However, despite so many years of criticism, "Painted Skin 2" is still unmoved, and it can continue the tradition since "Hero", stepping on and improving this business model that is completely different from Hollywood's business model and the public's acceptance of vision, and deviates everywhere. The road to domestic commercial blockbusters that ordinary audiences like to narrate, and can come out on top in box office performance and topical popularity, creating good results, which naturally makes the majority of film critics distressed: "For so many years, domestic blockbusters have never learned the quantified and accurate business of Hollywood. The film narrative mode, the story is pale, flashy, the characters are empty, a bad film, but it can always sell for money!" We have listened to this basic criticism mode for ten years, and compared to filmmakers, their creativity is very creative. Unfortunately, nothing has changed.
But times are changing like a torrent. These past criticisms that could "close the coffin" have completely lost their discourse power; "Painted Skin 2" from beginning to end is expressing a kind of appeal for "skin appearance", the theme is "skin appearance", and the process of film production is not the same The pursuit of "skin appearance" - as expressed in the movie, "men only care about the appearance of women", "Painted Skin 2" is gambling from beginning to end "the audience is only concerned about the appearance of the film", and the right bet is correct.
However, can this represent the naivety and irrationality of the Chinese audience? I am afraid that such criticism is a kind of dogmatic requirement of the critics for the film mode, the subjective assumption of the audience's taste, and the deep-rooted sense of superiority of the artist.
The commercial success of "Painted Skin 2" once again proves with iron facts that "story" is definitely not a necessity for the audience, and they will definitely be dissatisfied with the paleness of the story, but without a solid plot, the audience will not be unable to live; no Commercial movies with ups and downs can also be good works, and "flashy" can be regarded as a feature of a movie rather than a standard of a bad movie; people love to watch stories, but movies are not soap operas and have their own unique space for self-expression. The commercial success of Chinese-style commercial blockbusters, which has made film critics feel on pins and needles over the years, also confirms that this commercial film road, which is different from the classic Hollywood narrative mode, is indeed promising and not a dead end.
"Painted Skin 2" seeks the appearance of skin, its form is itself, and there is no other value. "Painted Skin 2" shows extreme stimulation on the senses, aiming for extreme stylized aesthetics. Under the control of Yoshitaka Amano, the costumes that are like the rebirth of Noh dramas in the Meiji era, the desolate and magnificent frontier scenery, and the ethereal and ethereal aura The striking atmosphere of the scene and the dark and rough alien tones have all merged into a set of "Oriental New Aesthetics" that breaks the shackles of the country and the nation, depicts the shape with the spirit, only seeks freehand brushwork, vague rationality, and expresses the supremacy, and has even reached "excessive". At the point of "beautiful", the pursuit of sensory effects by producers has sometimes reached the borderline of non-mainstream. On this basis, Wu Ershan is simply speaking in terms of form, trying to cover up the mediocrity of the essence of business with the extreme unfamiliarity of the form. The inevitable measures taken have undoubtedly become the basic model of domestic commercial films.
"Painted Skin 2" takes "skin appearance" as the narrative core, and the overall narrative is also divorced from reality. On the whole, the structural model of "prominence-prove-development" is constructed, and finally the conceptual reversal ending is added. All the plots and arrangements are all implementing the core conflict of "whether a man loves a woman's appearance or the heart", In order to express the conflict, the same strategy as the sensory effect is adopted: to express freehand brushwork, to pursue extreme stimulation and despise logic, the plot serves reasoning, and the story is symbolized and symbolized. The audience is lamenting how difficult it is to "tell a complete story", but the producers only care about "whether the story serves the topic", and the logic of the plot is not as important as the meaning of the story. The Chinese pay attention to "freehand brushwork" rather than specific artistic concepts, and the narrative mode also presents such a division.
"Painted Skin 2", which has done so many "anti-audience" acts, is never soft when it comes to what the real audience cares about. The use of the brand effect of "Painted Skin" is rare for domestic films. In my opinion, if there is another "Painted Skin 3" to form a commercial trilogy, it will be an important symbol of the maturity of Chinese commercial films; For the pursuit of topicality, I learned the lesson that the two blockbusters "The Thirteen Hairpins of Jinling" and "Flying Armor of Dragon Gate", which were two blockbusters in the Lunar New Year War last year, obviously lacked topicality outside of the movies, and tried their best to hype, although not necessarily profound, but accurately hit the movie. The topic of love among the crowd; decisively adopts a grounded lineup with mainland actors as the mainstay, and has passed the practical test of the mass base, instead of stacking up but focusing on practical results. From this point of view, it is precisely with the skilled commercial skills in marketing methods that the main creators have the spare energy to pursue some business within the film, and things outside the public can make domestic commercial films different.
Therefore, although the four major weaknesses of "Painted Skin 2": the story is pale, the style is excessive, the special effects are weak, the rhythm is out of control, and Huayi Brothers only releases the 3D converted version. Criticism and opposition have come from the tide, but the road to domestic commercial blockbuster that "Painted Skin 2" has solidly walked out still has universal value. On the issue of "how to fight Hollywood", it is far more foresight to follow a path with its own unique style than to follow international standards step by step. In this new era where domestic films are too weak to abandon "domestic protection", we have a broad-minded audience who can choose by themselves and an increasingly broad and bright market, so we should be more tolerant and bold. For me, being able to see something like "Painted Skin 2" that takes form, plays with skin, and has a stylized production with full of personality is probably far more beneficial than seeing a large number of brainless, boring and inferior commercial films that imitate Hollywood. Many, even if those films have a standard three-paragraph narrative, it's just mediocre without ego.
If you ask for the skin, what can the husband ask for?
Routine complaints:
1. I think like me, there are definitely not a few viewers who feel that the lily that Zhao Wei and Zhou Xun have been engaged in for so long is worth the ticket price. However, it is obvious that the director only cares about women, and Chen Kun and Feng Shaofeng's two bewitching flowers are stunned.
2. Yang Mi plays a bird. Well, the five words are broad and profound, and everything that needs to be said has been said.
3. I can guarantee that not only the stylist of the "Harry Potter" series referenced the design of the national teacher of "Painted Skin 2" when designing Voldemort's appearance, but also Ralph Fiennes must also refer to Fei Xiang. 's performance.
4. If Zhou Xun takes the Chinese test, he must fail in the dictation of ancient poetry.
5. Hundreds of years later, the French writer Gaston Leroux read this fascinating oriental story, and was very fond of Zhao Wei's role, and created the famous book "The Phantom of the Opera" accordingly.
6. I ask Huayi to publish a "Tianlang Mandarin Dictionary".
7. The Qin army who besieged Zhao State cried and said that they forgot to release the rockets and took advantage of Jet Li and Maggie Cheung.
8. Students who wear 3D glasses and can see what happened in the first five minutes of the film, you can take the pilot test.
9. Chen Kun: "Jinger". Zhao Wei: "Rong'er."
10. I thought about it carefully and felt that Rhododendron really didn't bother you.
11. It is said that the original script ended like this: Chen Kun and Zhao Wei ran wild on the grassland. Background music "You are the wind, I am the sand", with subtitles.
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