news

한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina

Art comes from life, and people in the film industry are recently proving this with their own actions.

On July 16, the comedy film "Catching Dolls" starring Shen Teng and Ma Li was released. The box office on the first day exceeded 600 million (including pre-sales) and has now reached 1.15 billion.

Industry organizations predict that the total box office of "Catching Dolls" will be 3.7 billion. If achieved, it will surpass "Hot as Hell" and become the annual box office champion.

But no one expected that the real comedy and drama would take place outside the cinema.

On the first day of its release, the famous director Lu Chuan’s Toutiao account angrily criticized the film, even calling it a "cultural tragedy."

Not long after, Lu Chuan’s company issued a statement saying: the account was stolen, and the comments were not his own and have been deleted.

However, the platform did not want to take the blame and immediately clarified: the content posted by the user "Filmmaker Lu Chuan" at 11:13 on July 16, 2024 has been deleted by the user himself, and the information of his login mobile device, posting mobile device, and deleting mobile device are all the same.

The real-life version of "low-quality, highly alkaline comedy" has thus been formed.

Shen Teng and Happy Twist must be silently thanking their peers for the traffic they provided.

If "Catch the Dolls" continues to be popular, it will not only save the summer season, but also save them.

The strongest combination to defeat Chen Sicheng

Forced to extend the life of Happy Twist

This year's summer Chinese movies are still full of cliches.

"The Silent War", produced by Chen Sicheng, was released on July 3 and has become the first movie to break the 1 billion yuan mark after the Spring Festival.

However, the Douban score of "The Silent Killer" dropped from 6.9 to 6.3.

The problem is the same as last year's "She's Missing," which was produced by Chen Sicheng: there are too many routines.

Someone summarized it as follows: Taking real social events as the basis of the story, various horror, suspense, and thriller elements are superimposed together through strong visual and sound effects to increase drama and impact.

Some netizens even complained about "The Silent Killer" like this: every five minutes can be edited separately and regarded as a paid short drama.

but,"Catching Dolls", which has reversed "The Silent Killer" at the box office, has a more sophisticated routine.

The entire story framework is exactly the "high-concept setting" that they are best at.

"Charlotte's Troubles" is about time travel; "The Shameful Iron Fist" is about the body swap between men and women; "The Richest Man in Xihong City" is about spending 10 billion in one month.

The setting of "Catching Dolls" is: a chicken-baby version of "The Truman Show".

In order to implement this high-concept setting well, the internal and external lineup of "Catching Dolls" can be said to be the strongest combination.

Starring Shen Teng and Ma Li, one is the highest-grossing leading actor in Chinese film history, and the other is the first female leading actor in Chinese film history to have a box office of 20 billion yuan, both titles newly earned this year.

They are not handsome men or beautiful women, their acting skills are not god-like, they do not have big capital as their backing, and there is little traffic hype, but they have reached the top. Even the movie "Lone Moon" starring them, which has a Douban score of only 6.6, has grossed 3.1 billion yuan, which is enough to show their incredible audience appeal.

The 100% "Teng content" + "Shen Ma combination" is undoubtedly a market reassurance.

In addition to the leading actors, another strongest combination of "Catching Dolls" is the director and screenwriter: Yan Fei and Peng Damo.

Yan Fei and Peng Damo are the main contributors to Shen Teng and Happy Twist's success. The script of "Charlotte's Troubles" they wrote in 2012 was adapted into Happy Twist's first movie three years later. As a result, "Charlotte's Troubles" grossed 1.4 billion yuan at the box office, beating Xu Zheng's "Lost in Hong Kong" head-on.

Shen Teng and Ma Li, who were not well-known at the time, suddenly became box office hits, and Happy Twist also successfully listed on the New Third Board at the end of 2015 by riding on the momentum of the movie.

In 2018, Yan Fei and Peng Damo wrote and directed "The Richest Man in Xihong City", which raked in 2.5 billion yuan at the box office.

In other words, their collaboration with Shen Teng and the "Shen Ma Combination" has never failed.

The market has been looking forward to their combination, but the wait lasted for 6 years.

Here we can summarize the buffs of "Catching Dolls": cooperation again after many years, "Shen Ma combination", director Yan Fei and Peng Damo, the latest copy of Xihong City universe, weak rivals in the same period...

This is also why a series of well-known film and television companies such as Wanda Film, Happy Twist Pictures, Alibaba Pictures, China Film, and Maoyan Pictures appeared among the investors - investing in "Catching Dolls" is almost certain to be a business that makes money.

Especially for Happy Twist, although it is not the largest investor in "Catching Wows", "Catching Wows" can be said to be their life-saving work.

Happy Twist was once the number one comedy brand in China, but in recent years it has almost become a machine for producing bad movies. For example, its last movie, "Super Family", only had a Douban score of 3.7, and one popular review read "like sitting on pins and needles, like a fishbone stuck in the throat, like a thorn in the back".

With the release of "Catch the Doll", their reputation finally stopped collapsing.

"Catch the Dolls", three tricks to attract Chinese audiences

The success of "Catching Dolls" is not only due to the strongest combination on and off the stage, but the routine also played a key role.

There is no good or bad routine, routines are indispensable in all walks of life.

The difference is that if it succeeds, it is because the routine has won people's hearts since ancient times; if it fails, it is because of the routine that makes it successful and the routine that fails.

The main criticism of Happy Twist in recent years is that it is "too formulaic."

Although some movies are not produced by Happy Twist, as long as Happy Twist artists participate or direct, most audiences will think they are Happy Twist movies, so much so that they have an increasingly deep perception that they are "too routine."

The most serious trick is the "fraudulent publicity" of some movies. It is obvious that Shen Teng is just a guest star, but people mistakenly think that Shen Teng is the leading actor.

Although both of them use the same tactics, the Shen-Ma combination plus Yan Fei and Peng Damo are obviously more powerful.

Although the core of their routines remains unchanged, they are always constantly updated.The primary goal of a comedy is to be funny, and a higher goal based on that is to create memes that can spread on the Internet.

In "Charlotte's Troubles", there is a joke in every few sentences, and the three words "Ma Dongmei" can make an ordinary old man famous; in "The Richest Man in Xihong City", she single-handedly changed "Wolong Fengchu" from a positive meaning to a negative one.

In "Catching Dolls", we can also see that they are working hard to create jokes. For example, Gao Qiqiang jokes, Lu Xun jokes, the foreigner who claims to love Chinese culture gave himself a Chinese name "Ma Peter", Ma Li's obsession with the orange lychee pattern of Hermès Kelly, and the scenes of "Qiuya Road", "Dongmei Bridge" and "Wang Duoyu Stadium" that echo the universe of Xihong City.

Another trick that is just as important as creating memes is to incorporate stories and jokes into hot topics.

From "Charlotte's Troubles" and "The Richest Man in Xihong City" to "Catching Dolls", the core of each is directly related to wealth and poverty, money, success studies, and cool articles. They revolve around topics that ordinary people often fantasize about, such as how to make money, spend money, and inherit family property.

Especially the topic of "Catching Dolls", although it is still nonsense, it is not entirely fantastic.

In the movie, the rich people played by Shen Teng and Ma Li deliberately created a poor family environment to raise their children in poverty in order to prevent them from becoming the second generation of rich people who are lazy and uneducated. In the real world, Wang Sicong did not find out that his family was quite wealthy until he was 16 years old, and the son of the founder of Spicy Prince thought that his family was in debt since he was a child. The story of "Catching Dolls" also has a bit of art coming from life.

In addition to money, "Catching Dolls" has also captured one of the most talked-about topics in today's society, "education". The combination of the two is more eye-catching and further amplifies traffic.

On the one hand, it hits the hearts of parents who push their children too hard. Although the form and means of pushing their children too hard are different from those in the movies, the mood and purpose of pushing their children too hard are basically the same, that is, education is for money.

On the other hand, what is more important is that it hit the psychological defenses of many value fighters.

The top popular film review on Douban reads, "This is not a comedy, it's a horror movie."

Many negative reviews also made the same accusation: "Almost all the laughs are based on deceiving children." After these people put themselves in the perspective of the children in the movie, they could not laugh and only felt terrified.

Creating controversial points in this way is their tried and tested tactic.

The most typical example before was "Charlotte's Troubles", which had an initial Douban score of 8.5, but was later dragged down to 7.5 due to many negative reviews. The main reason was that some people believed that the content was not correct and was full of middle-aged men's fantasies.

However, controversy means traffic. As long as you know that your merits outweigh your flaws, it is not a bad thing to reveal your flaws and be chased and attacked by others.

The routine "Catch the Doll",

Why did it become the savior of the summer season?

On the first day of the preview, someone wrote a bad review after watching the film: This is a movie that sentences Happy Twist to death.

Although the reason was not given, Brother Dao guessed that this was either because of the value problem of the content, or because he thought it was too cliché, or because he felt it failed to tickle his funny bone.

But from beginning to end, there was no death penalty, only savior.

"Catching Dolls" had a screening share of 29.8% on the first day of preview, which is much higher than the movies that have been officially released. It took nearly 500 million yuan in box office in just 3 days of preview, leaving the rest far behind.

Such performance not only saved Happy Twist, but also saved this summer season and even this year's film market.

Since the beginning of this year, there has only been one hit movie in China, "Hot and Spicy." Since the Spring Festival, apart from the currently popular "Silent Killer" and "Catch the Dolls," no other movie has even grossed over 1 billion yuan.

When it comes to the performance of the summer season, the gap is even more obvious. In July last year, the national box office was 8.7 billion yuan; this year, until July 15, the day before the release of "Catch the Doll", the national box office in July just broke 2 billion yuan.

How can the extremely clichéd "Catching Dolls" become the savior?

On the surface, it is because the audience loves to watch comedies, and the number of people who watch for fun far exceeds the number of value warriors.

In fact, in today's budget-conscious world, most people's consumption is paying for "certainty".

In China, comedy movies emerge in endlessly, but there are only a handful of comedians who can truly make people sure that their movies will bring laughter and make them pay for them.

Shen Teng's performance, with 100% "Teng content", is the biggest certainty for "having fun".

In the current comedy field, Shen Teng is undoubtedly the one who can best amuse audiences across the country.

In the movie "Hello, Li Huanying" two years ago, many theatergoers shared online that when Shen Teng first appeared in the movie, he was holding a book and covering his face. He did nothing but stood there, standing normally. Although his face was not shown, everyone knew it was Shen Teng, and then they all laughed.

Perhaps the only actor in China who can match his certainty is Wu Jing.

In addition, the certainty of the film market no longer depends on the actors, but on the movies.

For example, for proven movies such as "Wolf Warrior", "The Wandering Earth", "Nezha" and "Fengshen", the audience can also largely determine the performance of their sequels: they may be amazing or mediocre, but it is unlikely to be a shameless money-making movie.

Certainty does not come out of thin air.

Regardless of whether you are playing a routine, whether it is a funny routine, a patriotic routine, or a routine for the rise of Chinese comics, you should at least have this determination before filming:

Most people will not feel regret for wasting 2 hours after watching it.

The picture comes from the Internet. Please contact us to delete it if there is any infringement.