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Xu Zheng's new movie "Reverse Life" will be released on August 5. It tells the story of Gao Zhilei, played by Xu Zheng, who was laid off by a large factory and became a delivery man. This is similar to "Catching Dolls", which tells the story of a couple played by Shen Teng and Ma Li who failed to raise their eldest son in wealth and decided to play the role of poor people to educate their younger son. Both movies propose positive values ​​by reflecting social anxiety. But the paths of the two movies are different, which also leads to different reputations of the two movies. From the current situation, Xu Zheng may have made a mistake, while Shen Teng took advantage of the comedy curve. The same is to let ordinary people spend money to watch "rich people" play "poor people". Xu Zheng chose to give a counterattack directly, while Shen Teng chose to raise children in a roundabout way, pretending to be poor to raise children, which is extremely absurd. Obviously, judging from the response of netizens on social media, the latter is more in line with the expectations of most audiences. On Xiaohongshu, many netizens are looking forward to absurd messages such as "I am 40 years old, but my parents haven't told me the truth yet, but I can wait".

One netizen even commented directly: "After Xu Zheng's movie, the audience is left with the self-doubt and disappointment of 'You said I can cry because I'm hungry, but can I really do it?', while after Shen Teng's movie, the audience is left with the mental balance of 'I said you can't do it, and you see you really can't do it, and you can't do it no matter what.' By the way, you can also find opportunities to continue discussing with people around you 'what exactly is the right way to do it'."

If we look at it from this perspective, then the latter has much more room for discussion. One is about a career counterattack, and the other is about raising a child with a healthy diet. Whichever one can win more resonance will win the box office.

Both films revolve around hot social topics, using issues that currently make many people anxious as entry points, and then hope to use the films to help everyone move towards a positive direction.

Moreover, the main audiences who like to watch this type of film overlap to a large extent, and may attract audiences between the 1970s and 1990s, and even extend to those born after 1995.

Although the beginning seems similar, the current situation is completely different.

It is obvious that Xu Zheng's "Reverse Life" has miscalculated from the selection of materials to the presentation. It has been questioned before it was released. Although Shen Teng's "Catching Dolls" has polarized reviews, there are still many people who like to watch it. It can be said that it caters to the public in a clever way.

01

Different values, is it a good idea or a bad idea?

The reason why two films of similar types can have completely different interpretations is because the main creative teams of the films have differences in many aspects, such as the construction of values ​​and possible post-production presentation effects.

As the leading actors, Xu Zheng and Shen Teng were also compared with the audience along with the movie.

In terms of the way of presenting values, Xu Zheng's "Reverse Life" is more direct and hits the theme concisely and directly; while Shen Teng's "Catching Dolls" chooses to convey its values ​​in an absurd way of "layer by layer of nesting dolls".

In the movie "Reverse Life", Xu Zheng chose to use the protagonist's life as the thread, and concisely portrayed the protagonist's process from retrograde to counterattack, directly conveying the values ​​​​contained in it to the audience.

Moreover, the film is presented from the perspective of "life is like a play, a play is like life", which directly conveys the values ​​that the film wants to express. Netizens who can accept such values ​​may feel that it is "to the point and hits the heart".

In contrast, in "Catching Dolls", Shen Teng chose to express his values ​​through "layering, playing a rich man and pretending to be poor to raise babies", nesting the values ​​he wanted to convey layer by layer, from radical to conciliatory.

This also makes the audience feel that there is a sense of progression, bit by bit, and getting deeper and deeper to understand the point he wants to convey.

The couple played by Shen Teng and Ma Li "acting to be poor" in the film has a "play within a play" feeling. After the film is over, everyone feels that they have just watched a farce, but in fact the point of view has already been presented.

Although it cannot be said that Xu Zheng's "straightforward" way of expressing values ​​is outdated, but relatively speaking, Shen Teng's approach is more "dramatic" and "absurd", and is actually more in line with the audience's current mainstream aesthetics and the public's emotional expectations.

The two people's different approaches also achieved completely different effects. Xu Zheng's "Reverse Life" made the audience fall into self-doubt, while Shen Teng's "Catching Dolls" allowed the audience to achieve self-adjustment of their mentality.

The effect Xu Zheng wanted to achieve and his original purpose was to encourage the audience to find hope in the face of decadence and despair, to face it with a more optimistic attitude, to live on tenaciously, and thus regain success.

However, due to the overly straightforward presentation and the lack of universality, what he brought to the audience became "Just because you say I can, does that mean I can really do it?"

Falling into endless self-doubt and obvious psychological gap may be the feeling that most netizens will experience.

On the other hand, for Shen Teng, everyone is watching the movie just to watch an absurd event, or just to feel a fun, and this approach is obviously more likely to arouse the audience's interest.

So after the movie ended, some netizens commented that what Shen Teng brought to the audience was not self-doubt and disappointment, but a balanced mentality of "I told you you can't do it, and you see you really can't do it, and you can't do it no matter what", and he might continue to discuss with others "how to make it".

There is room for discussion in the story, and the audience also has the desire to express themselves.

Because the different ways of presenting values ​​lead to different effects, the current comments and reputation of the two are also very different.

Perhaps it is because Xu Zheng’s expression of values ​​in "Reverse Life" is too straightforward, which makes the audience fall into endless self-doubt after watching the movie.

Some netizens even strongly criticized the movie as soon as the trailer came out, saying that they would definitely not go to the cinema to watch it. "A group of people who live a wealthy life are performing the story of the poor, and then presenting it to the poor, telling them that life is full of hardships and that they must work hard, while those rich people can steadily earn box office revenue. This feeling is really hard to accept."

A large number of ordinary people also began to express their opinions. For example, a food delivery boy said, "Xu Zheng is acting, I am real. It is better to look at yourself in the mirror than to go to the cinema to watch him!"

Shen Teng's way of conveying his values ​​is very tactful and humorous, so it allows the audience to achieve a mental balance.

Some netizens even expressed their hope that when they wake up one day, their father will become a rich man.

Although both films criticize current social ills, it is obvious that watching an individual's breakthrough and counterattack is far less likely to arouse the audience's interest and resonance than watching the collapse of the established class.

02

Xu Zheng vs. Shen Teng, the real content is not as good as the false surface?

In fact, Xu Zheng has had many well-recognized works before, such as "Lost in Thailand" and "Dying to Survive", which were both very successful in both word-of-mouth and box office, and the values ​​they conveyed were also accepted and recognized by the public.

Netizens summarized: In the movie "Lost in Thailand", everyone originally thought that the "囧之旅" was a funny and hilarious journey of sarcasm towards the "grassroots" by the "elites", but unexpectedly, at the end of the film it was the "elites" who were awakened by a word from the "grassroots" and instantly gained enlightenment.

Some fans also said that what "Dying to Survive" wants to convey is that countless little people like the ones in the film are struggling to survive in the tide of the times, while trying their best not to lose their souls. This moved many viewers after watching it, and they exclaimed, "Finally, there is a movie that allows us to see the times, see kindness, and see hope."

The trilogy of films created by Yan Fei and Peng Damo, when it comes to talking about money and status, each of them can accurately grasp the point that people desire most in the current era, and knead it back and forth...

For example, "The Richest Man in Xihong City" is about "getting rich overnight".

The movie shows a seemingly absurd and impossible plot, but in fact it discusses the clash between the rich and the poor, and the good and evil of human nature beneath money and desire. The setting of "getting rich overnight" is packaged as a "billion challenge", which is extremely ironic in the context of the times.

"Charlotte's Troubles" was an overnight hit.

A netizen once commented: It is a time travel, followed by a review of the popular culture wave of that year and a new choice in life. It discusses cherishing the present and cherishing the people in front of us.

When the film was released, themes such as "Revisiting the Road of Youth" and "Painful Youth" were still popular, so this film happened to resonate with many people, and led to more thoughts on life, love, and friendship.

In "Catching Dolls", the story starts out rich, but the children play the poor characters.

This movie also discusses more about the problem of excessive "pushing" of children by the original families in educating them, which is even more ironic today when the competitive pressure is gradually increasing and anxiety is easy to arise.

It can be said that each film hits the pain points of the times.

Although both of them have created many excellent works that reflect contemporary issues in the past, their two new works are now meeting in the summer season, and they will inevitably be compared with each other's works, or with their own previous works. From the current perspective, it seems that Xu Zheng's new film is facing greater controversy...

Some people spoke out and put forward other opinions on "Reverse Life", saying that it is not that scary for programmers to be laid off, and we should not create anxiety. The movie only shows a part of the people, and in reality, even if programmers are laid off, they will not live as miserably as in the movie.

Therefore, this has also attracted doubts from netizens. Some netizens bluntly said that the online rhythm was too obvious. Such a tricky angle of "not watching rich people play poor people" must have been criticized.

But we will have to wait until "Reverse Life" is released to see the quality of the finished film.

So far, one very strange thing is that these are obviously movies about rich people playing poor people, and they are watched by similar audiences. Xu Zheng worked so hard and put so much thought into creating a surreal movie, but it cannot capture the hearts of the public as much as Shen Teng's movie, which is full of loopholes on the surface and fake and contrived at the core.

Perhaps it was Xu Zheng's overly straightforward presentation that distorted the sense of reality he wanted to convey, while Shen Teng's superficial presentation left room for public discussion, thus creating different emotional resonances and triggering different viewing experiences.