After watching Wandering Earth the day before yesterday, I watched a few clips again last night.
First of all, this movie is still very good. It is positioned as a disaster sci-fi movie. If you are interested in this type of movie, it is worth watching. As a movie of this type, it is also a movie with a high degree of completion. The narrative is clear and basically coherent, the plot is relatively natural without too bizarre turns, and the background introduction is also very reasonable, with bursts, tears, laughter and memes. Even if viewed horizontally and vertically in recent years, it is also a very good masterpiece. Compared with "Interstellar", it is slightly lacking. Compared with "Snowpiercer", although there is also the problem that the characters are relatively thin (a common problem in this type of film), it is fortunate that Langqiu is more restrained in preaching, and the overall basic level is the same as "Snowpiercer". 2012" is about the same.
A movie is a product after all, and we can use the Kano model to analyze it. Therefore, the first thing to do is to find the correct positioning. You will definitely not be able to benchmark "The Wandering Earth" with "2001 A Space Odyssey" or "Avatar", or even use it as a benchmark, because it is not the same thing at all.
For disaster sci-fi movies, narrative rhythm, coherent narrative expression, character growth, tears, laughter, and special effects are the basic skills of this type of movie. the must-be attribute. Classic scenes with typical aesthetic significance, visual spectacles with technological breakthroughs, in-depth discussions on ultimate issues such as human existence and society, and the feeling of being dreamy out of reality are all surprising attributes, which do not affect their ability to become a qualified disaster sci-fi film, but if there is, there is a high probability that it will be a masterpiece. "Alien Contract", "Inception", "Interstellar", "The Matrix", etc. are all such factors, and even some movies have multiple surprise elements. As for moral preaching, overly complex emotional relationships are typical irrelevant attributes. Not only will the audience not feel happy because of these, but it will even destroy the overall feeling.
In fact, it is not easy for "The Wandering Earth" to achieve these basic skills. This is a sign of the development of the film industry. There are few countries that can do it. This is also the reason why "The Wandering Earth" has more than 85% of the same type of sci-fi movies, because every year humans produce a lot of junk sci-fi movies, such as many of Nicolas Cage's (x. But it doesn't make much sense to compare with these.
First of all, in fact, the wandering earth has the potential to go up a whole level. As a sci-fi movie, the imagination is very grand. What should we do if the sun is destroyed? The idea of many Hollywood movies is to restart the sun, or humans simply run away in spaceships, but In this movie, human beings simply drag the earth to wander, there is a persistent sense of cuteness and romance. The director also consciously showed many times that Lieutenant Colonel Liu woke up and was about to resign and go home. At this time, the earth and the earth dragged the tiny blue tail flames of tens of thousands of planetary generators in the space station and flew to Jupiter. This long shot should have become a classic in film history. , but basically all Chinese directors' shortcomings in soundtracks caused this scene to be mediocre. I make a bold assumption, and I don’t consider the overall match (anyway, the soundtrack of the whole movie is not up to standard), if the soundtrack is made of an excerpt from Mrs. Butterfly’s Beautiful Day, and the shot is a little longer, the effect may be much better , the loneliness and perseverance of the earth, the emptiness and loneliness of the universe, Lieutenant Colonel Liu expresses the reunion with his family and the tragic hints in his heart, and even has a little association in the meaning of the lyrics. Another example is the last scene where Lieutenant Colonel Liu piloted the spacecraft to detonate Jupiter. If you have watched Astro Boy's "Metropolis", you may find that the last scene is very close in aesthetics, personal sacrifice, deep love, continuous and violent explosion, chaos in the Order and so on, but in terms of soundtrack processing, "Metropolis" used the song "I can't stop loving u" and is destined to become a film and television classic. In fact, I personally feel that many of Bach's songs in this scene may have a good effect.
In addition to the soundtrack, the movie is too realistic in terms of aesthetics. As a sci-fi movie, it is not necessarily a bad thing. For example, "The Martian" is very realistic. Every minute of the plot logic can find an accurate connection, which can be very smooth. Look down. One of the virtual models is "Inception" and the other "Arrival". Both films have very virtual parts. With the addition of the soundtrack, the emotions of the pictures are reasonable, giving people a dreamy experience that is out of reality. . In my opinion, this is very valuable for sci-fi movies. In addition to magnificent imagination and spectacular pictures, a little bit of flexibility is the finishing touch, but it may be limited by the script. "The Wandering Earth" is in this regard. Very lacking, resulting in lack of emotional openness.
Secondly, there are still flaws in the handling of many details of the plot, such as the elevator scene. I went back a few times to see what was going on. I don’t know if it was the editing problem or what, but to be honest, in such a tense situation Because the spatial position of the characters is not clear, the incoherence of the plot is really not very good. And at the end, moss came to the sentence "it is indeed a luxury to ask human beings to stay sane." This section of the director's tribute to 2001 A Space Odyssey is actually obvious, but this cold robot suddenly said this? ? I didn't expect you to be quite talkative? ? It may be a joke deliberately set by the director, but just before it is foreseeable that the lieutenant colonel is about to sacrifice, setting up this inexplicable plot feels a bit out of the blue.
And then this movie is too reluctant to explore any bit of the social conditions at the time, like why the flint is placed so far away, is it because there are still rebels? What happened to this coalition government? What was the scenario of giving up half of the human race by drawing lots, and what kind of trauma did it leave on everyone's heart? There is no discussion in the movie, as if these are insignificant matters, but if you can spend a little bit of pen and ink on writing, maybe the whole movie can be brought to a higher level, and even Lieutenant Colonel Liu's last act of saving all mankind can be more rationalized.
In the end, the characters are too thin and even labelled. The growth of the male protagonist Liu Qi is very textbook. Besides, there is almost no character diversity in other people. I guess this is probably the script's fault. After all, Liu Cixin is not very good at this in my eyes. A little better may be Uncle Da, who, thanks to the actor's experience, has half the show and half of it is hidden, leaving some room for imagination. As for Han Duoduo, don't say it, can't complain, captain, don't say it, can't complain, Lieutenant Colonel Liu doesn't say it, can't complain, China-Australia joint venture, it's inexplicable, IT brother doesn't say it, it's too stereotyped.
But there are still a few surprises in the whole film, such as the "Ten thousand roads, safety first, irregular driving, two lines of tears for relatives" appeared several times in the film, the first time I laughed, I almost cried when my uncle died. There is also considerable restraint in moral preaching. Except for Han Duoduo's inexplicable Sulawesi speech, most of the time in the movie, he restrains such emotions. A good director is a director who knows not to abuse the emotions of the audience. China is especially rare.
Although I have said so many shortcomings of this movie, I still want to say that there are more Chinese movies like this.
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