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By Han Haoyue According to data from the film analysis platform Maoyan Professional Edition, the single-day box office on July 16 reached 215 million yuan; since July 13, the single-day box office has exceeded 200 million yuan for four consecutive days, including the single-day box office on the weekends of July 13 and 14, which exceeded 300 million yuan. As of July 16, the summer box office exceeded 4.6 billion yuan.

The total box office of the 2023 summer season (June 1 to August 31) was 20.619 billion yuan, which was considered the "strongest summer season in history". Five movies, including "All or Nothing", "She's Vanishing", "The First Part of the Gods", "The Octagonal Cage", and "30,000 Miles from Chang'an", became the most eye-catching works. However, the top two movies in the box office, "All or Nothing" and "She's Vanishing", while winning high box office, also attracted great controversy, and the phenomenon of "reputation and box office inversion" has not been resolved.

This year's summer season is likely to replicate last year's summer season. The film "The Silence" ranked first, while making a lot of money at the box office, also had a "reputation and box office upside down" performance; "The Silence" is a crime and suspense drama, involving elements such as bullying, sexual assault, domestic violence, and revenge. It is indeed a breakthrough in terms of scale, but it is too eager to "focus on catching up with social hot topics", and the story framework and plot reveal a sense of staleness and piling up, which makes its score not high.

If the 2023 summer season is dominated by social topic films and suspense films, then this year's summer season is a reinforcement of the same period last year. "The Silence" pays more attention to the use of social issues than "All or Nothing" and "Gone Girl". The forced integration of multiple topics has led to the film's excessive tendency to "short video" expression, and the intention of relying on "strong typification" to occupy the market is obvious. This is probably because the previous "big sales" of similar films have led the producers into a cognitive misunderstanding, thinking that as long as the plot is a little more bizarre and the picture is a little more bloody, the audience will definitely buy it. In fact, this is overdrawing the audience's curiosity and consumption enthusiasm for this type of work.

As a comedy, "Catching Dolls" has not stepped out of the routine creation of "Happy Twist", but compared with "Silent Killing", "Catching Dolls" has more capital to become the leader of the summer season. It superimposes the highlights and selling points of "rich people pretending to be poor + family chicken baby + educational reflection + "The Truman Show", and is also a typological upgrade of comedy films, and the feeling of "strong typology" is overwhelming. However, because of the good presentation of plot setting, tragic core, actor performance, life texture, etc., "Catching Dolls" is more sincere, and the power of the box office in the later stage is more worth looking forward to.

"Strong typification" is not a shortcoming, it is an inevitable phenomenon for the film market to enter a period of rapid and high-quality development. However, the premise for "strong typification" to continue to have box office appeal is that it must be supported by a large number of excellent works that can stand the test of time. If you only use "strong typification" as a signboard and do a one-time deal, it won't be long before the audience loses interest in works that only use genres to talk about. Only by constantly adding to the quality of content can the golden period have long-term appeal and provide a soil for the growth of movies, especially domestic films.

Although the summer season is gaining momentum, we should look at it rationally. After all, before the release of "Silent Killing", the film market had been silent for a long time, which made people wonder whether the audience had lost enough enthusiasm for watching movies. Although the box office has exceeded 200 million yuan for many consecutive days, this is not a particularly optimistic number. After all, Chinese films once set a record of 1.459 billion yuan in a single day during the Spring Festival, and the 2023 summer season also had a record of more than 500 million yuan in box office for two consecutive days. The current summer season results are likely to have a lot to do with the release of the suppressed demand for watching movies in the early stage. Whether the entire summer season can hand in a good answer sheet depends on the efforts of the newly released films in the middle and late stages of the season.

Past experience shows that the formation of the golden movie season does not rely on a specific style of work. When the Spring Festival season has changed from a single family-friendly season to a season that can accommodate a variety of works such as costume films, science fiction, fantasy, suspense, and romance, there is no need to tie other seasons to a certain style of work. A rich and diverse selection of works that can withstand the scrutiny of the audience can support a valuable season. I hope that after the end of this year's summer season, we will see real highlights and breakthroughs.

(The author is a cultural critic)

Copyright Statement: This article only represents the author’s personal views and does not represent the position of Economic Observer.