At the beginning of this year, Netflix has been in constant action. First, the costume zombie film "Li Zhe Joseon" has a good reputation, and then it has obtained the film and television copyright of "One Hundred Years of Solitude". When everyone is still discussing the filming of this masterpiece, it will be Netflix's epitaph. When it was still a pass, Netflix quietly threw out the animated short series "Love, Death and Robots" in mid-March.
The series was released on March 15th, and I watched it on the 17th. At that time, the word-of-mouth effect had not yet formed. What attracted me to click to play was a familiar name-David Fincher.
David Fincher is my favorite genre director - not a subjective conclusion based on one movie, but a testament from multiple viewing experiences - several times I looked up behind-the-scenes information on my favorite movies, The director column reads: David Fincher. Among his works, the top three on my personal list are "The Seven Deadly Sins", "Fight Club", and "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo".
The first two films led me to my crime and thriller movies, and also profoundly influenced my follow-up movie viewing habits, but the relatively mediocre Girl with the Dragon Tattoo made me understand Finch - the only one A movie that I guessed the director halfway through watching it. It had been two years since I first met Fincher's work. To my surprise, subtly, the "Finch style" had already existed in my brain.
I was able to guess it at the time, entirely because Finch's label was too clear. He is an excellent "story narrator" who has precise rhythm control of the plot, and is especially famous for his sharp editing techniques and unexpected plot reversals. In addition, Finch is also handy with the application of adult curiosity elements - if a film is full of "sex and violence" sensory stimulation, and has a first-class plot narrative, it is mostly Finch's handwriting.
Although Finch is sitting in the position of producer this time, the "Finch style" is thoroughly implemented in "Love Dead", full of culture. Because each short film is no more than 15 minutes long, the series is more like a concept series, retaining only the core and exciting parts of the story, which has the feeling of a movie IP seed bank.
The CG characters that are comparable to real people are the most "hard" technical demonstrations in this series, and the animated characters can even display the skin texture caused by micro-expressions naturally (how to present the technology and guide this article: How to make the CG scenes more realistic? " Full analysis of the production process of "Love Dead" ). But maybe the CG visuals are too close to live-action movies. In terms of freshness, I prefer several hand-drawn animated short films in the short film collection.
(Warning, the following content contains spoilers.)
Two of the hand-painted short films are set in Hong Kong, "The Witness" and "Good Hunting", and both feature female protagonists. At the beginning, I didn't make too much connection between the two short films (after all, the contents are independent of each other), but I read the reports of "People" separately: " How did the bizarre murders in Hong Kong spread? And the film review of "Three Husbands": The most important local Hong Kong film this year is a tertiary film, don't underestimate it . Suddenly, "The Witness" and "Good Hunting" correspond to the extreme two sides of Hong Kong shown in the above two articles: repression and desire.
The Witness
This episode is the most amazing thing I (and many people) have ever done in Love Dead. The story tells a horror cycle about "It's your turn", where a girl who witnessed a murder is chased by the murderer because she shares the same face as the victim.
The whole chase takes place between the old streets and cramped buildings in Hong Kong. The background of Hong Kong is so realistic: the sky shrouded in haze, the dense concrete forest, the windows like ant nests - that is the life of more than 1 million poor people in Hong Kong. The living space is full of suffocation and despair. And the girl is an underground strip club performer - a veritable low-level sex worker.
All of this information echoes the murder case at the beginning. In fact, there have been several tragic murders of female sex workers in Hong Kong. However, the animation team added more fantastic color elements to the depressing Hong Kong. In addition to the heroine's cyberpunk makeup, there are also huge colorful neons appearing on the background of the dilapidated buildings, magnificent and flashing.
At first, I always thought that neon was an AR special effect added by the animation team to the real street. Later, when I looked at the scene supervisor of the team, I said with confidence - do we need photos? All of them are hand drawn! In the film, the onomatopoeia annotations in the comics are retained, and during the running process, the picture will alternate between blurred and clear with the breathing rhythm of the characters - greatly increasing the visual impact and sense of substitution.
The only controversial part of the whole play is that the heroine runs away almost naked, but I understand this as a show of skill. After all, it is more difficult to paint and run nudes - not to mention that it has been reported that "The Witness" is this episode. The director's revenge for "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse".
Good Hunting
The first half of the short film is a traditional Chinese-style story of Liaozhai: the male and female protagonists are descendants of a monster hunter and a fox spirit, and they met because of a monster hunt. The fox was originally the biggest desire carrier in the old order society, charming and possessing magic, but when the monster hunter and the fox grew up, the world has been invaded by industrial civilization.
The magic was replaced by industrial technology, and the demon hunter came to Hong Kong to become a mechanical engineer; the fox spirit also came to Hong Kong, but was deeply imprisoned in a humanoid body, and could only make a living by selling her looks.
The Hong Kong in the story has been transformed into a steampunk-style city, prosperous and easy to indulge. It is the city of desires of the invaders, and the vixen who are good at charm in the old civilization, because they can no longer bear new desires, are also rejected. Cruelly mechanically modified.
The female protagonist found the male protagonist, and she had to use her new strength to resist, so the male protagonist created a new body for her - a mechanical nine-tailed fox. The heroine is like a superhero in Marvel. After suffering, she has new abilities, disappears on the moonlit night, hunts villains, and helps other women from sexual assault.
Although it is more sci-fi, this story is still the core we are familiar with: the invasion of new civilization, the fall of old civilization, and the improvement and resistance of old civilization.
Personally, I think the choice of Hong Kong as a background has another meaning: its appearance is new and modern, but inside it retains many old traditional concepts - just like a vixen transformed by machinery. It's just that the transformation and transformation of the city of Hong Kong is more complicated than that experienced by the fox in the story, and it continues.
In addition to the above two short films with oriental characteristics, there are also hand-painted short films with humanistic and philosophical works wrapped in science fiction. For example, "Fish Night", which has the meaning of Zhuang Zhou Mengdie, is a classic American comic style, and the only romantic expression in the whole series.
But even more overwhelmingly acclaimed by the audience is another modern-style short film, also known as the show's masterpiece, "Zima Blue."
Zima Blue
This episode discusses the philosophical theme of "the relationship between the world and my existence" - this is actually a question that the sages thought about more than 2,000 years ago, and the reason why this episode is regarded as a masterpiece in "Love Dead" , because the thinker of this core problem is not a human being, but an advanced intelligence integrator - Zima.
Zima is like Gauguin in the sci-fi world, and its artistic creation is constantly approaching the ultimate three questions: Who are we? Where are we from? Where are we going?
When our ideological system is complex enough, when our knowledge is rich enough, thinking about these three questions is like falling into the infinity of the universe. The wonderful thing about this episode is that it reverses this complex philosophy—deconstructs "I" into a simple individual, and makes the relationship between the world and "I" simple and intelligible.
In the play, an interesting comparison is made between the two latitudes of thinking in which the "Ultimate Three Questions" tend to be complex and simple. The continuously enlarged blue color block in Zima's work, even occupying the cosmic space - no one knows what this represents, but its shocking effect dominates people's curiosity and awe.
In the eyes of admirers, Zima is a master who does not hesitate to endure pain to transform his body and travel to all parts of the universe to explore the "true meaning". Zima Blue contains the truth of all things in the universe.
For Zima, artistic creation is to continuously reshape self-cognition. The huge color block is just his expression of the world he first recognized (similar to the summoning sense of human primitive consciousness), which belongs only to Zima. the truth.
Before the release of Zima's last work, reporters were invited to interview, and the reporter saw a swimming pool under construction.
What is the connection between the swimming pool and the work?
Facing the reporter's question, Zima answered the first two questions of the final three questions. I, an advanced intelligent robot that has been transformed through several iterations; I, the original source is a swimming pool cleaning robot.
In the final release, Zima jumped into the pool, deconstructed herself, and turned back into the original pool cleaning robot. Zima Blue is his first pool tile, his first world. "Getting simple pleasure from completing tasks efficiently" is the essence of his artistic exploration as Zima. So far, all three final questions have been answered.
The above is my superficial understanding of the three episodes of "Love Dead". Although each film is very limited in length, the series does not flow into a slideshow-style plot for the visual service - this is due to the fact that many series are supported by original literature.
Good story ideas + excellent visual production + David Fincher's golden signboard is the reason why "Love Dead" can be both word-of-mouth and popularity. Netflix's experimental creation is undoubtedly very successful. This attempt also began to blur the difference between animation and drama series. In the past, the audiences of the two did not overlap very much, but this test of water has obviously raised the expectations of domestic American drama fans for Netflix (I It is also only to know that Netflix has fully entered the animation industry).
During the period of dragging the draft, Netflix threw out a new drama "Midnight Peiping", which is scheduled to explode. In this regard, I can only say from the bottom of my heart: Netflix, please keep doing things! !
(If you think it's not bad, welcome to pay attention to my public number: FancyViola)
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