Yuan Yun'er
From the perspective of pioneering and innovation in film genres, Wu Ershan's new film "Under the Stranger" is a pioneer and adventurer, and his courage to explore is worthy of admiration. Comic-book superhero movies have been popular all over the world in recent years, especially among young people. For example, the "Avengers" series has achieved success in major movie markets around the world. But in Chinese movies, this genre is still blank. The original comic book "Under the Stranger" builds a fantasy world in which there are all kinds of strange people. They have various powers, which is exactly the same as superheroes. Therefore, Wu Ershan said that he wanted to create a Chinese From the perspective of genre innovation and advancement of the film industry, such an initiative deserves encouragement.
Wu Ershan proposed the concepts of "urban martial arts" and "contemporary mythology". The setting of the alien worldview and the shaping of aliens from all walks of life in the film are the biggest highlights of this work. Although writers such as Nine Knives have written martial arts works with contemporary themes, in film and television works, martial arts films seem to belong only to ancient Chinese society and have no connection with the flashing neon lights, busy traffic, and reinforced concrete cities. Although the aliens in "Under the Stranger" live in modern cities, they still have their own worlds and sects. They hide their identities and practice martial arts diligently in secret, and conflicts and competitions will arise between various sects. The "martial arts conference" that Chinese audiences are familiar with also exists in the alien world. Various martial arts show off their special skills at the conference and compete for superiority.
It can be said that the theme core and spiritual temperament of the film are in the same line as Chinese martial arts films, but the background of the era has changed from ancient times to modern times, and the resulting character creation and picture presentation have made breakthroughs. For example, "Everywhere Express" in the film appears to be a courier company. In fact, the company's executives can use object control techniques to implement operations, and regard themselves as well-known and upright people, assuming the responsibility of managing strangers. Another example is Liu Yanyan, a stranger from western Hunan. She was instilled in her family since she was a child the idea of inheriting traditional supernatural powers. She has been practicing puppetry skills hard, but after completing the training, she was restricted from using them, which caused great harm to her young mind. The creation of this character is reminiscent of the family education problems of many children in modern society.
Although "Under the Stranger" has a modern background, the film cleverly incorporates a large number of traditional cultural elements. For example, the reason why aliens are aliens is because they can manipulate the energy "Qi" in their bodies, and "Qi" comes from Taoist culture. There is also the all-sex faction in the film. The aliens in the faction are free and easy and do their own thing, which is quite a bit like "Happy Journey". Of course, the most prominent traditional cultural element of the film is the presentation of traditional Chinese martial arts. From the perspective of a martial arts film, the film specially designed corresponding martial arts movements based on the characters, and presented no less than a dozen Chinese kung fu such as Tai Chi, Ba Gua Zhang, Xing Yi Quan, Snake Fist, Pi Gua Palm, and Jeet Kune Do in one go. It can be called a traditional martial arts competition. Wu Ershan once again used the training camp method to train actors. The "Irregular Training Camp" he launched was very effective, and the actors' efforts were obvious to all. From the perspective of actor training, this approach is worth learning from.
However, "Under the Stranger" currently has a mediocre box office and unsatisfactory reputation. What is the problem? Although the film puts forward a good concept and the setting of the alien worldview is basically established, there are many problems in its execution, resulting in the final overall look and feel being much inferior to the concept.
First of all, although the film is called contemporary martial arts, the historical background and the core of martial arts are not organically integrated, and it is still "two skins". The aliens in the film can be considered as people wandering around the city, but except for their modern attire, there is basically no interaction between them and contemporary society. As a result, the entire world view is still relatively suspended, as if it takes place in a parallel universe. What is the daily life of aliens in the city like? How do they hide in the city? How do they view their place in modern society? If there is a conflict or even disaster in their environment, will they step forward like the Marvel superheroes and use their powers to punish evil and save the world? How do they communicate with ordinary people? There is almost no explanation of these issues in the film, but it is precisely these issues that resonate most with the audience and make the film current.
The problem caused by this is that the characters in the film are also conceptual and relatively thin and flat. This is most prominent in the protagonist Zhang Chulan. As the soul of the whole film, Zhang Chulan neither sees the heroic hero in traditional martial arts, nor dares to love or hate, nor does he have all the modern consciousness of a modern man. Throughout the film, he was almost pushed along by the plot and other characters. He rarely took any proactive actions and could not see the character's growth arc. The most terrible thing is that in order to highlight the animation gene of the film, the actors' performances are generally exaggerated, especially Zhang Chulan's always laughing and joking and trying to be a comedy persona, but not only is it not funny, it makes people feel embarrassed. The consequence of this exaggerated performance is that Zhang Chulan, as the protagonist, not only lacks character charm, but even his core narrative - his life mission, his friendship with Feng Baobao - have been eliminated by various gags, without A hint of something serious or moving.
The female characters in the film are now facing great controversy. It would have been enough to give the character Xia He a sexy character, but Feng Baobao and Feng Shayan all did this. Not only did they not delve into the charm of the female characters, it also resulted in similar characters.
Although the film shows many traditional martial arts, the action design fails to cooperate with the scene creation and lens design. The result is that although there are so many fights, the differences and characteristics of each fight scene cannot be seen. In order to so-called restore the quality of animation, every time it is a juggling-style fight with two parties flying around and "internal forces competing with each other". There are no action moves and no sense of atmosphere. It kind of fails the hard training of the actors.
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