Paramount Pictures, one of the top five in Hollywood, was in a terrible situation after 2010 due to frequent high-level changes. Its performance declined year after year, and in some years it was even surpassed by Lionsgate outside the top five.
Therefore, in 2013, Paramount began to restart an old IP, and this IP is the childhood of most people ---Ninja Turtles .
fairly average grades
The rebooted movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Age of Mutants was released in 2014. With a production cost of $125 million, it only earned $190 million in its hometown of North America, and only about $485 million worldwide, plus The comprehensive calculation of the announcement and distribution costs and the box office share, the profit is not very high.
With such an ordinary box office, the film's reputation is still quite bad . Not only is the score quite average in many film review networks at home and abroad, but it has even won multiple nominations for the 35th Golden Raspberry Award (Bad Film Award).
As a commercial film, "The Age of Mutants" made a profit in the end, and it still reached the passing line, but in terms of its overall performance, it was quite unsatisfactory. It should be noted that "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" was restarted as a series, the first film Qu's reputation is so unbearable that it will inevitably have a great negative impact on the sequel.
It stands to reason that, as a reboot movie, and Paramount had not many cards to play at that time, it should have been more attentive, but why was the final result of "The Age of Mutants" so mediocre?
new audience, old fans
For an old IP such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, it has a certain audience and mass base , and most of the old fans have played the Teenage Turtles games on FC game consoles in their childhood, or watched them on TV. The TV animation of the Turtles.
Of course, this mass base itself is still a bit limited, and it is still incomparable with global IPs such as "The Lion King". In other words, the reboot movie of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" cannot follow the sentimental line.
In this case, the filmmaker and director made a decision, that is, "abandon old fans and focus on absorbing new audiences" .
Therefore, in the film "The Age of Mutants", old fans basically can't see anything with feelings, the origin story of the turtles and their teachers has been revised, and the villain Shredder has changed from the previous physical combat power flow. The equipment flow that relies on power armor, etc., everything is a new setting.
After all, it is very difficult for a movie to give thumbs up to both old fans and new blood. In this case, if you only focus on one of the groups, the difficulty of making it will not be that big, but it actually decides the movie. The box office is still a large number of passers-by audiences, so the balance of the film side is inclined to new audiences, which is no problem from a tactical level.
However, the fact that the tactics are no problem does not mean that the actual operation will be successful. "The Age of Mutants" is because it abandoned the old fans and did not do a good job in controlling the preferences of the new audience, which eventually led to a rather general response.
The conflict between character style design and film positioning
For an IP that was adapted from comics to live-action film and television, the most intuitive feeling it brings to the audience is naturally the shape design style of the characters, while the characters in "The Age of Mutants" follow the real style, which is actually production. The changes Fang made in order to distinguish the animation style of the old version of the film and television (it can also be seen from this that the film Fang did not intend to worry about the old fans who are used to the old version)
Strictly speaking, there is no problem with the realistic style of character modeling, but this style is an out-and-out disaster for the film "Age of Mutants", because it has an irreconcilable conflict with the positioning of the film.
What type of movie is Age of Mutants? As everyone knows, it is a typical popcorn commercial entertainment film , a simple story of confrontation between good and evil, with some laughs and cool special effects pictures, etc. This kind of film itself has nothing to do with the words "depth" and "connotation". Yes, their core is to entertain the masses .
Since it is entertaining, then the role of design in fact be US-based , because the four prototype turtle is a turtle, their master is a mouse, if the real wind to go, it will not be doomed to see where the good go.
However, under the premise of being an entertainment film, "The Age of Mutants" has a realistic style. The result is that a group of spectators with the entertainment mentality of watching popcorn movies walked into the theater, only to see four shapes "too real and ugly". "The Turtles.
Especially new audiences don't have the feelings of old fans, not to mention that many of those who entered the theater may have known these four turtles for the first time, and the turtles gave this group of new audiences their first impression. , obviously not so beautiful, after all, humans are visual animals.
The necessary condition for entertaining the public is to let the audience see what they want to see . In fact, the shape of the turtles is designed to be more eye-catching, but it is more in line with the positioning of the film, and the audience will like it more. After all, everyone did not expect Your popcorn can have the depth of "The Dark Knight", what does it matter if you go real?
group play
As we all know, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are four brothers, and they are a group. For a movie in which the protagonist is a team, the key to its success or failure is generally the quality of the group portrait , and the group portrait in "The Age of Mutants" can only be said to be quite average. Its flaws focus on one character, Raphael the red turtle .
Of course, the flaws mentioned here do not mean that Raphael's people have problems or are not well shaped, but that the movie ignores the other three turtles in order to highlight it , and even adds some that originally did not match Raphael. The plot is also forcibly set on his head.
For example, in the middle of the movie, the three tortoises and the mouse master were captured by Shredder, but the irascible Raphael went to save people, but Raphael, who was set up as a warrior, obviously couldn't say what a comprehensive plan was made. Going to rescue his teammates, the result is that the entire rescue operation is very simple and rude. Raphael directly rushed into the enemy's base camp and killed him. Boss Schreider knocked him down but didn't make up for it. In the end, Raphael successfully rescued his companions. come out.
At the end of the movie, when the Turtles thought they were going to die, Raphael said to his companions: "I have been too strict with you all this time!" This kind of line is actually usually asked by the team leader, Leonardo the blue turtle, to come It is more appropriate to say.
In fact, in the popularity polls in Europe and the United States, Raphael has always been the No. 1 popularity of the four turtles, and the producer obviously gave him more scenes in the movie for this reason.
But again, a successful group portrait should not be filled with one-on-one operations.
Like "The Age of Mutants", Raphael's image is tall, but what about the other three turtles? Not only was the prisoner trampled on the ground by a group of miscellaneous soldiers, the blue turtle Leonardo da Vinci, who was originally the leader, always needed to be rescued in the movie, and the demeanor of the leader disappeared; the yellow turtle Michelangelo and the purple turtle Donatello also It's just the living treasures and technical houses that are exposed on the surface, and the image is too flat.
For old fans, they definitely don’t want to see three of the four tortoises as tools. Since the producer can hold Raphael in this way, it obviously doesn’t care about the feelings of old fans, but the irony is because It's a fairly ordinary group portrait, and the new audience's perception is not very good, and the result is that both sides are not flattering.
Some people may say, isn't it just an entertainment popcorn? Why are the requirements so high?
However, what determines the success or failure of a film is really a place that seems to be "not too high", which is why it is also a commercial film, but some can get more than one billion box office and even have a good reputation, and some But it can only make a small profit or even just make a return.
In fact, the disadvantage of "The Age of Mutants" has a lot to do with the perfunctory attitude of the filmmakers. The mentality of "popcorn entertainment films just look at the special effects" can only appear in some ordinary audiences. Once the film producers have With this kind of thinking, it is absolutely impossible for them to make a truly satisfactory commercial film.
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