The last decade of Hollywood has been the decade of "superhero movies."
When "Avengers 4" was released this year , it set off the craziest movie viewing craze in the world in 10 years .
When "Reunion 4" was released, Marvel Pictures put out the slogan "Ten years of layout, one battle at the peak". After watching the film, the audience suddenly realized that it took Marvel for ten years, and it really took off. A very big game of chess.
In the past ten years, Marvel has released a total of 23 movies, almost all of which have sold well, created the "Marvel Cinematic Universe" , and single-handedly hyped the concept of "Cinematic Universe". Even its old rival, DC, had to follow suit and embark on an almost identical strategic line to Marvel.
This year, however, the arrival of an alternative DC movie seems to have changed things a bit. The movie is called "Joker" .
"Joker" not only won the highest Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival with great controversy, but as of today, it has unexpectedly won $560 million at the global box office (over 200 million in North America) , topping box office weeks in various countries and regions. Championship.
However, in terms of movie content, production ideas, distribution methods, etc., the strategic route taken by DC's "Joker" this time is completely different from the ideas in the past few years.
The protagonist of "Joker" is based on the number one villain in the DC Batman series of comics, writing his growth history with a new story. In this sense, Joker can still be classified as a superhero comic book adaptation.
But on the other hand, its production completely follows the path of an independent film. It is supervised by the well-known Hollywood director Martin Scorsese. It has low cost, less fighting, no special effects and surreal elements. It is a social and ideological reality. ism film .
After watching the film, the audience will be surprised to find two things:
1. Maybe this is a new idea for the filming of "manga change movies"?
2. Is it more interesting to have a villain like the clown as the protagonist?
In fact, the gameplay of "letting the villain be the first protagonist" is nothing new.
In recent years, Hollywood has been working hard to create some "villain protagonist" movies, some successful and some failures, but few people have noticed this new change in creation.
Let's take a few examples.
At the end of last year, Columbia Films teamed up with Marvel and Tencent Pictures to launch "Venom: Deadly Guardian" with the Spider-Man series villain "Venom" as the protagonist . This film took an exaggerated 1.8 billion box office in the Chinese market, which shows how much audiences love this kind of film.
As early as 2014, Disney produced the adaptation of the movie "Maleficent" with the "Wicked Witch" in the old fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty" as the protagonist. The film 's subversive adaptation of the original fairy tale is refreshing. The mainland market has also achieved good box office results.
Coincidentally, on the 18th of this month, "Maleficent 2" will be released simultaneously in North America and mainland China. The filmmaker chose to release it at the current time, which further proves that Hollywood intends to launch more movies with "villains as the protagonists", which is a new direction for the future development and evolution of Hollywood movies.
In addition, 20th Century Fox has made movies "Deadpool" and "Deadpool 2" with " anti-hero" characters in Marvel Comics, and DC has made "Suicide Squad" . In a broad sense, these can be regarded as "the villain as the protagonist ". ”, regardless of the quality of these works, they have also gained a high degree of attention and discussion.
By the popularity of "Joker" this year, the high-quality villain narrative has pushed the comic book genre to a new height. As everyone becomes more and more tired of the routine "superhero movies" aesthetics , movies with "villains as the protagonists" are being loved and recognized by more and more mainstream audiences.
In the future, we can imagine, perhaps, a new type of movie series that will completely replace the past "superhero movies", let's call it - "super villain movies"!
So why are supervillain movies so attractive?
What is the deep-seated reason why the villain is loved by the public?
01 Villains are people too
When we were kids watching TV, we always liked to ask adults, who is good and who is bad?
The way a child sees the world is always simple, a duality of good and evil. Because of this, we can easily understand without thinking.
When we grow up, we begin to understand that there are no absolute "good people" and "bad people" in this world.
Movies are not reality, of course we can deliberately create good and bad in the video world. But if you want the movie to be close to reality and create flesh-and-blood characters, both the good and the bad must conform to human nature.
Good movies are not good and evil , that would be too boring.
Villains are people too.
For a screenwriter who wants to write a good "villain" character, your villain is like your hero , with a life of ups and downs.
The villains are usually right, they just go too far . They always have a reason to say what they're doing is right, and even get the audience to strongly agree.
For example, in Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver" , the protagonist Lavis is actually a "villain". The film shows his turbulent life. The suffering of life made him decadent and numb. He bought a pistol and attempted to assassinate the presidential candidate.
He didn't go down the assassination road because he was a bad guy. He is antisocial because he is suppressed and manipulated by the system represented by the presidential candidate, which he believes has been tormenting him for decades . Therefore, the audience recognizes this "villain"-style "hero".
see it? "Villains" and "heroes" are sometimes interchangeable .
So, writers, viewers, stop prescribing villains as bad guys and imagine them as misguided souls.
In the movie "Venom: Deadly Guardian" , Venom has a ferocious face, disgusting fangs and a long tongue. Children see him and definitely think he is a "bad guy".
But as adults will find out, Venom isn't that bad, he absolutely follows Eddie, only shows up to protect him when it's time to transform, and even confides in Eddie about being sidelined in his hometown.
The character's background is in sharp contrast to his appearance, and the audience is prone to empathize with Venom's "weakness".
Therefore, the "villain" is not liked by everyone because he is a "bad guy", but because they have similar stories, struggles and humanity to all "people".
May the world treat the "villains" kindly.
02 It's more fun to watch "the villain as the protagonist"
This kind of cool feeling probably comes from two kinds of viewing psychology.
One is to seek freshness.
Most of the movies we see are "decent" movies, so it's nice to see the good guys win and the bad guys lose. However, such a routine is too familiar, and it is inevitable to see too many heroic stories.
For the first time in "Super Villain Movie", the "villain" is used as the first point of view, which satisfies our desire to spy on "what the villain thinks" . Such a narrative method brings us a sense of freshness.
The second is to eliminate negative emotions.
In our daily life, all of us are constrained by rules and regulations such as laws and morals, and the negative emotions in our hearts are suppressed.
In watching movies, we finally unload the moral burden of the real world , and the audience can release the backlog of bad luck through the impulse, violence, vulgarity and other negative emotional elements that often appear in the villain's film and television works.
In addition, the behavior of the villain and the anti-mainstream society is in line with the psychology of the "millennial generation" mourning culture , and it is easy to resonate with the protagonist. This kind of alternative "coolness" can never be given to you in the real world.
03 The villain has more depth
Compared with heroes who want to maintain the mainstream social order, villains naturally have the attribute of "criticizing society" , which makes them sociologists or philosophers in the criminal world.
In Nolan's Batman: The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger's version of the Joker famously said, "Crazy, like gravity, just takes a nudge."
Compared to other villains in movie history, the Joker's combat effectiveness is simply garbage. What makes him scary is not how strong his physical destructive power is, but his insight into the evil of human nature.
Throughout the entire story of "The Dark Knight", the clown is like a catalyst , which does not participate in the chemical reaction itself, but accelerates the collapse of the entire morbid social structure.
His favorite criminal technique is to create "human multiple choice questions" .
In the dilemma of life and death, human nature can reveal its true colors.
In the movie, he sets up two ships, one full of Gotham citizens and one full of prison criminals. One will explode and sink, and both parties have a detonator in their hands. Whoever detonates first will survive. How do they choose?
In another episode, the Joker proclaims on TV that if Reese doesn't die within an hour, he'll blow up a Gotham hospital. As a result, the people of Gotham went into a frenzy, some people shot Reese in panic, and some people tried to kill Reese with a car.
For the people, if they kill a stranger, they can save the lives of their family members in the hospital, and any of them can become murderous demons.
The Joker has no goals, no principles, no money, no fame, he's committed to creating chaos . And the reason why he can easily succeed is because the power to subvert society is not in him, but in society and human nature itself.
Through the clown, we spy on the absurdity of human nature and the fragility of the social order .
Joaquin Phoenix's "Joker" takes the criticism directly at the current society.
This version of the Joker is portrayed as a marginal person at the bottom of society. The script deeply depicts the ins and outs of Arthur Fleck (the Joker's real name in the film) who became a demon after being abandoned by society. He became the spokesperson for the bottom people in countless neglected corners of the world. , regarded as civilian heroes by them.
The artistic expression of the clown stirring up the whole society is still far from reality, but it accurately depicts the crisis that exists in our current world . Such a villain is obviously more attractive than the small entertainment heroes in Marvel movies.
However, "super villain movies" such as "Joker" are too anti-mainstream in terms of values. The audience is worried that such movies will affect reality, and it is not ruled out that someone imitates the plot in the movie to commit crimes.
Even when "Joker" was released in many countries and regions, the local police were strengthened to guard outside the theater to prevent possible violent incidents.
And film director Todd Phillips responded publicly, "Film is a mirror of society, he is just reflecting the world as it is, not shaping it... We try to paint the real world to the greatest extent possible, so that the work to hit our sore spot.”
American film critic Emily VanderWolf wrote: "There is no art at all if filmmakers need to constantly answer all kinds of bad situations, including moral distress, that audiences may encounter after watching a film. was created."
Different people have different opinions on whether violent films like Joker should be held responsible for the possible bad moral consequences , and we cannot easily draw conclusions.
But this kind of work can produce such a sensational effect, which itself has proved that the movie with "villain as the protagonist" has quite strong market potential and artistic value .
Taking advantage of the popularity of "Joker", DC has recently announced that it will be preparing another movie featuring the villain . In the future, this may be a new direction for many Hollywood production companies.
The future of "super villain movies" can be expected.
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