Text | Linghu Boguang
Recently, South Korea's cultural "plagiarism" of Chinese culture has caused a lot of uproar on the Chinese Internet.
But the mature Korean pop culture industry is the envy of many Chinese netizens.
Most domestic netizens dislike group idols, K-POP, Korean variety shows and Korean dramas, and feel that these popular cultures are too shallow.
Even so, most people will give a high opinion of Korean movies.
Korean films have always been well received by domestic netizens because of their daring to shoot and the maturity of the film and television industry. And every time a South Korean movie with a good reputation is released, there will always be a round of discussions in which domestic netizens criticize domestic movies in turn.
A Korean movie like this has been released recently.
"Victory" starring Cho Sung-hee, Song Joong-ki, Kim Tae-ri, and Chan Sun-kyu.
The director and actors will not be introduced, after all, most people only know one Song Zhongji.
"Victory" is currently the largest commercial blockbuster in South Korea. It was supposed to be released as a cinema blockbuster, but because of the "epidemic", it finally chose to go online.
The film was bought by the famous streaming media giant Netflix and will be broadcast online on February 5, 2021.
Bo Guangjun watched this film for the first time and commented: South Korea's first sci-fi blockbuster shows one of the most mature film industries in Asia, but its shortcomings are also very obvious, and China's first sci-fi blockbuster "The Wandering Earth" has its own advantages and disadvantages. .
Note: This post contains serious spoilers for the movie, those who haven't watched the movie should watch it carefully.
The storyline of Victory (with spoilers).
At the beginning, the movie setting is that the earth enters the end of the world.
In 2092, desertification and forests disappeared, the sun was buried and the soil acidified——
In order to escape from the earth, a company called UTS established "Eden" in the outer sky from the earth.
Like many apocalyptic movie settings, only a few people can enter the Garden of Eden. And this Eden was small, billions of people were left on Earth.
In the opening scene, the actor Jo Jin-ho (played by Song Joong-ki) goes to a department to find his daughter who is missing in the universe.
Through just one scene, we can see that Zhao Taihao is very poor.
Zhao Taihao had no choice but to return to the universe to make money by cleaning up space junk for UTS's Garden of Eden.
Following Tae Ho on the universe, the movie footage gave a few shots of UTS's Garden of Eden.
There are footage of several reporters interviewing Eden creator Sullivan.
The general idea is that life in Eden is beautiful, but billions of people on earth are suffering, this is a humanitarian disaster, etc.
Then another shot was taken. The "space cleaners" of various countries drove the cleaning ships, leaving a large number of abandoned satellites, spacecraft and other space junk that would threaten Eden before the universe was cleaned up.
Seeing that everyone was about to grab an abandoned spaceship, the "Victory" fell from the sky.
The protagonists managed to take away the spaceship and leave in the midst of other people's scolding.
But because the operation was too sassy, it crashed the UTS antenna.
There are a total of four members in "Victory", in addition to the hero Tae Hao, there is also the heroine Captain Zhang (played by Kim Tae Ri), Xiao Pu who is in charge of the thrusters with tattoos all over his body, and a robot Babos (played by Yoo Hae Jin) ).
The waste products have to be sold for money. Originally, the setting of this space junk in the movie was worthless, and in the end, it had to pay for the damaged antenna.
"Victory" people not only did not make money, but increased more debt.
Next, through a game of cards, the four members of the "Victory" except the robot Brabus, the other three human members are poorer than the other.
At the same time, UTS released a news to the whole universe.
Dorothy, a little robot girl with self-destruction, has been kidnapped by a terrorist group called "Black Fox" and is now asking the world for news.
Not surprisingly, the members of the "Victory" found the little robot girl in the spaceship that was towed back.
They were going to report to UTS, but because they were so poor. The actor Tae Hao decided to contact the "Black Fox" organization to exchange money, and he successfully contacted the "Black Fox" organization.
The two parties agreed to meet in a "space disco", when the two parties were trading.
The UTS space escort, who had intercepted the information long ago, was in ambush, but the little girl escaped beforehand.
Then the space escorts opened fire, causing a flurry of confusion, and the deal naturally fell through. The male protagonist and others took the little girl back to the "Victory".
When the robot Babus talked to the little girl Dorothy, she gave her a popular science about the past of the three members of the "Victory".
No spoilers here, anyway, it's the hero Tae Ho who lives in the universe because of his daughter. Because he didn't have the identity of a citizen of Eden, and he didn't have cash, the other party wouldn't send a spaceship to help him find his daughter Shunni.
Anyway, Tae Ho will do anything to make money, and the purpose is to get back his daughter, Sunni, who is floating in the universe.
Next, when they reconnected with the "Black Fox" organization for a second meeting, Shunni was kidnapped and taken away.
The two sides fought each other for a while. Captain Zhang saw that something was wrong, and told Tai Hao and others that these people were organized by "black foxes", and the truth was not what UTS advertised.
Dorothy's real name was Hwarang, and the one who redeemed Hwarang was her father, a scientist at UTS.
Hwarang fell ill as a child, and her father invented a drug to save her. The unexpected result is that Hwarang can control nanorobots and can make plants grow again.
Eden's Sullivan is a big villain, and he has a huge conspiracy to "destroy the earth" to capture Hwarang.
This conspiracy and the final plot will not be spoiled.
South Korea's first sci-fi blockbuster, how does it compare to "The Wandering Earth"
If you want to describe the feeling of watching South Korea's first sci-fi blockbuster.
That is, although it is still far from the American sci-fi blockbuster, it is not inferior to China's first sci-fi blockbuster "The Wandering Earth" in many aspects, and the film and television industry is obviously more mature.
1. The special effects of "Victory" and "Wandering Earth" have their own advantages and disadvantages
The special effects level of "Victory" is indeed very powerful, but it may not reach the level of hanging "The Wandering Earth".
"The Wandering Earth" is a disaster sci-fi film. There are two clues, cosmic rays and earth lines. The special effects of the two clues are obviously different.
"The Wandering Earth" actor Liu Peiqiang (played by Wu Jing) space line is a relatively realistic style.
The special effects scenes of space lying, dormancy, and two or three acting outside the spacecraft.
Because the style is more realistic, the delicacy and realism of the special effects are slightly stronger than "Victory".
There is also a "dungeon" scene on the ground line. The movie is basically a real scene, so the sense of realism and details should be richer.
On the contrary, those real scenes cannot be built, and they need to use "computer special effects" to make large scenes.
For example, at the beginning, the earth was captured by Jupiter's gravity and the sky was torn apart, and countless rescue teams rescued the scene. The rescue team went to Hangzhou to pass through Shanghai and was frozen by Lujiazui cbd.
The last few scenes around the planetary engine, there are a lot of special effects aspects of the big scene.
Although the shock is very shocking, the cg feeling in the special effects is obviously stronger.
"Victory" is a space action adventure film (belonging to a space opera). The whole film focuses on space adventure, with a large number of space department scenes with different functions, and various spaceships and action adventure scenes.
Garden of Eden, Space Cleanup, Space Discos, Spaceships, and more.
Most of the scene designs are very magnificent, and the special effects of the movie are probably in the middle of the two lines of "The Wandering Earth".
A large number of scenes are too grand and magnificent, and it is impossible to set the scene realistically and requires the use of large special effects, which is slightly inferior to "The Wandering Earth" in terms of realism and detail support.
But it has a lot of big scenes and is very balanced.
Except for a few sports shots with insufficient special effects details, most scenes do not have the ground line of "The Wandering Earth", where the sense of cg is more obvious.
Therefore, the special effects of the two films generally have their own advantages and disadvantages.
2. The Korean film and television industry is obviously more mature
However, no matter how the two films are compared, the Korean film and television industry is indeed more mature.
First, there are a lot of high-speed motion special effects shots in "Victory".
For example, when spaceships are fighting each other and shuttle in complex scenes, this special effect processing is inherently difficult.
There are only two high-speed sports fields in the "Wandering Earth" space line, and the scheduling and complexity of the sports shots are obviously not as good as the other side's.
There are also many high-speed motion shots on the ground line, but the cg feeling is relatively heavy.
The entire film of "Victory" is a high-speed motion special effect shot, and the special effect has achieved a very balanced degree (in fact, the ending scene is not very popular).
But the rhythm of the whole movie is very smooth, and the music, art, and photography are all smooth.
You can't see the rhythm of "The Wandering Earth" that is obviously broken and jerky on many levels.
Second, the investment in "Victory" is too low
This film is the largest investment in South Korea, and the promotion is to invest 24 billion won.
But about 143 million yuan, less than 150 million yuan.
This is not enough for many domestic films to invite actors.
And "Wandering Earth" is already a well-known dream.
However, the original investment of China Film was 50 million US dollars (rumor has not been paid), and then the Beijing Culture Group invested tens of millions of dollars.
Anyway, the investment of "Wandering Earth" is about 400 million.
The investment is more than double that of others. In the end, the film and television industry of the film is similar, not to mention the maturity of others.
This is enough to prove that the perfection and maturity of the Korean film and television industry is almost the first in Asia.
There is no need to say much about the Chinese film and television industry. In Japan, in addition to literary films, drama films and animated films, a large number of animated live-action versions are straddling each other. The key is that the special effects are not so good.
What's the downside of Victory?
The shortcomings of this film are also obvious, that is, the core of Korean film expression, in addition to realistic themes, North-South issues and "government darkness" such expressions.
Korean blockbusters will face a problem whenever they want to break through the regional pattern.
That is, the barren history and the loneliness of literature to serious art have led to the comprehensive study and imitation of the United States in the expression of the cultural core of the film.
To put it bluntly: I have too few things, or even basically nothing.
The first is the various settings of the sci-fi background.
This movie is basically a copy of the 2013 American sci-fi film "Elysium". The difference in this setting is so small that there is almost no difference.
It's just that the protagonist of "Elysium" is struggling on the ground, and this movie is the protagonist struggling in space.
The second is the identity setting of the protagonist group, you can see the shadow of many American movies.
The male protagonist is almost the kind of poor opening, and in the past, he was also a human elite. But because the daughter's family relationship declined at the beginning, the type who loves money on the surface but insists on justice in the heart.
The other characters have similar settings and are very common in American blockbusters.
The last is the narrative structure, the beginnings and transitions of the movie, the foreshadowing of key plots and the transformation of character concepts, etc. This routine is even more routine than American commercial blockbusters.
Apart from language and skin, there is hardly any expression of Korean culture.
Let's put it this way, you replaced the protagonists of this movie with Americans, and there is no sense of incongruity with the usual American blockbusters.
Of course, in the end, the little Korean girl who saved the world is half of the "cosmos country" ridicule (in fact, there is no problem with this setting, whichever country makes similar movies will set it like this).
In contrast, some details and loopholes in the film itself are not important.
The Chinese sci-fi movie "The Wandering Earth" also pays tribute to the artificial intelligence moss of "2001 A Space Odyssey".
But the Chinese "collectivism" spirit of saturated rescue, to the 100-generation immigrant of 2,500 years in the style of "foolish man moving mountains", to the Chinese-style local spirit of running with the earth, and so on.
Regardless of the debate over art when "The Wandering Earth" was released, most Chinese audiences would admit that the ideas it expressed were vastly different from Western sci-fi blockbusters.
And "Victory" has none of these cultural things.
end
From the perspective of race and region, we must support South Korea to make more sci-fi films.
Because there are many science fiction films made by people of the yellow race in East Asia, only in this way can the monopoly of Western science fiction types led by the United States be gradually broken.
At the same time, South Korea's mature and complete film and television industry is worthy of learning from Chinese science fiction films and the entire Chinese film and television industry.
But from the perspective of Chinese films alone, while we are learning about the Korean film and television industry, we must eventually surpass Korean films.
As for why.
Needless to say!
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