(This article was published in "Beijing Evening News" 2019.11.13 version 36)
Ang Lee's new film "Gemini Man" has accumulated a total of 230 million at the mainland box office as of this writing. But this figure is undoubtedly a huge gap compared with the investment of nearly one billion yuan in the film. Although "can't pay back" can be said to be the daily life of the film industry, this time it was Ang Lee who lost his footing - this name has a considerable position in the hearts of movie fans all over the world. Perhaps the failure of "Gemini Man" this time both in word of mouth and at the box office was indeed influenced by the factors that over-expected and failed, but perhaps the reason for Ang Lee's "failure" this time is not something that can be explained in a few words, or, in fact, Not really a failure at all.
120 frames per second can be understood as five times the image capacity of 24 frames per second in traditional movies. The high frame rate will enhance the smoothness of the image, thereby making the details that are difficult to express in traditional movies to be highlighted. The film's box office waterloo in North America was largely due to the inability of the theaters to provide sufficient hardware support. There are very few theaters that can show the film with the optimal configuration of 120 frames, and even if there are a sufficient number of theaters in China equipped with 120 frames, 4k, 3D projection equipment, the high ticket price still makes the audience hesitate, which makes the audience hesitate. The "digital imaging revolution" that Ang Lee wanted to carry out has not really entered the eyes and minds of more audiences.
In fact, since the day of its birth, the film has inherent technological revolution, but this is often overlooked by the audience. The audience is always more concerned about "what story is told" in the film, and the image, sound, special effects, and special effects, which reflect the production level of the film industry, require the conscious attention of the audience to feel its beauty. It is true that Ang Lee is famous at home and abroad for depicting the collision of Eastern and Western cultures and the complex and tangled emotions in his scripts, but as a director, his fine control and pursuit of film scenes and even the techniques used are often overlooked. Whether it's the long shot of the long-shot in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" in the early days, or the completely realistic 3D tiger in "The Fantastic Drifting of Pi", or the first time in "Billy Lynn's Midfield Battle" Trying to capture the blood under the skin of the young soldiers with 120 frames of super close-up, these attempts all show Ang Lee's courage to be the first. In "Gemini Man", Ang Lee went a step further to "create people" with motion capture technology, creating a clone killer who was more than 20 years younger than the hero of the film, Will Smith - he looked exactly like a real person. In the action scenes, all the details are captured by the camera, from the splashing water droplets to the broken glass, coupled with the rich scene scheduling, the look and feel is as strong as being in the shooting scene. Ang Lee, who used to be obsessed with depicting the complex hearts of characters, is now obsessed with shooting 120-frame films. Perhaps, like Dreyer, the director of "The Passion of Joan of Arc", he discovered a unique beauty from new technologies, but he wanted to share these. To the audience, there are many barriers to beauty.
"Gemini Man" is too simple on the plot level, but the characters don't quite fit the settings common in genre films. Is this a sci-fi movie? Action movie? Or should it be attributed to the author's film under the pedigree of Ang Lee's work? It seems to have both, and it is difficult to meet the expectations of any kind of fans of the three.
In fact, the story of "Gemini Man" has been formed as early as 1997. The avant-garde clone theme looks a bit outdated today, and the turning point of the plot can only be said to be quite satisfactory. The former government special agent started a private military Stories of organizing and privately mass-producing clone troopers are common in science fiction. What deserves more attention is the relationship between Henry, played by Will Smith, and his clone, Xiao Ke, who are like fathers and sons.
The most important turning point of the whole film is that the clone killer Xiao Ke questioned the actions of his adoptive father Verris, and his humanity awakened to stand on Henry's side. Xiaoke's tearful questioning of his adoptive father's scenes shows us how much high-frame-rate digital images can reveal the complex emotions of characters. Henry and Xiao Ke's ambiguous admiration for the girl in the company at the same time makes the relationship between the two superimposed a layer of competition on the basis of the established "father and son" in the plot structure, which seems to be closer to people's impression of Li The kind of complex mood that is unique to Ann's films. Of course, to a certain extent, the simplicity of the plot is more suitable as a testing ground for new technologies-because it can save the trouble of explaining the plot, and then save more energy to achieve stylized processing in the direction of the director. But whether the audience buys it is another matter. It can be seen that the viewing experience brought by high frame rate is a double-edged sword. "Gemini Man" is a movie that needs a "top matching" theater to fully exert its charm, but it creates an overly real "spectacle" It is not enough to attract audiences with an unseen sci-fi world view like "Avatar", so it is expected that the box office of this film is not satisfactory. In other words, appreciating the unique beauty of this film requires the audience to escape the shackles of traditional appreciation routines.
Of course, what we cannot ignore is that Ang Lee is promoting the upgrading of theater facilities around the world with his works, and the upgrade of theater hardware is subtly changing the audience's viewing habits. Perhaps, Ang Lee's 120-frame dream belongs to the future, and perhaps on that day, the audience will discover that Ang Lee's name and attempts have long been irreplaceable in the history of film.
View more about Gemini Man reviews
