With the blessing of Netflix, Victory has recently gained a good topic and results. After watching the entire film with a little anticipation, I asked myself a question:
"If 'The Wandering Earth' and 'Victory' were both foreign films, which one would I prefer?"
After I came to a very definite answer without hesitation, I wrote this film review in a more precise tone. (lots of spoilers)
"Victory" and "Train to Busan: Peninsula"
The reason why I mentioned the second trip to Busan is because the fundamental problems of the two films are actually the same. Of course, "Victory" is crushing "Busan" in almost all aspects such as characterization, visual effects, viewing experience, and overall rhythm. Travel: Peninsula", that is to say, the Victory will be better where the trip to Busan is good (to be honest, the only thing that can be called a good trip to Busan is only the special effects), and the Victory where the trip to Busan is not good also has many breakthroughs , the characters are more three-dimensional, and the rhythm of the film is more natural. Unfortunately, the worst part of the trip to Busan, the Victory also failed to escape.
The core of the problem appears in the steps of Korean films trying to move closer to Hollywood in the process of industrialization, and this is reflected in the hesitation and contradiction between the East Asian cultural circle and the European and American cultural circles in South Korea. It is related to politics, but what it shows is the repeated jumps between the film styles of Korean films in the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan, Europe and the United States.
Today, South Korea is the most ardent country that embraces the West in terms of culture among the three East Asian countries, and its cultural works have indeed gradually been recognized by the Western society, but when the mainstream consciousness of the Western society is put into its own movies Without adaptation and adjustment, in the absence of Hollywood's mature industrialization system, the result is bound to be disastrous. The failure of the train to Busan perfectly illustrates this point.
In the movie Train to Busan, the director put almost all of his energy on the "visual effects" and "spectacles" that Hollywood blockbusters love most, and the characterization is also a typical Hollywood set of boring, stereotyped self-salvation, although in At the beginning, you can see some reflections on South Korea's own national situation, but this kind of reflection is extraordinarily torn and even a little ridiculous on the basis of the entire film's complete approach to the West.
The better part of Victory is that although it also brought us quite a few special effects shots, the director did not indulge in it, at least he did not completely ignore the basic logic in order to put more visual explosions.
But in the same way, Victory still falls into Hollywood's narrative structure and sci-fi setting. As for the scale and thinking about reality that Korean films have been praised for before, it is not surprising in this kind of film. Completely lost. Next, I will try to explore from a few hug points to explore what aspects of the Victory have gone wrong.
Narrative structure, characters and logic are self-consistent
narrative structure
The Victory actually fell into that old-fashioned structure without incident. The tragic life experience and self-salvation of the male lead, the hero of the little girl's savior, the legendary experiences of the crew members, and the traditional to the extreme three-act ceremony , and even Hollywood's set of flat-screen villains with magical brain circuits like a blank sheet of paper have learned a thorough understanding. It can be said that every element and every plot in this movie can be played in any one of them. Hollywood blockbusters see exactly the same way of appearances. The biggest difference between the whole movie and Hollywood is the flag on the boat. ,
This kind of routine creation is not unacceptable. In fact, the reason why these elements can become routine and formulaic is because it is easy to use. One of the advantages of this film is that the narrative structure is neat and the rhythm is clear. It was shot almost according to the three-act sequence, the climax and climax, the turning point, the trough and the trough, and there is basically no excessive rhythm disconnection. The audience will have the idea of "actually this movie is actually not bad". Different people naturally have different criteria for judging movies, and there is no right or wrong. At least Victory can bring the audience a smooth and stable viewing experience for more than two hours, which is at least a pass.
Unfortunately, although the structure is neat, there are a lot of bugs in the plot that generates the structure, and these bugs even affect the integrity and smoothness of the structure in turn.
logically self-consistent
A qualified and fascinating story should also be self-consistent and smooth. However, Victory did suddenly start to have a lot of logic bugs in the later stage of the film (or at least the logic that I couldn’t understand after watching the movie for more than two hours) ), for example, the exoskeleton of a military combat robot that can destroy dozens of fighter jets in high-speed motion and shooting in space is detached with a kick by a human who can chop off his hand with a single blow with an ordinary axe Killed in seconds, for example, the media firmly controlled by UTS broadcasts all dialogues to all humans (including residents on UTS) as soon as the dialogues are exposed. This kind of logically contradictory plot will greatly affect the viewing experience. , which makes the audience feel puzzled and confused.
If these are all small bugs, then the scene where the protagonist group who would have been eliminated by the hydrogen bomb at the end came back from more than 5,000 kilometers away in an instant under the package of a red light simply subverted the climax of the entire film, because it was the same as a few minutes. The plot from the captain's mouth just didn't match the setting. If the nano-robots could not be destroyed in the explosion, then the biggest highlight of the whole film in the story-the people flew away with the bombs instead of the little girl- It was taken away from a lot of meaning. This kind of plot setting made the most glorious scene of the protagonist group a little nonsensical, and the battles and sacrifices of the other scavengers who came to help the protagonist group inevitably became. It's a pure joke (just no one cares).
This huge contradiction in the main plot makes the logic of the whole story very confusing. If the film stops exploding, my evaluation of this film may be slightly higher. Obviously, this kind of plot hole even has a great impact on the overall structure of the film - when the meaning of the climax is stripped away, the tension of the whole story will naturally be reduced.
character image
In addition to the logical problems, the characterization is also flawed. The protagonist's experience is the most complete, so his entanglement and growth should also be the most. The film tries to give the protagonist as much transformation process as possible in the case of limited literary drama. , but some plots still have places worth scrutinizing, a bit inexplicably forcibly arranged for the protagonist to be "the only player directly assigned by the BOSS", refusing to execute the order but not having the consciousness and preparation to be fired, and addicted to gambling after bankruptcy. After going through a series of events, there is not much emotional change. At the end, there are some sudden attitude changes. These points have more or less affected the identity of the protagonist.
But in addition to the setting, the actor's performance may also be one of the reasons. Although Song Zhongji is good-looking, he plays such a complex role who has been brainwashed since childhood, experienced self-awakening, self-struggle and self-degeneration, from modeling and acting skills. Maybe it's a bit reluctant to go up, it's a little too young and too tender.
Apart from the protagonist, the setting of the rest of the crew is actually much simpler. As a big drug lord, Park Hu has a high probability of killing countless people. After he arrived in space, he became a good gentleman. , although both he and Bamos use contrast to create their characters, Bamos is obviously more natural.
The BOSS setting is really lackluster, not only has the magical brain circuit that must destroy the earth and then go to Mars to play at home, but also has no pity for the great hero who made the entire Mars a livable environment. The killer is to drive the robot by himself at the last minute to be tough. Although this does not only involve the problem of character setting, this villain still makes people feel unattractive and tasteless.
Under the premise that all elements are imitated and borrowed from, it is difficult to make a truly excellent work. Even if you can improve it in every way, the plot has no loopholes, and the characters are more three-dimensional, at best, it is just a galaxy made by South Korea itself. Convoy, that's definitely good news for industrialization, but it's hard to say how much real progress there is in terms of the exploration of the film itself.
sci-fi setting
This should be the reason why this article asks the question at the beginning, "The Wandering Earth" and "Victory", aside from the concept of a country, which one would I prefer? The answer is no doubt, the wandering earth.
Why? It's actually very simple. Although I like sci-fi works very much, I haven't been in the pit for a long time, and I haven't seen many works. Even so, I'm not interested in "The Base", "Roadside Picnic", "Three-Body Problem", "2001 A Space Odyssey", etc. I have known about the recognized masterpieces. After reading these works, it is really difficult to have too much interest in such a straightforward setting of the Victory. Shooting in space requires a lot of imagination. If it is too low, the matter of nanorobots recovering the earth's environment is more like a fantasy plot.
The space city in the film is just a mix of cyberpunk and space opera style visual impressions. After watching the whole film, what impressed me the most was the Korean flag on the spaceship, because it was the only thing I didn’t expect. , elements never seen in previous sci-fi. No offense, I think viewers from other countries, apart from Korean viewers, will probably have a similar feeling when they see the flags of countries or regions other than China, the United States, Russia, the EU, and Japan in similar videos.
If we only talk about special effects, in fact, Victory is better than Wandering Earth as a whole, and there are obviously more special effects shots. The motion of the robot in the film, the texture and details are quite good, and they are not inferior to Hollywood by too much. Doing this with a very high budget, the industrialization of Korean films seems to be ahead of China's.
However, apart from special effects, in terms of world view setting, the idea and creativity of wandering earth with the earth wandering in the universe is really in line with the word "science fiction". The saturated rescue in the film has already been budgeted for. The ultimate solution to give up probability, these make us who are accustomed to the Hollywood-style hero saving the world routine to see how human beings in the real world save themselves from another perspective, this kind of world setting full of sci-fi romance, this This kind of dissatisfaction with the authenticity of traditional routines is the fundamental reason why I prefer the movie The Wandering Earth. This may be related to my motherland who made this movie, but it is not entirely because of this.
' Looking back at Victory, you will find that from the setting of the world to the details of science fiction, like the story structure and characterization, it is still full of routines and formulas. This kind of imitation will make people feel familiar, but they will never realize that this is In a Korean film, if embracing the past and making others familiar is enough, then where does exploration and creation come from?
The struggles of Korean cinema
Last year, Bong Joon-ho's "Parasite" made history and won the Best Picture Oscar. This is undoubtedly the most glorious moment in the history of Korean films, and it was also something that neither mainland nor Hong Kong and Taiwan films were able to achieve when they were at their best. This is a great feat, but after watching it, I am also a little confused. This is still the director who made "Memories of Murder" at that time, not to say how bad the parasite is, but compared to the memories of murder back then, it is really less shocking. , there are too many logical loopholes. It seems that since then, when I watch Korean movies, I always feel that something is missing, and after watching "Train to Busan: Peninsula" and "Victory", although I have not figured out what is missing, the extra imitation of Hollywood And the sought after touches are obvious.
I watched a lot of Korean movies in the past few years, and I always felt that their directors dared to shoot and dare to say that they were real and not contrived, but after watching a lot, I felt that this was not the case. The government is corrupt and dark, and human nature is distorted and ugly. It seems that I can no longer see the thinking and struggle in the memory of murder. The Victory is like a microcosm. Korean movies have already experienced the peak of the extreme. I don’t know where the future will go, we will wait and see.
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