(Text/Remy) Saying goodbye to the first half of the year when famous directors and low-cost movies are emerging, we finally come to the summer season of Korean theaters, where the box office battle is the most intense. "Travel to Busan" became the first Korean movie this year with a box office of more than 10 million people. It was also the 14th in Korean box office history and the 18th "10 million film" including foreign films, and set multiple box office records.
When we talk about the Korean film box office, we may often hear the term "tens of millions of movies". To explain briefly, South Korea’s box office is generally based on the number of movie viewers, and movies with more than 10 million visits are "ten million movies." Considering that the total population of South Korea is 50.62 million (2015 benchmark), "10 million movies" also means that at least about one-fifth of the people have seen this movie in a movie theater.
"Travel to Busan", which was titled a "disaster blockbuster" in the draft, in my opinion is actually a work of social criticism under a new genre. The new genre of "Asian Zombie Movies" and the social critical information hidden in the script of the movie have made this movie a seed movie that impacts millions of people.
♦️From animation to real person, "20,000" to "10 million"
maybe not many people have paid attention to director Yan Xianghao before, at least before Cannes this year. Because his previous works are all animation works, and the mainstream media in China really lacks attention to the type of animation. Similar to the director Luo Hongzhen mentioned last time, director Yan Xianghao came from an art major. He was a fan of Hayao Miyazaki when he was in high school, and he has been silently walking on the road of making animation. By chance, he finally made his first live-action movie. Unexpectedly, it was this movie that made him one of the "thousands." The ranks of directors of "Wan Movie".
His representative feature-length animation "The King of Pigs" was nominated for the Cannes Directors' Fortnight and was nominated for the Golden Camera Award. This is also the first shortlisted Korean native animated feature film. "The King of Pigs" was released in South Korea in 2011, with a box office of only 19,798 people. Two years later, the box office of another animated feature film "Specificity" was only 22,366 people. These two feature-length animations are both horror and thriller, so he actually made a live-action zombie movie completely unexpected.
So how did the leap from 20,000 to tens of millions be cultivated? Let's first understand the story of the birth of "Travel to Busan". In fact, compared to "Travel to Busan", the first conceived was the animated film "Seoul Station", which is the prequel of "Travel to Busan".
Initially, when the director was working on the short animated film "Hell", thinking of what other stories could be derived from it, he thought of zombies. And "Seoul Station" is this film about zombies. It was originally intended to be a short film, but later it became a feature film. While communicating with the movie distributor of "Seoul Station", someone proposed to make "Seoul Station" a live-action version. The director felt that doing the same movie twice would not be good, so he wrote a summary of the zombie story about getting on the train to Busan to show to the other party. In this way, "Travel to Busan" was born.
As for the script, director Yeon Sang Ho and writer Park Joo Suk worked together for about six months before it came out. The character of the tramp in "Travel to Busan" was added at the suggestion of writer Park, mainly to maintain relevance to "Seoul Station". And Shen Eun-kyung, who played the infected person in "Travel to Busan", was also the person who dubbed the heroine of "Seoul Station".
Many people had suggested that the director make a live-action movie before, but he always insisted on making animations, because he felt that he hadn't encountered a live-action movie script that he wanted, so he kept waiting. And this time through "Travel to Busan" can form two joint works with "Seoul Station", and "Travel to Busan" was released before "Seoul Station", which will definitely have a positive leading role in the box office of this sister animation. It's pretty smart indeed.
♦️Why is "Travel to Busan" so popular in Korea?
At first, I didn't want to go to the theater to watch "Travel to Busan", mainly because I couldn't see the horror category. But my Korean friend insisted that I accompany him to the second brush, so I asked, why is it necessary? Friends’ reasons and personal experience of watching movies can be summed up in four points.
1. "15 Forbidden" zombie films, but not terrible.
After watching the stills and trailers, because the soundtrack and makeup are too powerful, it is easy for people to have the illusion that the film is too "horror", but in fact it is only the "horror" on the visual level. The ratings for "Travel to Busan" in South Korea are the same as those of "Cry in May", which are all "15 bans", which means that even high school students can watch movies. So my friend asked, "The Cry" is two hundred times more terrifying than this. You even watch "The Cry", why can't you watch "The Busan Tour"?
Don't forget, many people had watched "The Cry" and protested that it should be classified as "19 bans." After reading it, I really feel that "Travel to Busan" is more relaxed and fun than "Cry." Although the horror elements involved in the two films are relatively unrealistic, "The Cry" is completely a black whirlpool-like solution experience, which makes people feel extremely depressing most of the time; while "Travel to Busan" is nothing. Fear, staged a hearty pass, and brought thought-provoking feelings after the disaster.
Therefore, for those who hesitate because of the "horror", as well as the Korean teenagers who are above 15 and below 19, in the same period of the movie, compared to the national democratic melody "Incheon Landing Operation", "Deokhye Wengzhu", "National On behalf of 2", there is no doubt that "Travel to Busan" will be more attractive. And I have reason to believe that there are probably not a few people like myself who have been pulled into the cinema by the reputation of friends.
2. A new type of "Asian Zombie Movie".
Needless to explain, "Asian zombie films" and "Pure melee without guns" are definitely the top attractions. The zombie movie itself is topical enough. Director Yan Sang-ho said that when shooting in Gyeonggi Province, there were a lot of onlookers. Everyone said, "Wow, it looks like a zombie movie." That's why he realized that the zombie itself is really real. It's already very popular. However, it is a pity that, let alone Asia, there was no real zombie film made in Korea before, but now it has been realized in the hands of an animation director.
So when a Korean friend talked about the new type of "Asian zombie movie" brought by "Travel to Busan", it not only carried a kind of joy of "meeting and hating late", but also a kind of "unprecedented people". It is estimated that there will be no short-term " The courage and self-confidence of the "comer". For a big fan of zombie movies, the birth of "Travel to Busan" is no different from a bright lightning.
In addition, the battle with zombies in "Travel to Busan" is pure melee without hot weapons. It is not just a physical game, but also a battle of wits and courage. In this regard, Ma Dongxi has played a superb combat effectiveness. Even Kong Liu said in an interview that he felt that Ma Dongxi was particularly capable of fighting.
Before watching "Travel to Busan", I had the impression of Ma Dongxi as a funny and cute muscular uncle. After the release of Busan Tour, his popularity has increased a lot, and aliases such as "Cute Horse" and "Baby Horse" have also appeared in endlessly. As soon as Uncle Ma appeared after the Cannes screening, the audience immediately burst into applause. Although I like Kong Liu more privately. But in this movie, I feel that Uncle Ma’s overwhelming spirit has robbed some of Kong Liu’s sense of existence. As for whether the two can survive to the end, it’s not a spoiler here.
The highlight of the real man tearing the zombies is getting off the bus from Daejeon Station and getting on the bus again. In order to rescue the pregnant wife Zheng Youmei and daughter Xiu'an, Ma Dongseok, Kong Liu, and Cui Woo-sik need to fight all the way from 9 to 13 The process of moving the carriage. It can be said that Kong Liu and Uncle Ma abandoned their prejudice and stood on the united front after working together to fight the zombies at Datian Station. After successfully boarding the train again.
Uncle Ma wrapped his arm around the tape, flexing his hands and preparing to fight the zombies. Cui Woo-sik, who plays a baseball player, also wrapped his arms and clenched the bat, without stage fright. Kong Liu used his intelligence to match the fund manager, and designed and implemented a plan to move to Car 13 based on the weakness of the zombies' only well-developed hearing and poor eyesight under dark light. Fortunately, the zombies in "Travel to Busan" are quite stupid. If they are the same as the ones in "Seoul Station", I am afraid that the witty zombie scene will not be staged.
3. The significance of social criticism.
"Travel to Busan" is not a horror thriller that simply tells the story of zombies. How do people on the high-speed rail cope with the extreme conditions and how to survive when the zombies come. The film has a very realistic description of this, criticizing morality and humanity. At the same time, by the way, the South Korean government was hacked.
When I set off from Seoul, something went wrong. However, when the infected zombies attacked humans aggressively, the South Korean government officials in the news on the train blatantly lied, "Dear national safety, Hamiida!" in the online video that people on the train found with their mobile phones in order to maintain peace of mind. It's another scene. Many cities in South Korea are in desperation. When the train arrived in Daejeon, which the official claimed was “safe and guarded by soldiers”, the innocent passengers got off the train, only to find that it was a completely different scene, and they had to get on the train with zombies again in order to survive.
Compared with the government shown through images, the reaction of people on the train to survive makes the audience have to sigh that "people are more terrifying than zombies".
If Kong Liu’s self-interest, as a representative of urbanites, finally turned into human love in the rhetorical question of his daughter Xiu’an and the flesh-and-blood fight in reality, then the class represented by Jin Yicheng is a completely unscrupulous way to survive. Even the holder of the right to harm others. He has privileges in society, and he is also the passenger who holds the highest voice in the compartment, and he can turn things around.
Kim Uiseong stills
Fourth, the high degree of completion and the directing characteristics of the animation director.
The box office performance of "Travel to Busan" is definitely closely related to its high degree of completion. Although in Cannes, the exposure of "Travel to Busan" is not high compared to the large-scale same-sex work "Miss" and "The Cry", which is well-received by foreign media, but as Yan Sangho's first live-action commercial film, "Travel to Busan" An excellent answer sheet has been handed in in Korea.
In the original script, Kong Liu’s child is set to be the son. The director has seen many auditions and has never selected a suitable boy to act. After seeing Jin Xiu'an's work, he insisted on inviting her to perform, and even changed the original son to his daughter, which made the production team sweat. Fortunately, the performance of Kim Soo-an, the acting girl, is completely above expectations. Compared to Kim Hwan-hee in "The Cry", although she is not so challenging, she is definitely able to be included in the list of outstanding Korean children's actors with extremely rich acting skills. .
In terms of art, the special disguise of zombies in "Travel to Busan" is very lifelike, highlighting the bursting blood vessels and colors, and the treatment of the eyes in the later period also looks to make people stand up. In terms of action, the zombie actors began to receive special training six months before the filming started. The action director of "Travel to Busan" also participated in the production of "The Cry" before, so he also borrowed some treatment methods from "The Cry".
In addition, Yeon Sang-ho's background as an animation director also made the scene of "Travel to Busan" quite interesting. Korean friends complained that many Korean directors are often obsessed with the use of fixed shots and short shots for medium and close shots, which are very rigid and difficult to see exciting and dynamic camera movements. But Yan Xianghao's directing style brings a unique sense of freshness.
I have the most memory of the title. The footage of the film starts with a close-up of the face of a traffic police model unique to South Korea. The arms of this traffic police model can be constantly mechanically waved. To some extent, it seems to echo the action style of the zombies, which is very interesting. At the beginning, a middle-aged male driver passed through the disinfection station and complained to the staff. Then on the way to continue driving, he killed a deer. The uncle driver got out of the car and checked, and found that it was a deer, so he scolded a few times and drove away. Then the camera panned to the corpse of the deer, it twitched and twisted its limbs and head, its eyes changed color, and it turned into a zombie deer and stood up again.
Immediately afterwards, the title of "Travel to Busan" appeared on the screen.
♦️Why is it said that "Travel to Busan" is not a typical "tens of millions of movies"?
Although "Travel to Busan" broke a series of box office records, it was among the "ten million movies" in just 19 days, becoming the first tens of millions of movies in South Korea this year, but looking at South Korea’s "tens of millions of movies" list is not difficult to find, " Busan Tour is clearly different from the previous "ten million movies". It can be said that it breaks Chungmuro's established "ten million movies" rule.
First of all, there are no heroes in "Travel to Busan".
In the existing "tens of millions of movies", you can always see the plot setting centered on a hero character. For example, Admiral Yi Sun-sin in "The Battle of Mingliang", Dexiu, the soul of the family in "International Market", and Daozhe, the criminal policeman in "Old Hand", all belong to this category. But these people in "Travel to Busan" are closer to ordinary people than heroes.
Kong Liu's "Shi Yu" is a typical young urban father who has succeeded in his career but is not caring about his family. At the beginning, he was a character with self-interested thoughts. As the plot unfolded, his heart, who was constantly under impact, also changed. Ma Dongxi's "Shang Hua" looks like a man who obeys his wife's words, and constantly ridicules Kong Liu with existing prejudices. Choi Woo-sik's "British" is a young baseball player. At first he didn't even have the courage to face his beloved girl. He hid his feelings and only gave him a poker face.
There are three men who pass the battle against the zombies, and it is difficult for us to define any of them as "heroes." Before this exciting scene was staged, the director had already demonstrated the weaknesses of these three individuals. And from the ending point of view, the creators did not have any tendency to portray men as heroes. This is clearly different from the typical "tens of millions of movies".
Ma Dongxi stills
Secondly, there is no patriotic marketing and anti-criticism of the South Korean government.
The so-called patriotic marketing is actually the main theme of the movie with the patriotism of the audience as the marketing focus. Let alone whether this works in China, at least Koreans are willing to pay for patriotic themes. Although not all "tens of millions of movies" have used patriotic marketing, most of them have the topical nature of setting off a patriotic upsurge.
"The Battle of Mingliang Sea", which ranked first in the box office in the "Ten Thousands of Movies", is a historical film with the main theme, telling the story of the famous North Korean commander leading the navy to resist the Japanese pirates. The film has received general support from the political circles, and even President Park Geun-hye went to see it. As a Korean, it’s a bit unreasonable to say that he hasn’t watched it; and the runner-up "International Market" is a small person who reflects the changing times and modernizes Korea. History is shown on the big screen. Before Huang Zhengmin and Wu Dazhu went to West Germany to dig for coal, they had to interview for visas. After almost losing, he and his friends suddenly sang the national anthem, so they gave the pass. Look at the Korean Peninsula war in "Taichi Flag Flying", the story of the Japanese occupation era in "Assassination", the prototype of the former President Roh Moo-hyun in "The Defender", and the South and North Korea issues in "Silmi Island". National topicality.
As for this "Travel to Busan", there are no clues to the Korean-style patriotic theme from beginning to end. Instead, the government has become an object of criticism and sarcasm. "Travel to Busan" was spread mainly by word-of-mouth received from Cannes and Korean audiences. Of course, the title "Asian Zombie" is also a major reason for attracting people to enter the theater.
last point is the large-scale exceptional screening of "Travel to Busan", which is also a point of criticism in the Korean film industry.
Generally speaking, before the official release of Korean films, there will be media release screenings and VIP screenings, and some movies will also hold one or two ticket sales screenings. In general, the box office accumulated through the trial screening will not be higher than 50,000. The creator of the highest box office history in South Korea, "Mingliang Sea Battle", has a cumulative box office of 17.61 million people, and the total number of people who watched the movie through the preview before the official release was only 22,500. However, "Travel to Busan" completely broke the traditional rules of the screening.
"Travel to Busan" is scheduled to be released on July 20, and a media release trial screening was held on the 12th, followed by a number of large-scale ticket sales trial screenings from the 15th to the 17th. As a result, before the film was officially released, it had accumulated 560,000 box office visits, which is indeed unprecedented. But for "Travel to Busan", the accumulation is not only the box office, but more importantly the word of mouth.
Some of the movies originally scheduled to be released in the third week of July were entirely to avoid the box office competition of "Travel to Busan". I didn’t expect the distribution company to conduct such a large-scale trial screening, which robbed the box office and popularity. The topic of "Travel to Busan" began to circulate before it was released, and the film released in the third week was inevitably affected. Compared to competing works that were also released in the fourth week, "Travel to Busan" has also seized the opportunity.
Yan Xianghao's success from independent animation director to "Ten Thousands of Directors" has also made people look forward to his next film. Will he continue to do animation, or continue to do genre films by winning the pursuit? In fact, his next movie is already set. The live-action film "Mind Power" tells the story of a man who accidentally acquired superpowers (Mind Power) trying to rescue his daughter who was caught in an accident. He will still cooperate with Shen Eun Kyung who will be the voice of "Seoul Station". Two actors, Liu Chenglong.
The so-called prequel of "Travel to Busan" and the sister chapter of the parallel world-the animated film "Seoul Station" was released in South Korea on August 18. The zombies in "Travel to Busan" are relatively stupid. They only have good hearing, can't open the door, and cannot accurately identify the target of the attack, while the zombies in "Seoul Station" are smarter. After watching "Travel to Busan", if you want to know how the zombie virus in the film began to spread, how the girl played by Shen Eunjing was infected, and what happened in Seoul the day before driving, then you can also consider taking a look. This "Seoul Station".
(PS: Thanks to everyone who can see the last...I know I wrote too long orz...)
PS: Unauthorized reprinting is strictly prohibited.
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