120 frames (high frame rate) + 4K + super 3D , these three technical terms determine that "Gemini Man" is a movie that can only be watched in theaters.
Even if you watch it on the big screen, in my opinion, if you choose the 60 or 24 fps version instead of 120 fps, your viewing experience will be greatly reduced, it is better not to watch it.
Just use an example to illustrate.
At the beginning of the film, there is a section in which Agent Henry (Will Smith) blocks terrorists on the high-speed train. The same first-person blocking shot, in the 24-frame version, the high-speed rail picture the audience sees is completely blurred, and nothing can be seen.
This is the 60fps version, barely able to see a single figure.
This is a 120-frame version of the moving picture, you can clearly see the appearance of the terrorists on the high-speed rail. No matter how the lens moves, the picture in our field of vision is stable and clear.
Friends who know the history of film know that the first film in human history is the Lumiere brothers' "The Arrival of the Train" , which was first shown in France on December 28, 1895.
The film was filmed when a train pulled into the Chau-Dat station in Paris. The audience at the time were frightened and ran away. Those who had never seen the film thought the train would leave the screen.
In "Gemini Killer", director Ang Lee has a lot of ambitions. At the beginning, he filmed a "high-speed rail exit" tribute to "The Train Into the Station" , which seems to be declaring his determination to change the form of future movies!
Ang Lee seems to be playing with technology, but what he actually wants to subvert is the common century-old film language and industrial system . Sha Dan, curator of the China Film Archive, said: "Film starts with Griffith and ends with Abbas. What Uncle An wants to do is to be Griffith in the 21st century."
It is true that 120 frames + 4k makes the action scenes of the movie clearer, smoother and smoother, but whether this technology will really change the movie in essence, we still have a big question mark .
When "Gemini Man" was released in North America, it suffered the biggest fiasco of Ang Lee's career reputation. Professional film critics on Rotten Tomatoes gave only 28% of the tomato freshness, and the North American box office performance was also quite sluggish.
It was released in China for 4 days, and the box office and reputation were slightly better than those in North America, but it was not ideal.
Some people say that the script has to be blamed, and the story of this clone is too cliché to make people interested.
We agree. A script written in 1997 was still the hot spot of "Dolly the Sheep". Today, when clone-themed movies are not new, and the imaging technology is mature, the script is too old-fashioned.
Although Ang Lee did not participate in the screenwriting, the screenwriting team consisted of three well-known Hollywood screenwriters, but the person who chose the script was Ang Lee , who of course also took some responsibility for the failure of the story.
However, it doesn't really make much sense for everyone to just scold the story, because obviously, the script is not what Ang Lee cares about the most this time. His biggest creative theme this time should be: experimenting with 120 frames to shoot action movies .
For Ang Lee's attempt, the advantages and disadvantages are very obvious .
In the "Gemini Car Chasing" , which is talked about by many people , 120 frames makes it possible to move the camera at super-high speed. No matter how high the speed is, it does not distort the picture seen by the audience, and the fast big scene scheduling is super substituted. The sense of immersion and immersion seems to bring the fun and refreshing feeling of Ang Lee's version of "The Fast and the Furious" to the audience.
The downside of Gemini Man's most acclaimed car chase is that 120fps seems to slow down the action .
For example, in the picture part of the "Gemini" indoor fight, the same 1-second, 24-frame version is blurred, but our eyes receive a "fast" signal.
Now with 120 frames, we can see the picture clearly, but in terms of perception of time, the audience will feel that the action "slows" down . Every punch they hit became soft and weak, and the audience couldn't be "cool".
For an action movie, the lack of "cool" feeling is absolutely fatal .
This is why we are not very optimistic about 120fps technology. We believe that there will be a lot of discussion about film technology brought by Gemini Man, and it will be debated for a long time .
"Gemini Man" is not Ang Lee's first attempt at 120fps. His previous work , "Billy Lynn's Halftime Battle" , used the 120fps specification for the first time. The film also suffered a cold reception in North America that year, and the film eventually lost 40 million US dollars .
"Billy Lynn's Halftime Battle" It is said that Uncle An is still preparing the last part of the "120-frame trilogy", "Battle of Manila" , which tells the biographical story of Muhammad Ali .
But in terms of the situation that "Gemini Man" is almost certain to lose money, it has become unknown whether Hollywood will invest in Uncle An's next film. In the recent interview related to the screening event of "Gemini Man", Uncle An revealed that his biggest pressure in Hollywood now is: "Why didn't everyone shoot 120 frames, I was the only one trying."
This sentence makes people feel the heroic sense of Ang Lee fighting alone on the road of technological exploration . But from another angle, we will find that Ang Lee seems too stubborn or stubborn .
When "Gemini Man" was released in North America, there was no CINITY movie theater in the United States that showed the "120fps + 4K + 3D" top version of the movie, which means that no one in North America could see the best version of the movie.
During the two-day screening in the Mainland, due to the variety of film specifications, many movie theaters had screening accidents. In a temporarily rebuilt CINITY cinema in Kunming, the film was screened 12 times in succession, but it was still unsuccessful, and finally "Captain of China" was replayed. The audience of this game, but each person paid 150 yuan for movie tickets .
The high ticket price of the CINITY cinema is really unfriendly to ordinary audiences.
It can be seen that under the condition that the existing theater screening conditions are not mature, Director Ang Lee insists on promoting 120-frame movies, which is a bit too hasty . If technology does not serve narrative, cinematic expression or aesthetic innovation, but becomes a vassal of technology, it is putting the cart before the horse for the development of film art .
For a long time, Ang Lee has always been the image of a gentle and gentle gentleman in the hearts of movie fans . He speaks slowly, neither in a hurry nor slow, and is very friendly.
From "Pi" to "Billy Lynn" to "Gemini Man", director Ang Lee has repeatedly ignored the negative opinions of the film critics, regardless of the box office performance, and insisted on the so-called "new technology". This kind of stubbornness And the "just" side seems to be far from the superficial image he presents to the public.
At a recent film premiere held in Wuhan, Gao Xiaosong talked to Li An, Uncle An was very tough throughout the whole process, turned into a "King" , and answered Gao's questions very sharply. During the more than 50 minutes of interviews, almost all of them were dominated by Ang Lee, and Gao Xiaosong was often unable to intervene .
Perhaps, you were all deceived by Ang Lee.
At the creative level, he has always been tough, rebellious, anti-mainstream, even a little conceited.
Li An is not gentle, but a needle hidden in the cotton. Inside is a "ruthless man".
In Uncle An's earliest "family trilogy", "Pushing Hands", "Wedding Banquet" and "Diet Men and Women", his rebellion was shown in two dimensions.
From the perspective of the family, full of his resistance to patriarchy , Ang Lee's "father complex" is the most intuitive understanding of his films.
From the perspective of national culture, it is his rebellion against the traditional mainstream culture .
In "Pushing Hands" , the son chooses a new family structure that combines Chinese and Western styles. On the one hand, it is in serious conflict with the old Chinese father's expectation of enjoying a family; on the other hand, he is breaking and reconstructing the traditional Chinese family.
In "The Wedding Banquet" , the son finds his homosexual identity. On the one hand, he is challenging his father's expectation of inheriting the lineage; on the other hand, he is also declaring war on China's 5,000-year traditional concept of marriage.
In "Diet Men and Women" , the daughters all have the desire to leave their native families and live alone. On the one hand, three forces are resisting the old father who is trying to maintain the big family; The brutal truth about the value gap between parents.
Of course, in the "Family Trilogy", there are many positive praises for the Chinese image represented by the father, but in the core expression, Ang Lee's creation is sharp, critical, and offensive .
Even after entering Hollywood, the "father complex" in Ang Lee's creation continues, even increasing. "Ice Storm" directly used the case of a son's death, accusing the father of causing harm to his son, failing to fulfill his responsibilities, and failing to take good care of the child. For the first time, he faced his father with a cold attitude.
In "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" , in a sense, Li Mubai plays the role of Yu Jiaolong's "spiritual father". One tried to tame the other, the other refused to submit, and the two collided violently many times. Yu Jiaolong's resistance with full vitality was the ultimate rebellion against "father".
From the perspective of family relations, the family configuration of several daughters at the same time, "Sense and Sensibility" can basically be regarded as the Hollywood version of "Diet Men and Women".
In addition to the "father complex", Ang Lee's rebellion against mainstream values has not converged. '16 "Billy Lynn's Halftime Battle" can be seen as an offense to the "American Dream".
Billy's Class B fighters won a brief victory in Iraq, and overnight, they all became American heroes and were invited to the "American Spring Festival Gala" - the halftime show of the Super Bowl. During the halftime show's fireworks, lights and dances, Billy's memories of the war in Iraq kept flashing back and forth.
The film presents two Americas. One is the United States of the "American Dream" . Big fireworks, big stadiums, big lights, sports stars, entertainment stars, and big capitalists are the epitome of prosperous America.
The other is the United States on the battlefield in Iraq , where there are countless families torn apart by the war, the despair in the eyes of the children, the memory of fighting with the enemy, and the old squad leader who died heroically. That is Billy and their permanent war wounds. .
On the stage, the Billys are used as a tool to show the glorious side of America and are consumed by the American people. This halftime performance was only a few minutes, but for the Billys, it was extremely long.
The story constructed by Ang Lee is simple on the surface, but rich in anti-mainstream expressions behind it, which is an outright offense to the mainstream American narrative.
Despite the risk of the film being boycotted on a large scale in North America, Ang Lee still uncompromisingly filmed the story and insisted on using 120 frames to present it technically. Anti-bone.
In today's "Gemini Man", Ang Lee still consistently takes "revolting against patriarchy" as his creative theme. However, due to the weakness of the script, the textual discussion of the film is too shallow, and nothing new is played.
We have to question whether Uncle An's creative concept this time is a bit backwards.
Wouldn't this kind of movie be better if there was a good script story, supplemented by higher video technology? Is it a bit too competitive with yourself to choose such a story to reflect the role of technology?
I do not deny that I admire Ang Lee , appreciate his storytelling across the ideological and cultural barriers of the East and the West, appreciate his ease of handling various themes and styles, and appreciate his directing ability to make excellent films in different cultural countries.
But we want to say that good faith is hard to hear . Compared with Ang Lee's previous works that moved us, are these recent "techno-only" films of Ang Lee really of such high quality?
There may be a premise in confronting the world as a hero, that is, there is a problem with the original operating mechanism of the world. And Ang Lee is fighting alone on the technical road, without even a comrade-in-arms or a companion, maybe it really is not the fault of the world .
If technology can really be the primary force in determining a movie, why doesn't one of Hollywood's big directors have a similar idea? Directors who can get a foothold in Hollywood are all smart people.
On the contrary, Uncle An may have always been an atypical Hollywood director who was rebellious, stubborn, and obsessed with confronting the Western mainstream . However, the director can have a personality (it is difficult to be a director without personality), but the creation must not be coerced by these external emotions.
Uncle An, who puts the cart before the horse and creates technology first, is not a hero, but falls into the "ego" who believes in the medium and abandons himself in Hollywood-style creation .
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