I haven't watched many disaster films, but the one that impressed me the most was "The Day After Tomorrow". When I bought a disc in a video store and found that the name on the cover of the DVD was "After Tomorrow", I was immediately struck by lightning. I heard that the box office was pretty good by word-of-mouth before watching this "Water Roaring and Fog City". First of all, the rhythm of "Water Roaring and Fog City" is very bad. It doesn't have the smell of a disaster movie. Even Tsui Hark's "Shushan Biography" can't keep up with the rhythm. Secondly, as a disaster movie, it brings very little thinking to the audience. Anyway, after watching it, I don’t have any awareness or urge to protect the environment from me. It is not so much a disaster movie as it is a disaster movie. Family drama in a disaster movie package.
I have always felt that disaster films attract audiences by the sense of crisis before the disaster, the sense of despair and helplessness when the disaster comes, and the tragic feeling of the characters in the fight against the disaster. Of course, this standard is quite unscientific and imprecise. According to this standard, Tsui Hark's "Shushan Biography" is also a good disaster film, but this standard can also be used as a superficial standard to measure the pleasure of watching a movie. Although "Water Howling and Fog City" is called a disaster movie, the tension in these paragraphs is not enough. At the beginning of the movie, a scene where an old woman was drowned alive in her own home was shocking, but then the flood scene created by computer stunts relieved the audience, and the sense of crisis disappeared. The waters are roaring and foggy, and the flood is the capital of the United Kingdom, London. This is a disaster of the world, but such a whole audience has no sense of oppression at the beginning of the film, which is doomed to be a failure. Before the flood struck, genius scientists deduced that the flood would hit London, but the official hydraulic scientists did not accept it. The Deputy Prime Minister, who was overwhelmed by the facts, could only make unfounded remarks in public that the flood would not affect London. All the above Originally, it can be done in depth and used as a metaphor for real politics, but it gives people the feeling that it is only a shallow taste. Most of the scenes in the floods that hit London can be found indoors, and there are not many big scenes that can see the overall situation of the flood. Too many indoor scenes will dissolve the sense of crisis in the movie, and in these indoor escape scenes, there are not many human beings struggling in the face of death. The shots of several water gates that are not inserted are a bit imposing, but they are still quite fake. In the last part of the movie, the family who experienced the disaster and released their previous suspicions had to fight the disaster for the last time. The father, a genius scientist, still sacrificed himself in the end, but he did not convey any sense of tragic and solemnity. To understand what the situation is, could it be that you don't have professional knowledge in water conservancy and still don't understand the situation? The death of the old scientist is not sensational enough. It is said that such a tragic sacrifice should touch people's hearts, but it is not very touching.
Although "Shushan Biography" is a bad film, it is better than "Water Roaring and Fog City". From the time when the blood demon is about to set off the catastrophe of the heaven and the earth, the film is full of tension and oppression. Suck it away, Dan Chenzi was enchanted, and the merger of the two swords failed. These twists and turns have continuously increased the psychological pressure of the audience. In addition, the environment in the movie is mainly dark, which deepens the sense of crisis before the disaster. The Gorefiend launched the Great Blood Cloud Array to destroy Shushan. At this time, Xuan Tianzong and Lian Xing were fighting hard with the Dan courtiers in the blood cave, and everything suddenly lost hope. God, a sense of the end times arises spontaneously. And at the end, the dialogue of the Dan courtier asking Xuan Tianzong to kill himself also cast a tragic taste. The rhythm of a bad film is better than that of "Water Roaring and Fog City". It seems that the disaster blockbuster in the future cannot be counted on.
In the end, the purpose of disaster movies is to wake up the world and convey a sense of existential crisis to the audience, but "Shui Xiaowudu" does not introduce the source or cause of the flood, it is just a disaster for the sake of disaster. The reason why "The Day After Tomorrow" is popular is that it magnifies the global climate anomaly caused by greenhouse gas emissions, and the cause of the flood in this film is vague, and the audience after watching the film and entering the theater has nothing but visual shock. Get, which fundamentally defeats the original purpose of a disaster movie.
It is most appropriate to position this film with "the appearance of a disaster film, but the name of a disaster film". In contrast, it is not as rhythmic as "The Legend of Shushan" in the name of the martial arts swordsman movie. Compared with "The Day After Tomorrow", this film is like an independent low-budget film. The words "After Tomorrow" are well-deserved.
View more about Flood reviews
