At the beginning of July, the cute and cheap Minions once again swept the whole world, and their momentum had already surpassed the high temperature and heat wave in July. In today's crazy growth of the world's film industry, the shelf life of an animated film is often exhausted within 1 or 2 months. However, the continuous output of the "Despicable Me" series is changing in style and marketing creativity. has become a new paradigm.
Throughout the "Despicable Me" film series, the first and second films are novel in terms of scene design and story creativity, especially the design of various new weapons in the film is unique, advanced in function, and full of futuristic sense. In "Daddy 3", although this unique design concept (multi-purpose vehicle, stealing suit, etc.) is still maintained, more retro elements are introduced in the scene setting.
As soon as the opening scene, the audience can see the appearance of the villain Brad. With Michael Jackson's "Bad", the characters and characteristics of the villains in the whole film have been unobstructed. In the subsequent plots, the story still revolves around the Gru family. Minions ran away from home because of dissatisfaction with Gru's work, and finally returned to Gru's side and defeated Brad together. Most of the music in the film is still composed by "Filipino" Pharrell Williams, and other songs are interspersed with classic pop songs of the 1980s and 1990s. The music hummed and swayed.
Looking at Hollywood, the "retro style" in recent years has become a new generation of film trends. The "Golden Songs" of "Star Lord" in "Guardians of the Galaxy" has long been the most anticipated part in the hearts of movie fans, "Doctor Strange" Classic old songs in films such as "Ant-Man" have also been added to Marvel's super-long "classic playlist". Under such a strong retro trend, the energetic songs and dances of "Despicable Me 3" are also timely and appealing to the audience.
In fact, as early as 2015's spin-off film "Minions with Big Eyes", retro elements were used in many scenes throughout the film, involving music, art, current affairs, subculture and other aspects. Without the constraints of family stories, the Minions single-player movies have more room for expression. Anti-Vietnam War parades, floats, Abbey Road, Andy Warhol, the endless stream of parodies and tributes make watching the movie more like a big game of Easter eggs, which is beyond the reach of teenage audiences The "invisible switch" shows the ambition of filmmakers - after all, capturing the adult audience is the fundamental way to sustainable development.
Looking back at "Despicable Me 3", in addition to the music, the scene design of the movie is not difficult to find seemingly unintentional "coincidences". A woman in a black dress on the street held down the hem of her skirt, which highly restored Marilyn Monroe's classic moves in "The Seven Year Itch"; the runaway minions broke into the singing talent show scene, which is easy for people to make Think of "The Voice of Joy", which is also produced by Universal. As for Brad's giant steel robot, it reflects the mecha culture that has become popular in the film industry. This retro design is more like a "cultural hodgepodge" made to attract adult audiences, and it inevitably leads to the plot. On the weakening, but from another point of view, the reproduction of classic cultural elements allows us to see the new development direction of animated films. Perhaps in a certain period of time in the future, the continuous performance and interpretation of the retro elements of movies will become a new trend in Hollywood movies.
In the past 2016, Universal Pictures has successively launched two animated films, "The Secret Life of Pets" and "The Voice of Joy". On the surface, the former focuses on the creation of cartoon images, while the latter focuses on the idea of the story and the characters of the characters. It is also more adult-like, but compared to the "Despicable Me" series and its derivative film "Minions with Big Eyes", I am afraid that it will inevitably show the limitation of a single audience. Although the "Despicable Me" series has not been able to avoid the shortcomings of conventional plots and flat characters, at least in the face of the constant selling of Minions and the various Easter eggs, both adults and children will obediently buy it, and as far as Universal Pictures is currently From the perspective of the animation market, this is also their best choice at this stage.
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