I believe that most movie fans like Robert Downey Jr. since he became Iron Man, but this step may be the most successful and also the most unsuccessful decision in his career: on the one hand, he incarnates into a well-known person The rich man of love, Iron Man, has also made him a real rich tycoon who is loved by everyone; on the other hand, since his appearance in "Iron Man" in 2008, his non-Marvel films are very few. number, which also limits his acting style.
Looking back, the last person defined by the same character was a well-known makeup vlogger, Johnny Depp. Coincidentally, Captain Jack and the Mad Hatter are also Disney masterpieces.
So, will Robert Downey Jr. become the next Johnny Depp? The answer is basically no. But what is certain is the existence of "withdrawal reactions".
And this "Dolittle's Fantastic Adventure" is the standard product of its withdrawal period.
1. Overview of the film: Children's words have been changed into an epic drama
The "Doctor Doolittle" series was born in the same period as "Peter Pan" and "Winnie the Pooh", and is one of the representative works of British and American classic children's literature. And the novelist Hugh Loftin injected this new and incidentally romantic imagination into Victorian popular fiction, including the climax of travelogue-style adventure stories, and illuminated the postwar era with intense curiosity. The world of children's literature has reshaped the beautiful imagination of the world.
But in the post-Harry Potter period, the giants of modern film and television have proven time and time again that children's literature and even youth literature can no longer support their thirst and ambition for money: they have a complete fantasy world view "The Chronicles of Narnia" and "Dark Matters" both fell to the ground, "Christopher Robin" was listless, and "Peter Pan: Dreams" hit the wrong medicine.
One of the key mistakes in these films is getting the audience wrong. Not to mention anything else, for a movie adapted from children's literature, first of all, the audience you have to satisfy should also be children, right? Harry Potter became dark and adult in the hands of Alfonso Cuaron and David Yates, but Harry Potter started with Chris Columbus, who made movies for kids. Moreover, in the subsequent seven sequels, the themes and characters of the series have grown with the audience.
Turning children's words into an epic drama, the resulting products are often nondescript.
Luckily, Dolittle's Adventures is still a simple, character-friendly, family-friendly film; unfortunately, Dolittle's Adventures still has epic failed attempts. , is likely to follow in the footsteps of Predator City.
2. Production analysis: screenwriters who have not worked on large-scale projects
In terms of production, the investment cost of "Dolittle's Fantastic Adventure" is as high as 175 million US dollars. Such a cost is quite rare in family films, and the pressure to return the cost is conceivable.
But this does not mean that the character or concept of "Dr. Dolittle" has no commercial value; although the series has already hit the street in the 20th Century Fox version in 1967, the cost has soared from $6 million that year to nearly three times. 17 million, and the box office has just passed 6 million, but it still won two Oscars; then in the 1990s, two modern versions of "The Strange Doctor Dolittle" starring the popular Eddie Murphy. ", with an average cost of 70 million US dollars per film, and finally exchanged for nearly 500 million box office worldwide.
In 2020, the box office of "Dolittle's Fantastic Adventure" was sluggish, and the cost was so high. A large part of the reason is due to the production team that constitutes a mystery.
Generally speaking, a film of this scale must have two or more senior producers sitting in the seat. And "Dolittle's Fantastic Adventures" has Jeff Kirshenbaum and Joe Ross, the two who have developed the familiar - "Maleficent", "Alice in Wonderland", "The Wizarding World" ", "Snow White and the Huntsman" and a series of movies adapted from fairy tales. Original music by Guillermo del Toro's cinematographer Guillermo Navarro ("Pan's Labyrinth"), and Danny Elfman ("Iron Fist") from the fairy tale series, Seems like a pretty solid choice.
But apart from these, in the most important role of writer and director, there is not a single person with experience in the production of such high-budget films: first, two screenwriters, from the TV comedy circle ("How I Met Your Mother" "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend"); followed by director Stephen Gaghan, who twice broke into and won an Oscar as a screenwriter ("Drug Web"), but on the director's resume, especially this kind of special effects comedy It was a similar film, but it was as thin as a blank sheet of paper; the other one was that the test screening effect was not good, and another director Jonathan Liebesman who helped make the reshoots had the same thin resume, and successively played the "Battle of Los Angeles". , "Wrath of the Gods" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Age of Mutants", he has not directed a feature film for 6 years.
Looking at it in this way, it is already expected that the behind-the-scenes production lacks control, compared with the less than ideal box office.
Let's imagine, what is the concept of the cost of 175 million US dollars? It is already on par with Sony's two new "Spider-Man" and Jon Favreau's "Fantasy Forest", and must get more than $400 million at the global box office to break even. And similar "talking animals" genre films, looking back on the last family-style comedy film that could achieve this task, it was 10 years ago - "Mouse Lai Bao 2".
3. Overall performance: the story is loose and the characters lack arc
And this kind of loose script lacking a clear purpose and motivation seems to be common in Hollywood blockbusters in the past year: "Alita: Battle Angel", "Thunder Shazam", "Joker" and so on, and many more. The stories of these films lack a certain "necessity" in the development, so they will inevitably have the characteristics of a running account.
What makes up for this defect is usually the intrinsic attributes of the characters-that is, the "want to do" of the protagonists becomes the "need to do" in the story, so that while the plot is connected, it is also realized Evolution in role.
And this "Dolittle's Fantastic Adventure", although the script is faithful to the original travelogue form, there are still some looseness, and some of the subplots are also shelved in the second and third acts. In terms of narrative promotion, it still stays at the forced external cause of the "Queen's Secret Order", giving up the internal setting of the protagonist's loss of his lover.
Throughout the adventure, the protagonist Dolittle should have achieved various transformations from passive to active, from pessimism to optimism. But after this journey officially began, Robert Downey Jr. quickly returned to a standardized personality that was both unrestrained and rich in life experience, and continued until the end of the story.
Of course, the lack of arc and energy does not mean that Robert Downey Jr. made a mistake in his performance - on the contrary, it is even good, in fact, the movie exists in the very beginning of the positioning and even the casting. Certain mistakes. Such an image from melancholy temperament to transformation is actually more suitable for Ewan McGregor or Johnny Depp; at the same time, the cartoon villain image also greatly limits Michael Sheen and Antonio Bender Lass's shaping and play space.
So, although the film has a very gorgeous cast and voice cast, including very solid CG effects. But unfortunately, "Dolittle's Fantasy Adventure" won't be the kind of fantasy masterpiece or blockbuster movie it wants to be.
4. Summary: Hollywood suffers from big IP dependence
Compared with Eddie Murphy's version of modern "farce", "Dolittle's Fantastic Adventures" seems to forget the most important thing: Who is Dolittle? What are the characteristics of this character? And what impact will these characteristics have? This new version of Dolittle seems to have forgotten the heart of the story, not these "talking animals," but "he can talk to animals."
The difference between these seemingly simple and similar sentences determines how the laughs of the movie should be organized, and how to make the audience feel strange and fresh to the story, so as to satisfy the audience's satisfaction. Anticipate points and break the routine of narrative routines. Therefore, when the movie has no way to distinguish itself from other similar "talking animals" movies, it has lost its real features and selling points; just relying on the single concept of "talking animals", in today's 2020 It is very outdated, and it cannot support such an epic masterpiece.
In recent years, re-digging similar old IPs seems to have become a common method for Hollywood giants. But the lack of pioneering and innovative "Dolittle's Fantastic Adventures" did not make great breakthroughs and contributions at any level; also, there is a very similar object, that is, Disney also spent a lot of money in 2012 "Alien Battlefield" created.
The movie "Alien Battlefield" was born at the peak of the last "IP war". At that time, half of the six major studios were burning money to make loss-making transactions - such as Disney's "Lone Ranger", Universal's Super Battleship, Warner's Jack the Giant Slayer. It can be said that if the other half had so much money, they would definitely join such a race.
Ten years later, Hollywood has become half of Disney and MCU, but history will repeat itself, and blind burning of money will also cycle. With Disney's A Wrinkle in Time and Universal's Predatory Cities, it looks like it's about to start again.
Of course, for every big local tyrant, as long as there are so many big-selling works every year, it is not a big deal to burn hundreds of millions of dollars every year: even if "Dolittle's Fantasy Adventure" is released After the Squib, there are still films such as "Magic Wizard 2", "Fast and Furious 9" and "Minions 2" to make up for it, so that the report will not be so ugly.
However, over-reliance on this kind of super production has made Hollywood more and more deformed; Warner will use AI to help decision-making in the future, which may be a promising seed?
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