"Becoming an Agent" was just released, and I watched it for the first time. I'm still very interested in special agent-type movies, especially the attributes of "agent + comedy + animation", which can achieve more unscientific but cool scenes, so I originally had expectations for "Transformed Agent" fairly high. But after watching it, "Transformed Agent" did not have the expected surprise. Next, let's talk about "Transformed Agent".
(one)
Inspired by the animated short "Pigeon Impossible", "Broken Agent" is an adapted and extended work. Compared with "Pigeon Impossible", "Broken Agent" is better in many ways. "Pigeon Impossible" is a 6-minute short film with no lines. The content is very simple. It is about a pigeon flying into an agent's high-tech suitcase. The pigeon's various button operations lead to escalating weapon accidents and even launch missiles .
The plot of "Broken Agent" is much more detailed. The plot goes like this: A single agent who likes to go it alone makes a mistake on a mission that leaves the villain with impunity and himself is investigated by the Ministry of the Interior. In order to stop the bad guys as soon as possible, the agent found the expelled scientist, hoping to get his support, but accidentally drank the gene potion and turned into a pigeon (please ignore the scientific irrationality behind it). Afterwards, Agent Pigeon and scientists chase down the bad guys and evade capture by the Internal Affairs Bureau. The ending is naturally the victory of the special agent team, needless to say.
In addition to the enrichment of the plot, "Transformed Agent" also added a lot of novel weapon designs. Although some weapons are not scientific, such as lasers that turn the human body into a rubbery soft body, most weapons and weapons are used in the fight scene to bring a good visual effect. With some humorous and funny bridges, the content is indeed much better than "Pigeon Impossible".
As the official said, "Pigeon Impossible" is just a source of inspiration, unlike "Code 8", which has a more direct connection between short films and feature films. You basically don't have to watch "Pigeon Impossible" anymore. It is worth mentioning that the protagonists of "Broken Agent" are Will Smith and his brother Holland, some netizens dubbed it "Men in Black + Spider-Man". However, aside from "Pigeon Impossible", the story of "Broken Agent" itself still has many shortcomings.
(two)
The online evaluation of "Broken Agent" is biased towards good or bad. "Not bad" lies in the visual effects and humor, the characters are very interesting, the editing of the movie storyboards is also quite distinctive, and the fighting scenes are quite good. The "bad" lies in the story. Even if there is not a large amount of film reading, it can be felt that the story of "Transformed Agent" is actually very ordinary. The blandness of the story can be viewed from the following perspectives.
First of all, "Becoming an Agent" is relatively short and the plot line is relatively thin.
As far as the actual length of the film is concerned, "Becoming an Agent" is only about 100 minutes, which is not very long, and its plot density is relatively sparse. You can compare "Klaus: The Secret of Christmas", this movie is only 90 minutes, but in addition to the main line of the protagonist completing the postal indicators, the protagonist and "Santa Claus" Klaus, the protagonist and the local residents, the protagonist and the The villains, Klaus' past experiences, the changes of female teachers, and many other subplots. Although the subplots of "Klaus: The Secret of Christmas" are relatively simple, they are numerous and make for a very fulfilling 90-minute run.
In addition to the main line of "Dove Agents and Scientists Chasing the Bad Guys", "Transformed Agents" basically has no subplots, and most of the film length is put on funny scenes. Not only that, the main storyline of "Transformed Agent" is not very rich, and there are relatively few turns. Compared with the "007" series of movies, "Broken Agent" lacks the twists and turns of chasing the bad guys and the process of blocking layers upon layers. The audience can't feel the difficulty of chasing the villain, and naturally there will be no sense of defeating the villain. Everything is too easy.
At the same time, "Transfiguration" also uses less suspense. For example, "Klaus: The Secret of Christmas" buried in 90 minutes "Why are the people in this town fighting with each other?", "How does the protagonist complete the postal target in this chaotic town?", "Klaus" What's the story?", "What is the connection between postal metrics and Christmas secrets?" and many other suspense. Every time a suspense is revealed, people will exclaim "Oh, that's how it is". In "Transformed Agent", the villain was basically revealed from the beginning, "What happens when the agent turns into a pigeon?", "What cool weapons do scientists have?" There is also a lack of surprising answers in the suspense. This leads to a feeling of "unexpected by the audience" in the plot of "Broken Agent".
Second, the story design of Turn Into Agent went wrong from the Inciting Incident.
An Inciting Event is an event that upsets the balance of a character's life. It stimulates the character's desire to restore balance in his life, and the character begins to act. However, the character starts out by taking the most conservative actions to restore balance in his life, until he realizes it won't work, and then he takes the riskier actions. In this way, the story progresses little by little until the characters take actions that they would never have done in the first place, which is usually the climax of the story.
After understanding this, it is not difficult to see "Transformed Agent" again, and it is not difficult to find that the protagonist of the agent took the most unlikely high-risk action after the occurrence of the Inciting Incident. When the protagonist of the agent brought back an empty box after the mission, but the real weapon fell into the hands of the villain, and the Internal Affairs Bureau wanted to detain the protagonist of the investigation agent, the protagonist simply chose to flee and chase the villain alone.
It stands to reason that the conservative action at this time should be to prove one's innocence, and then use the resources of the secret service department to act. After all, if you are wanted by the Secret Service, resources such as weapons, intelligence, transportation, funds, and comrades-in-arms are extremely limited. Under such circumstances, it is difficult to chase down bad guys. Moreover, once there is another incident where the villain uses the protagonist's face to commit murder during the detention period, the protagonist can easily get rid of the suspicion and pursue the villain with the entire secret service department, which is the most efficient.
The unreasonable actions of the protagonist of the agent after the Inciting Incident are only a small problem. The bigger problem is, how to design the biggest action of the protagonist afterward? If options like "fleeing and chasing the bad guys alone" are the most conservative actions for the protagonist, it's hard to design riskier actions later. Facts have shown that "Transformed Agent" did not design a riskier protagonist action. As a result, there is a lack of a sense of story progression after an Inciting Event. This is the root cause of the "flat story" perceived by the audience.
In addition, there is a very critical question that needs to be explained. Who is the protagonist of "Transformation Agent"? The analysis of the second point above is based on the premise that the agent is the protagonist. The reason for this is because the agent has changed the most, he has the most problems, and he has gone from "solo" to knowing how to work in a team, he has also experienced the second act of becoming a pigeon, and he is also The most dynamic and purposeful character. If "Transformed Agent" is regarded as a dual protagonist, then the "primary" of the "primary and secondary" is still on the side of the agent. Therefore, most of the discussion in this article revolves around the premise that "agents are the main protagonists".
(three)
The above is just a problem with the story design skills of "Broken Agent" itself. If you dig deeper, from the creator's original perspective, there are also problems in the choice of the general direction of the story design of "Broken Agent". In my opinion, Turning Into Agent is a bit too attached to the "Dove Agent" inspiration.
On the one hand, in order to realize the setting of "Pigeon Agent", many characters appear very rigid.
The role of scientist, in particular, was basically created to explain "why agents turn into pigeons." In order to enrich the role of a scientist, the creator bluntly added to him the scientific research and development concept that "he believes that special agent weapons should protect people, not just hurt people", but they did not make this concept tenable. At the same time, scientists' obsession with pigeons seems unreasonable. In addition, the change of the protagonist agent from "single action" to "team cooperation" is actually relatively blunt, and such a change lacks stronger support.
In fact, it's the villain that should be polished the most about Turning Into Agents, who is the story's most bland main character. The villain is alone from start to finish, with a robotic arm and a bunch of drones. This villain setting, everyone has seen it in "Spider-Man: Heroes Expedition". Moreover, why did the villains destroy? What does he want? What is he like? None of these are answered in the movie. Basically, the villain is just designed to give the protagonist an enemy as standard. The setting can only be the icing on the cake. The story design should always start from the characters. "Transformed Agent" is to let the characters cooperate with the setting, which is obviously putting the cart before the horse.
On the other hand, when the creators used the setting of "Pigeon Agent" as a selling point, they did not meet the audience's expectations very well. No matter how mutated the genes are, they can't turn people into pigeons. Instead, it is better to design them into superpowers from the beginning. Even if the audience accepts this setting, "Broken Agent" should also show "what advantages do agents have when they become pigeons".
In the movie, apart from simply adding some funny scenes where the agents turn into pigeons, there is basically no advantage for pigeons to be agents. Scientists mentioned that the advantages of pigeons as agents, including "unobtrusiveness", "360° field of view", "fast flight speed", etc., were basically not shown in the pursuit of bad guys. In other words, the agent turned into a pigeon has no use for the audience except for being funny. In addition, since pigeons are animals, even if the audience knows that pigeons are secret agents, they will still be regarded as two images subconsciously, which has a negative impact on the empathy of the protagonist.
If you want to say that the biggest problem in the creation of "Broken Agent" is that it did not dig deeper into more possible ideas. Such as "Klaus: The Secret of Christmas", the background of the story is still very substantial, and the world view is very unique. And "Broken Agent" doesn't have its own world view. If you take away the plot, cool weapons and props, and funny scenes, you will find that this movie has no story background at all. Especially the villain, who has no background. As a result, the story of Turning into an Agent feels like a castle in the sky. If the creative team imagines more deeply, it may bring a more exciting story. But for now, "Broken Agent" is still not good enough.
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