The dazzling technical effects are updated, and the core content of the wonderful content is hard to buy - Ang Li can't understand it, he may just don't believe it for a while.
(The article was first published on the public account "Flying Catfish Movie", WeChat ID: FMYmovie)
With the controversial new film "Gemini Man" released in October, director Ang Lee has become the quasi-spokesman of "120 Frames". Who would have thought that this leading Chinese director who once expounded the oriental ethics in "Father's Trilogy" and reinterpreted the love and hatred of rivers and lakes in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" astonished the world film circle, now he seems to have "abandoned the text". Follow the martial arts", devoting himself to the study of imaging technology and unable to extricate himself. Of course, there is also one thing that few people think of, that is, Ang Lee became obsessed with technology because of a movie project 16 years ago, that is "The Hulk".
"The Hulk" produced by Universal Pictures in 2003 is the first mainstream Hollywood film directed by Ang Lee, and it is also the first film by Ang Lee that uses a lot of computer special effects. This project began preparations as early as the 1990s. The special theme of the original comics brought difficulties in terms of technical level and main creators to this project. Until the beginning of the 21st century, the popularity of motion capture technology and the birth of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" gave the producers hope - the special effects technology that can better present the characters of science fiction movies that combine ordinary people and monsters, and can Interpreting the main creator of this character's conflict with the outside world and the heart, this project seems to be half successful. And Ang Lee's Oscar aura also attracted Eric Bana and Jennifer Connelly, who were very popular at the time, to serve as the male and female protagonists of the film, which also made Universal Pictures mistakenly think that it saw a great prospect for the film.
It's a pity that Universal Pictures only got half of it right. On the one hand, Ang Lee did consciously portray the entanglements and unease of "Hulk" Bruce Banner as a mutant, but he doesn't seem to be familiar with it, nor is he willing to be familiar with it. The creative mode of mainstream Hollywood commercial blockbusters: In his finished film, the foreplay of about 30 minutes is not only trivial, but also almost makes the film beside the point; after Bruce Banner officially became the Hulk, the rhythm and tension of every conflict are different. It is too gentle, and the audio-visual impact does not reach the average level of sci-fi special effects blockbusters; the Shakespeare-style line design is not full of life, and it is even more out of place in a monster-based sci-fi special effect blockbuster like "Hulk". It's not like "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" has the artistic conception of Oriental martial arts to neutralize this abrupt feeling.
On the other hand, the plot arrangement of the script is also very problematic: whether it is a Hollywood blockbuster or not, "The Hulk" can discuss self-contradiction, but it also needs to be set off by social environment issues to highlight the lonely situation of the protagonist , And this is precisely what "Hulk" is missing in the film. The story scene is either in the laboratory or in the desert military base, and there is almost no panoramic environment explanation. The whole film focuses on Bruce Banner's personal anxiety and unease , by the way, leave a few more expressions to express the life contradictions between Banna's father and heroine Betty. A story subject that could have explored the conflict between the individual and the environment has been tossed by a few screenwriters (not only Ang Lee's American classmate James Shams) into a big-picture play.
Under the premise of such a problem at the creative level, drama star Ang Lee not only did not pay attention to the adjustment and improvement of the text, but paid more attention to the production investment of the film. As if in Ang Lee's view, the production is done with enough care, and even if the movie is made into a "scrambled bird's nest", consumers will still pay for it. His obsession with production technology is not only reflected in the current Hulk, which combines CGI animation and motion capture, but also in the miscellaneous editing special effects that appear all the time throughout the film: comic split screens, mask transitions, seamless Transitions, chromaticity leaks... To be fair, the use of these transitions has indeed brought inspiration to the editing of mainstream films in the future, and the inspiration is no less than Ang Lee's promotion of "4K+120 frames" in the past two years. But returning to the film itself, these editing special effects not only do not help the narrative rhythm and audio-visual expression of the film, but instead highlight the four dissimilarities of the film's text; and in the clips that should focus on showing special effects scenes, the fancy transitions are more likely to make the audience feel play. Ang Lee's willfulness made "Hulk" go up and down in the market that year. The cost of 132 million US dollars finally earned only about 240 million at the global box office, and it also received numerous bad reviews from mainstream media. Ang Lee almost bid farewell to the film industry because of this. Fortunately, he returned to the field of feature films in time. The success of "Brokeback Mountain" and "Lust and Caution" proved that he is still the light of Chinese in the film industry. However, the success of Marvel's superhero movies seems to have brought excitement to Ang Lee. In addition, the stream-of-consciousness fantasy film "The Fantastic Drifting of Teenage Pi", which uses a lot of CG special effects, has created a new high in the box office reputation in his work history. It is mistakenly believed that cutting-edge film and television production technology is the kingly way to dominate the film market. Facing the fiasco at the box office of "Billy Lynn's Halftime Battle", a 4K+120-frame-blessed drama, he still doesn't regret it, and wants to pass "Gemini Man" to test whether 4K+120 frames can give old themes, The new market vitality of the script.
Obviously, Ang Lee has also half-estimated the success laws of Hollywood and even the world's mainstream movies-sophisticated production can only complement each other with careful content. It is also a comic-themed movie, not to mention the subsequent cosmic series movies, it is more a single-player movie, and the "The Incredible Hulk" restarting the "Hulk" theme is not very good at the box office, far worse than the "Iron Man" and "Iron Man" of the same year. There are two versions of the "Spider-Man" series before and after, although "The Incredible Hulk" has a more personally influential Edward Norton and more explosive CG special effects. Films such as "Iron Man" and "Spider-Man" can make people remember not only the dazzling special effects scenes, but also the classic plot characters, strong memory settings and vivid characters. Based on these three indicators, the investment in the creation of IP for Marvel superhero movies in recent years has not decreased but increased, and the upgrade of technology is mainly to serve them. Even without the blessing of cutting-edge technology, Hollywood has such powerful works as "Joker". The success or failure of countless commercial blockbusters at home and abroad over the years more or less reflects a rule: the dazzling technical effects are updated, and the core content of the wonderful content is hard to buy. It is impossible for Li An to understand such a law, he may just not believe it for a while. Recently, the new domestic film "Youth as a Teenager" was also released, which not only received rave reviews, but also received a box office of 200 million in the first weekend of its release. Thinking that Ang Lee, who has frequently overdrafted his reputation in Hollywood, is likely to return to the Chinese movie market, I wonder if Director An is interested in watching this movie to find out what kind of content and works this market needs?
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