Why can’t domestic movies ＂become＂ Chen Sicheng？

Special feature of 1905 film network The movie "Save the Suspect" became a dark horse in November with a box office of nearly 300 million. Then, this week’s film "priceless treasure" is expected to create the second miracle this month.

The two films have many similar shadows — — A remake of an overseas film, the former is a Korean film "Seven Days" and the latter is another Han Ying film "Guarantee".

More than that, "remake of overseas movies" seems to have become the key word in the recent film market.Japanese word-of-mouth masterpieceLove like a bouquetAfter the official announcement that the China version will be remake, various versions of outline creation have sprung up on the online platform, and netizens have created interesting stories for the China version according to the local settings of different cities such as "Beishangguang".

The movie "Second-hand Masterpiece" that is still being shown is a remake of the American movie "The Greatest Father in the World", and the recently officially announced movies "Extreme Escape" and "What’s in the Zoo? "Brilliant She" is waiting to be shown.

Remaking movies has become a trend, and these films have different word-of-mouth and market performance. What can remake this business bring? Why do film companies constantly broaden their remake film layout?

"The dilemma of remake"

At the Gulangyu Forum, the opening forum of China Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival, when talking about the exchange of learning from overseas films, director Guan Hu specifically said that domestic film creation should learn from European films now. What is the creative motivation? "We have too many remakes and remakes now, and China films should pay attention to originality."

Undoubtedly, the remake of overseas movies has already ushered in a small climax.

From loyal dog and eight husbands at the beginning of the year, please don’t believe her, to the summer movie "The Lost Woman" and "The Super Family", to the second-hand masterpiece "It doesn’t seem so exciting" and "priceless" and "Crossing the Sea", the number of remakes is amazing.

What needs to be emphasized here is that the remake of this article is aimed at the original film or the adaptation of the original script. Not including "I love you! "Cloister Pavilion" is an adaptation of original novels/comics.

We have simply combed the market performance of several major remakes this year, and it is not difficult to find that the film "Disappeared She" has a great performance, which has also set a box office record for the remake in the China market. This achievement is also completely different from the production and marketing behind it.

Chen Sicheng, the producer, talked about the remake in an interview and said that the impulse to create The Disappeared She was to talk about the violence in intimate relationship. However, when the movie was turned on, I found that the core idea of the movie was "stumbling", so I went to make up the copyright for the possible problems in the follow-up. After the film was released, the story was just linked to the real hot events, and the marketing of sinking channels finally realized the box office income.

Not only the adjustment of creation, but also we can find that most of the above-mentioned films are works after the Millennium, even the story of loyal dogs and eight public officials in 1987 is still in the radiation category of public viewing. With the appearance of this kind of film, the audience naturally takes a microscopic trial.

This goes back to the core issue — — Localization.

"Loyal Dog Eight Men" is a remake that has been released so far this year, with the highest reputation, reaching 7.6 points, but it is far from the original 9.2 points. Back to the issue of localization, the China version has made excellent adjustments according to local conditions, and made use of the geographical advantages of Chongqing Mountain City and the historical events of the Three Gorges immigrants to make the film’s key "waiting" more textured. More importantly, although the title of the film continues the name of the original, in the film, the name of the puppy has become "Ba Tong", which makes the audience in China more friendly.

It’s a pity that Zhu Yu is ahead. Although the IP value has been spread in marketing, the film adaptation is more likely to be criticized by the audience.

In localization, some films focus on the characters’ emotions and set the events in the aerial cities in Southeast Asia, such as Disappearing She and Saving the Suspect. The former appropriately grasps the context of the times and tells the story from a more modern perspective. In contrast, although the expression of the latter is more in line with the China market in terms of emotional concentration, the loopholes in the original version are not handled properly in the logical handling of the whole case, which makes it difficult for the film to make a breakthrough.

Of course, not all works are "sinicized". Especially the remake of Sunny Sisters Amoy by Han Ying of the same name, the original background implies the local social sentiment under the financial crisis. However, after adaptation, it only copied the story and even shot a split lens, which made the film’s depth weakened after the story became a single youth theme.

On the contrary, the film "Priceless Treasure" adapted from "Guarantee" set the background of the times in the 1990s. After some people in the Northeast experienced the tide of unemployment, their lives changed in the torrent of the times, and the feelings of this group of people in the story were expressed in the most local way. This adaptation successfully removes the traces of the original, which is also half the battle.

"The limitation of remake"

During the Tokyo International Film Festival, Zhang Yimou lamented, "The ideal state of my work is that while shooting a movie, there is another prepared script waiting for me. If the script is always enough, I can keep the rhythm of one movie a year. " It’s just that in his opinion, there are too few good scripts now.

Even the great director Zhang Yimou suffers from the script, not to mention other creators.Good scripts are hard to find, which seems to be the self-comfort of some film companies in their pursuit of "remake". Compared with the time-consuming and laborious polishing of the original script, perhaps polishing and adjusting the film can avoid many risks. just asGoodbye mr. loser.Just because I was questioned by film critics to copy 1986′ sPeggy Sue is getting marriedEven in the end, the filmmakers and film critics "went to court."

Of course, it needs to be emphasized that in the past, there were many scripts in the market, such as Finding You, Returning to the Age of 20 and Lobster Interpol.

Nowadays, in the market, the speed of remake has become faster and faster, which has quite the benefit of "one copy and more shots" in the past. The film "Priceless Treasure" started in 2021, but the Korean version of "Guarantee" was released in 2020.

Coincidentally, the China version of "Extreme Escape", which was just officially released recently, was originally released in 2019. At that time, with the help of the power of the Internet, it had a high spread in China, and the number of viewers on the single douban platform was as high as 220,000, nearly 10 times that of the film "Guarantee".

Such cases are not isolated cases, and even many original films have been shown in China.

The original movie "Basketball Story" of "It doesn’t seem so hot" was released in China market in 2019. If the box office and attention of this movie were weak at that time, then the original movie "Invisible Guest" of "Crossing the Sea" can definitely be called a movie with certain popularity.

"Invisible Guest" was released in Spain in 2017, and then spread in the China market with the help of the power of the Internet, and was interpreted by many video bloggers in many dimensions. It can even be said that the interpretation of this film was the originator of "3 minutes to watch a movie". At the end of the same year, it was released in the mainland market of China, and achieved 172 million. Not only that, Italy made a "zero adaptation" in 2018, and the Chinese translation of "Death tells no tales" was released in the mainland in 2020, with a box office of less than 30 million.

Nowadays, although Greg Han Hsu, Kara Wai and other topical actors have joined the Chinese version of "Crossing the Sea", the remake of this original film, which has a high spread, has a very high test for writers.

As mentioned repeatedly above, the number of viewers of some movies on domestic online platforms has led to the fact that even old movies will still be contradicted after the remake because they are classic enough. In addition to "loyal dogs and eight males" and "five teenagers who save water", they also have a good reputation, but the box office feedback is still not as good as expected.

The same is the filmmaker who often remakes overseas movies. Bao Beier not only directed Sunny Sisters Amoy, but also deeply participated in the remake of Han Ying’s Secret Zoo, What’s in the Zoo? ",as well as the remake of" When Men Fall in Love "and" Northeast Love Brother ",and the results are not satisfactory.

On the contrary, director Chen Sicheng found his own rules in the remake market. Sheep Without A Shepherd made a remake of the movie "Mistaken Killing to Hide the Truth", and "Mistaken Killing 2" was remake from "It’s Urgent" and "She Disappeared". Although the original works of the first two films are all after the Millennium, the films are relatively unpopular, which also keeps the story suspense.

At the same time, during the remake, the Chen Sicheng team always worked hard on the script, which really made it possible to break the original and tell a brand-new story in a new context. It is inevitable that some netizens will ridicule under many remakes of movies, "questioning Sicheng, understanding Sicheng and becoming Sicheng."

Jokes belong to jokes, and only when the creators truly grasp the significance and value of the remake can they have a chance to gain market recognition. Of course, a blind remake will not be a long-term solution, and Chen Sicheng’s subsequent "Three Battalions" and "Decryption" will be a good proof.

In any case, the market is always eager for original scripts.

Observing the Golden Rooster Awards in China Film Festival in recent years, the Best Screenplay Awards have focused on original scripts since the nomination.

Of the five works nominated this year, four are original scripts and one is an adaptation of a novel, which was finally won by Cosmic Exploration Editorial Department (Kong Dashan and Wang Yitong). Looking back nearly five years, the Golden Rooster Award and the Best Screenplay Award were all awarded to original scripts (Love Myth, 1921, Leap and Forever).

Maybe one day, the wave of remake will come down. But in fact, we are not rejecting the remake, but we hope to have a good remake and more excellent China stories.