution level is done well enough, packaging the idea of a silent scare into a touching story.
is similar to the classic movie, as well. The reason why "Saw" is so good-looking is not only the fear mechanism of struggling to survive in the secret room, but also the man behind the scenes Jigsaw's grasp of human nature and his control of human weaknesses. The character of Jigsaw as a God and his criticism of human nature are the core of the film becoming a classic. Later, when "Saw" was filmed one after another, it became a simple viewing mechanism, which was extremely boring and became increasingly unsightly.
The same is true for "The God of Death". The first part still talks about the issue of fatalism. The King of Hell wants you to die at the third watch. Who dares to save people until the fifth watch, but a few lucky people temporarily escaped from the hands of death. However, how could the God of Death let go of your destined fate, so you must die again according to the established method of death. The truly shocking thing about the first part is this established fatalism, the inescapable sadness. However, as the series continued, it turned into a bizarre death award, which completely changed its flavor and lost its original value.
It’s not that the screenwriter doesn’t want to, but that he lacks ability and only seeks bad taste and forgets the fundamentals.The "x" series is doing pretty well. The amazing thing about the first "x" is that it combines erotica and horror. The first half of the movie is an erotic film, but in the second half it suddenly turns into a blood-soaked thriller. Watching the first half alone or the second half alone is not exciting, but when combined into one, it is very fresh. After all, no one has put these two unrelated movie types together. . When the second part of the series "Pal" came out, I thought it would be a combination of two different movie types. However, it turned out to be a literary play, telling the story of the heroine's struggle and the reasons for her fall. Not only did it not follow the same path as the first Continuing on the path of the first part, it has actually improved the style left by the first part, which is very rare. Therefore, this summer's third "Maxine" is particularly interesting.
Back to "A Quiet Place", after the first part was a huge success, the much-anticipated "A Quiet Place 2" is far less exciting than the first part. The pattern of the story has opened up and is no longer limited to It is above the protagonist's family, but the sense of family atmosphere and the sense of pursuing hope have also disappeared. Although Oscar-winning actor Cillian Murphy was added to the scene, it was of little significance and did not bring enough surprises. At first glance, it seems that a sequel is made for the sake of making a sequel. There is insufficient necessity and innovation. Instead, it has lost its original shining point. The method is the same as the sequels of "Saw" and "Death", just to make money.
Immediately, " A Quiet Place: Invasion Day" is a prequel and part of the expansion of the universe. What is the highlight of it?
When I heard the news that "A Quiet Place: Invasion Day" was going to start filming, the first thing that immediately came to my mind was "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story". Not only did it talk about the causes, but it also made the protagonist inevitably die.
Sure enough, "A Quiet Place: Invasion Day" is going to talk about how the silent terror came about, and then the protagonist will die, that is, the heroine Lupita Nyong'o must die, and from the beginning she is... As a cancer patient, she is destined to die at the end of the film.
As for how the silent terror came about?
"A Quiet Place: Invasion Day" puts forward an excellent proposition, but does not give a qualified answer. At the beginning of the film, it is described that the noise on the earth is so serious that it has constituted "noise pollution". Humanity's self-inflicted evil and excessive use of nature will inevitably cause nature's counterattack and revenge. The proposition of this proposition is in line with reality, and it is also an unsolvable problem that is worthy of human reflection. But how to solve it is difficult.
"A Quiet Place: Invasion Day" is very simple. Since humans can't solve it themselves, let alien creatures solve it. As a result, several meteors fell, and alien creatures came to the earth. They were particularly interested in everything that made a sound, and used them as prey to attack and kill indiscriminately.
This setting seems to answer the doubts in the later story "A Quiet Place" and the reason why alien creatures came to the earth. However, it does not fundamentally answer the question of how to solve noise pollution in cities raised at the beginning of the film. Introducing inexplicable aliens is just a terrible lazy answer that has nothing to do with solving real-life problems.
Asking a great question and then giving the laziest answer is one of the failings of A Quiet Place: Invasion Day. If you have to say something, you can actually make a deeper setting, that is, there are highly intelligent creatures on a certain planet. They detect that the noise decibels on the earth are too high, so they release the monsters on this planet to hunt based on the sound, and use the sound life on the earth as the basis. Food.In this case, the logic will make sense and the movie universe will be expanded more reasonably. At the same time, it will pave the way for a battle between the earth and extraterrestrial intelligent life in the future. But it doesn't, the screenwriters revealed, it just allows low-end alien creatures to come to the earth inexplicably and start killing inexplicably.
So, this prequel, which claims to solve the origin of the monsters, is very unqualified in solving the problem.
As for the second part, it is that it has fallen into the quagmire of political correctness and cannot extricate itself, and it has gone too far. The heroine of "A Quiet Place: Invasion Day" is a black girl, starring Lupita Nyong'o. Ordinarily, the first two sequels also focus on the heroine Emily Blunt, but Blunt is surrounded by her family. The real protagonists are the Blunt family, and the family is the core protagonist of the film. Blount's personal role is not obvious.
In "A Quiet Place: Invasion Day", Lupita Nyong'o has become the absolute protagonist, and she is already helpless, has no family, and lives alone in a nursing home. Just let her be the protagonist, that’s fine. But she was inexplicably matched with a white boy who had no sense of CP, and they were left together to depend on each other. This is political correctness for the sake of political correctness.
The combination of black and white is in line with the current political aesthetics of Americans, and it is mainly black. Black people should protect the white brother and act as his protector and guide. Because the boy is still a student, he looks quite mature and looks a bit like Robert Downey Jr., but after all, he is still a child and needs to be taken care of.
However, the scene setting of the kid brother is very unreasonable. He has to follow the black girl inexplicably, and then he has to accompany her to eat pizza and walk with her through the flooded subway. But why? No answer was given.
is so inexplicable between black and white, the pairing is stiff, the cp is slapped stiffly, the sense of dissonance is extremely strong, the two people don't call at all, they just make up, which makes people very embarrassed. We have already rescued a pair of children at a street fountain. Wouldn't it be nice to continue taking the children with us and continue to rescue them? For the sake of political correctness, you have to make a black and white match, it's messed up.
As for the heroine, the meaning of her existence in the film is to seek death. This is even more baffling.
Since he is asking for death, he can just die directly from the monster. He also insists on eating pizza. His stubbornness makes people doubt his life.
As mentioned above, the reason why "A Quiet Place" stands up lies in the love and mutual protection between families in it, as well as the persistent pursuit of hope for survival. In "A Quiet Place: Invasion Day", it suddenly turned into a death wish, and just to eat a piece of pizza before dying. Suddenly the meaning of life was transformed into absurdity and ridiculousness.
A cancer patient wanted to eat a piece of pizza before he died. Is this important?
is very important to her. But for the general audience, this pursuit is too personal and lacks universality. This creates a barrier to communication, which not everyone can accept. Family and hope in "A Quiet Place" are both universal and something that everyone can understand and be willing to pursue. By this time, it suddenly became an extremely personalized pursuit, which resulted in the loss of the original intention. It was expected that it would not receive general recognition from the public.
A big proposition of "A Quiet Place" is that no matter what the crisis on the earth becomes, we must live on and pass on life. Although the family is incomplete, despite the incompleteness, hope must be passed on.
At the end of "A Quiet Place: Invasion Day", the black girl sacrificed herself to win the chance of survival for the kid brother. It was somewhat of a donation of love, but this was also very abrupt, and suddenly it became like this , is not enough to impress the audience.
As for how the water-climbing alien creatures escaped from the island and wiped out the entire earth, turning it into what it looked like in "A Quiet Place", the film did not give a reasonable explanation.
The entire "A Quiet Place: Invasion Day" has become a pure money-making work, and it is not a qualified prequel at all. Not only did it not solve the problem, it actually caused it, which was really unbearable.
There is another point that I don’t understand in the film, that is, the cat is really too well-behaved. Even if the world is turned upside down and the world is in chaos, it just remains unmoved and unreasonably well-behaved. As a blogger who has six cats at home, I can’t understand why that cat is so well-behaved? If anyone understands, please leave a message to me.
Well, it’s not worth writing so much for such a mediocre work.