Did 'Robin Hood: Origins' suffer a bleak foreign box office because of its involvement with the Crusades? The Chinese market is likely to be an opportunity for its box office turnaround
Zhou Zhifang
Generally speaking, involving religion in movies is often a very troublesome thing, because every director has his own understanding of religion, his cognition and expression of a certain religious belief, a certain major religious event, Not necessarily exactly the same as religious believers. For the less violent believers, there are some dissents in the movie, but they are just a smile, and for the extreme and almost paranoid believers, it is likely not just It is a question of voting with feet, and it may even be upgraded to the point of licking blood with the tip of a knife.
On September 17, 2012, the Beijing News published an article written by Zhang Jingwei, "A Film Insulting Religion Triggers a Clash of Civilizations Between the United States and the World". Stevens and three diplomats died during anti-American protests in Libya's second-largest city, Benghazi. According to a Reuters report on September 12, this is because in an American film that killed the US ambassador and embassy staff in Libya, the Islamic prophet Muhammad was portrayed as a playboy, homosexual and child abuser. For Muslims, any depiction of the Prophet is considered blasphemous. According to the Associated Press, the film's maker, Bacile, has gone into hiding. On the 11th, he communicated with the Associated Press from an undisclosed location. Egypt's Coptic Orthodox also issued a statement condemning some Coptic Christians living abroad for funding "film productions that blaspheme the Prophet of Islam". On the 11th, a demonstration against the above-mentioned film also broke out in Egypt, storming the US embassy in Cairo, and an American flag was burned. It is reported that cartoons and other works have appeared in the past as insults to the Prophet Muhammad, sparking protests by Muslims and condemned by officials, priests, ordinary Muslims and many Christians in the Middle East.
Zhang Jingwei believes that a movie became the trigger for a riot, and Stevens, the US ambassador to Libya, became a burial. Behind the seemingly simple logic, in essence, there is still a thousand-year-old conflict of civilizations between the Western world and the Arab countries.
With such a background foreshadowing, let's look at the bleak foreign box office of "Robin Hood: Origin", and there are good reasons to think that it is likely to be related to the Crusades, which led to the bleak foreign box office. It is also because In this way, I think it is a very wise choice for it to come to the Chinese film market, because the Chinese market is likely to be an opportunity for its box office reversal, because Chinese audiences either have no faith or are extremely tolerant of religious freedom. American scholar Judith M. Bennett wrote in his book "History of the Middle Ages in Europe" that "the Crusades brought together the three major trends of the era: religion, war and greed". The chance of such a thing happening in Chinese history is very small, because the countless battles that have occurred in China from ancient times to the present are mostly not because of religion but because of the excessive expansion of imperial power.
The Crusades, can be said to be a series of famous religious military operations carried out with the permission of the Roman Catholic Pope for nearly 200 years, by the feudal lords and knights of Western Europe in the name of reclaiming the lands occupied by Arab Muslims The war against the countries on the east coast of the Mediterranean and the Crusades have been recited by the entire Catholic world for generations. Many clergymen and later church chroniclers are trying their best to record the battle, praising Christ, and reciting it miraculously. At the same time, this war and the subsequent establishment of the Latin East affected the entire pattern of the Eastern Mediterranean. Like a single stone, it stirred up a thousand waves and was strongly concerned by all parties. Byzantine, Armenian, Turkic, Arab, historians of various religious backgrounds and backgrounds are all writing and expounding on this matter for reference and reflection. Akbar Ahmed, director of the Center for Islamic Studies at American University in Washington, said: "The Crusades created a lingering historical memory for us, a long-term European offensive." For what was probably the most powerful and destructive Muslim civilization in the world at the time, the Crusades and the destruction they caused hit the Islamic world and shook the confidence of Muslims; for Europe, the Crusades were the starting point , which propelled Europe from a dark age of isolation to an open modern world. The Crusades lasted for nearly 200 years, and the Holy See's attempt to establish the world church not only failed completely, but also failed due to various reasons in order to recover the land invaded by the evil Arabs, which greatly reduced the prestige of the church, and later historians commented that : "In a sense, it is worse than failure." After the Crusaders looted the Holy Land of Jerusalem, they carried out an unprecedented bloodbath. In one monastery alone, about 10,000 refugees were slaughtered. In a letter to the Pope, a commander of the Crusaders said that he rode past the messy places, blood on the horse's legs to the knees. Temples, palaces and folk gold and silver property were looted, and many ancient art treasures were destroyed. After this massacre, the crusaders went to the so-called monasteries to perform religious ceremonies, and then committed new burning, killing and looting. "Jerusalem History" records that after the Crusaders occupied the city, men and women, young and old, carried out a horrific 30-day massacre. In order to plunder the gold, the "warriors" cut open the belly of the dead and searched for it in the stomach. Later, because there were too many dead people, they simply piled up the dead and burned them into ashes, and then searched for gold in the ashes. When the Crusaders captured Constantinople, they burned and looted the city for a week, looting the gold and silver treasures, silk clothes and art treasures, turning this prosperous and rich ancient city into a ruined mountain of corpses and fires. For the convenience of dividing the stolen goods, the metal sculpture Cast into blocks. The French chronicler Villadouin wrote: "Since the beginning of the world, there has never been so much spoils from the capture of cities." The robbery of the Crusaders fully exposed the deceit and falsity of their religion. From the moment it appeared, it was not just a literary or historical work that had dealt with its essence, Robin Hood: Origins was nothing but a cinematic expression of a voice.
The difference between "Robin Hood: Origin" and previous works is that the director uses modern thinking to rewrite the legendary story of Robin Hood, the hero of the green forest. Robin, a wealthy aristocrat, went to the battlefield for the righteousness of his family and country. After seeing the cruelty and tragicness of the war, he returned to his hometown. While escaping reality, a mysterious man who Robin had rescued on the battlefield suddenly appeared and led him to learn invincible archery. Robin was trained while investigating the culprit that destroyed his life, and clues gradually converged on the Sheriff of Nottingham. Thus, the most famous legendary hero in the West, Robin Hood, was born. He used the most incisive skills and the most superb archery to seek justice in the world. I went to China Film yesterday to watch the screening of "Robin Hood: The Origin" and felt that the production The effect is quite good. At first, I couldn't figure out why it was so bleak at the box office abroad. If it really caused criticism or even resistance because of the crusade, it would be a pity. Besides, the facts of history are not covered up by ignorance. Denial means it never existed. The crusades have scorched the earth, and the people have been devastated, and the people are struggling. They launched massacres in the name of religion, lost their faith in the name of kindness, and plundered and oppressed in the name of fraternity. Officials force the people to rebel, they have to rebel! A good religion should help people who are lonely and helpless to avoid the suffering of displacement, and help people find the habitat of their souls in a world full of uncertainty. People hate uncertainty and doubt, but they are also used for it. , become trapped beasts in the abyss staring at each other. If someone can break through the shackles of bad religion and illuminate this dark world with the light of kindness in the depths of human nature, why should we not praise the light together?
If I have time, I will watch this film again and give it a fair judgement.
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