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Produced by Huxiu Youth Culture Group

Author | Mu Zitong

Edited and drawn by Zha Zha County

This article was first published on Huxiu’s youth content public account “那个NG” (ID: huxiu4youth). Here, we present the faces, stories and attitudes of today’s young people.

"I thought it was a big one, but it turned out to be a huge lump."

After watching Wuershan’s new movie "Under the Alien", I finally felt relieved.

As an adaptation of the popular Chinese comic book "Under One Person", it had aroused great expectations from the audience before its release. However, its reputation plummeted after its release.

It's not too bad, at least it's sincere enough for a popcorn movie, but as a comic book movie, it's very embarrassing:

Just like a fat person trying to get through the dimensional wall, his belly accidentally got stuck between the second and third dimensions.

Although I had a bad feeling during the trailer stage, out of trust in director Wuershan's "The Innate Counterattack of the Holy Body", I still expected a reversal in the feature film.

However, it turns out that "Under the Alien" is not "Investiture of the Gods", and the miracle did not happen:

The first third had my brows furrowed, the middle third had my toes digging into the ground, and the last third had me already beginning to wonder if I would be happier sitting here if I had never read the original work.

The conclusion is that it is highly unlikely. Because if I have not read the original comic, then what I will face is a domestic fantasy film that is too cliché.

The content includes the counterattack and growth of the loser male protagonist, the fancy magic battles, a large number of characters that appear one after another, and a lethal amount of SM and pornographic content.

There is no doubt that the film, which claimed to be faithful to the original in the early promotion stage, still made a lot of adaptations to the original.

There is nothing wrong with the adaptation itself. It does need to be changed from comics to movies.

Because the original work "Under One Person" is a long comic that has been serialized for seven years and has not yet been completed. The movie needs to explain the background clearly, explain the characters well, and complete a round of ups and downs and climaxes in more than two hours, so it is inevitable to excerpt and adapt it.

The setting of "Under One Person" is that in our seemingly ordinary world, there are a group of "different people" hidden. They can use and cultivate the mysterious human energy "Qi" to form various supernatural powers.

The protagonist Zhang Chulan inherited one of the most mysterious skills in the alien world, "Qi Body Origin", and in order to avoid being guilty of possessing a treasure, he had to hide his identity. However, with the theft of his grandfather's body and the appearance of the mysterious girl Feng Baobao, he was forced to get involved in the alien world and participate in the "Luotian Dajiao" to explore the truth of his life.

The movie version of "Under the Alien" selected the paragraph from the beginning of the comic to the "Luotian Dajiao". In the original work, this is a long appetizer. Its main function is to explain the background of the world, explain the bond between Zhang Chulan and Feng Baobao, establish Zhang Chulan's "unyielding" character, and pave the way for the climax of Luotian Dajiao.

Strictly speaking, this section does not have a climax with a sense of paragraph, so it needs to be adapted to create a story line that is more friendly to casual audiences.

But unexpectedly, after refining and concentrating, what we got was a version that "removed the essence and retained the dregs".

What is the essence of "Under One Person"? It is because the original author Mi Er is very good at telling stories. Not only is the foreshadowing wonderful, but he is also good at using small details to portray the characters. The group portraits are all wonderful, and the motivations are delicate and reasonable.

As for the dregs, they mainly consist of some vulgar plots.

For example, Feng Baobao and Zhang Chulan address each other as master and slave, and the method of teaching is called "training", and the names of the moves can be called a complete collection of pornographic techniques.

Another example is the villain "Bone Scraper" Xia He, who is naturally charming and has a skill that can arouse people's lust. She is the main supplier of peach blossoms in the early comics. However, her behavior of riding on the corpse of the protagonist's grandfather and speaking dirty words has been criticized by fans for being too explicit and sexualizing women.

However, these obscene jokes are mainly concentrated in the early stage of the comics, serving to accumulate popularity. After the popularity was consolidated in the middle and late stages, they basically disappeared.

However, the movie version of "Under the Alien" went the other way and deleted a lot of small details that portrayed the characters from the side, and the saved time was all spent on the not-so-clever original plot and the upgraded version of the vulgarity.

All the romantic plots that were glossed over in the original work were highlighted in red and bold, and presented in a more ugly and vulgar form.

In the original novel, the monkey rescued Zhang Chulan, but was hit by Xia He. After the poison entered his body, he was just tied up and waited for the poison to subside. In the movie, this scene was turned into a wretched dwarf spraying hot air on the female prisoner, and the camera was specially focused on the flushed and crazy face.

Zhang Chulan was kidnapped by the villain. In the comics, she was simply tied up, but in the movie version, a SM gag was stuffed into her.

The Hu father and son are controlled by Xia He, obsessed with lust and jealousy. In the original novel, it was just a fight, but the movie version spent a lot of time to let the father and son put on little white dresses and dance Swan Lake.

As if that wasn't enough, a specially created plot was created to take the cake, in which the brothers Xu San and Xu Si, who had a transcendent status in the original work, were controlled by Xia He, and staged a fawning infighting in front of their father's bedside.

The result is that the whole film is full of low-level original jokes that are forced to tickle the soles of the feet, as well as excessive concentration of "sexual explicitness", and it fails to tell a good story.

After deleting a lot of details, the characters naturally become thin, lose their internal logic, and their behavior routines and transitions become abrupt.

When the characters are not strong enough to support a full and complete story, in order to forcibly create a climax, the screenwriter chooses the easiest and most clumsy way - weakening the heroine.

So Feng Baobao, who was supposed to be the best in the game, ended up being beaten the whole time, and was finally saved by Zhang Chulan's burst of energy.

For those who haven't read the original novel, what does this impact feel like? It's like reading "Grave Robbers' Chronicles" and suddenly discovering that the little brother is weak and helpless, and it's all thanks to Wu Xie that he can kill everyone.

It neither respects the original work nor makes a convincing adaptation. No wonder the "original fans" are so heartbroken and the audience with no basic knowledge can't get enough of it.

The final Douban score was 6.1 points, barely passing, and the market also gave an objective evaluation with money: after one week of release, the box office just exceeded 100 million.

But the poor quality of the film cannot be attributed to the director team’s lack of effort. Rather, it may be a problem of working too hard.

The production team probably didn’t expect “Under the Stranger” to be so coldly received, and they even felt a little aggrieved.

In an interview before the screening, Wuershan said: "I accept the judgment of all comic fans, but the premise is that everyone must watch this film before judging me. Don't judge me without watching the film first, otherwise it may not be very objective."

It can be seen that Director Wu himself is still very confident about the quality of the film, but unfortunately the feedback from the people is not satisfactory.

The "confidence" comes from the fact that a lot of money has been invested in the production. From the crazy production footage released before the screening, it can be seen that the production team is quite proud of this.

First of all, in terms of characters, we tried to restore them as much as possible. On the one hand, we invited "Jinguizi" Liu Chunyan, musician Chen Peter and others to play special roles, and on the other hand, we used realistic artificial prostheses to replicate images that do not exist in reality, such as "Lei Yanpao" Gao Ning.

In order to make the actors more immersed in the role, a "foreigner training camp" was held in advance to provide intensive training for the actors. Not only did they practice various martial arts such as snake boxing and Bajiquan, but they also taught students in accordance with their aptitude and provided personality training that fit the characters.

Hu Xianxu, who plays Zhang Chulan, was asked to do a talk show every day to cultivate a sense of comedy and humor. Li Wanda, who plays Feng Baobao, was asked to "keep silent" and not speak if possible.

Even the music, each character has his or her own exclusive appearance BGM.

Secondly, in terms of shooting methods, we continued to follow the old path of industrialized movies. First, we made dynamic storyboard action samples, and then actually shot according to the samples.

In order to "pursue a comic visual experience", the shooting method was specially innovated:

The film was shot with a single lens and no second camera was set up. Many fighting shots were shot with wide angles. The unconventional 16 and 14 mm lenses were used to create perspective distortion in the images. The actors' movements were wide-open and close, replicating the comic-style wide-angle shots.

In order to accurately grasp the rapid lens movement and frame rate changes, even CNC robotic arms were used to complete the control.

As for the "AI animation" that was used extensively in the flashback chapter, a special feature was dedicated to introducing it.

It is said that this is a technology that converts real shooting to AI. First, real shooting is done, then real people make animation copies, and finally AI style migration is performed to form an AI animation with a unified style.

The reason for doing this is to pay tribute to "two-dimensional comics".

Wuershan said that this technology deserves everyone's special attention in the cinema: "I think this is a very important technological breakthrough for the entire film industry."

However, putting in a lot of effort does not necessarily mean that the results will be excellent.

On the contrary, the more I learned about the behind-the-scenes production process, the more disappointed I felt after entering the theater: Why did I work so hard, but the result was like this?

It's hard to say whether it has a comic feel or not. What appears on the screen is an indescribable floating texture. It's too heavy to say it's from the second dimension, and too frivolous to say it's from the third dimension. The colorful and highly saturated special effects have a rustic buff, and the solid martial arts that the actors have trained hard are greatly weakened under the flying shots.

The highly restored image of Zhang Huaiyi, created with prosthesis, never appears clearly in the camera once throughout the entire film. All of it was turned into colorful AI animations using memory shots.

The BGM, with each player singing a part, makes the sound effects during the melee as chaotic as a DJ set in a nightclub.

The more I watched, the more I couldn't help but wonder, is such a presentation effect really worth the actors' hard work for half a year in advance?

In fact, audiences who are familiar with Wuershan can see that "Under the Strange Man" is completely replicating the successful experience of "Fengshen".

The same training camp, the same prosthetic modeling, the same hard training of martial arts, and the same shooting process.

These are the most praised strengths of "Fengshen" after its success, and are also the production principles that the Wuershan team is proud of.

Even the publicity and promotion has fully learned from the lessons learned from the "Fengshen" period.

The promotion and publicity of "Fengshen" adopted the traditional promotion and publicity mode in the early stage, and did not release behind-the-scenes materials such as the training camp. As a result, it led to low reputation before the release, which made fans feel very sad.

"Under the Alien" fully learned its lesson and began releasing behind-the-scenes footage one after another before its release, a high-density information bombardment that lasted for a month, vowing to make every audience member engrave two words in their minds before entering the theater - "hard work".

However, the success of "Investiture of the Gods" is also its failure. This time, "Under the Strange Man", which copied the experience of "Investiture of the Gods", stumbled again in publicity and promotion.

Why are the reputations of the two films so different when they use the same promotional strategy? Because an essential problem has been overlooked: the quality of the film itself.

If the quality of the feature film is good, such as "Investiture of the Gods", the behind-the-scenes production experience will certainly be talked about with great relish. But if the quality can't support the scene, who will care about the behind-the-scenes footage?

After all, no one can get into Tsinghua University or Peking University without hard work.

Except for idol talent shows, no one is willing to pay simply for "hard work".

"Efforts" will not win sympathy or box office, but may further restrict the film.

When you open the cast list, you will find that many names are quite familiar. Naran, Naer Naxi, Li Wanda, and several other female characters are all familiar faces in the Conferred God Training Camp.

They are relatively well matched to their respective roles, but not absolutely suitable. It is hard to say that there is no preference or selfishness.

Feng Baobao's casting for the film and TV series

The training camp model often takes up half a year of a young actor's most precious time, which means that the director must be worthy of the actor's efforts.

Therefore, "Under the Alien" became a big cake of roles, and every actor who participated in the training camp was given an equal share. Those who had roles continued to shoot as usual, and those who did not have roles could also create their own roles. Xia He and Liu Yanyan, who had less appearances in the original work, were given separate original plots.

The final showdown is even more Marvel-style, with everyone getting a chance to show up.

It only makes the main storyline of the original work suffer, as it becomes even more fragmented after being divided.

Casting of Feng Shayan in the movie and TV series

Therefore, the upset of "Under the Alien" is somewhat unexpected, but also reasonable. After all, the director is still trapped in "Investiture of the Gods".

But why did the production strategy that worked so well in "Fengshen" fail in "Under the Strange Man"?

Perhaps it’s because “Under the Aliens” didn’t really understand comic adaptation.

This is "a new cinematic language that comics bring to movies."

This is what Wuershan said when describing the shooting style of "Under the Alien".

It can be seen from the released production specials that he put a lot of effort into creating a comic-like film texture.

However, if audiences are looking for the comic texture when watching comic-adapted movies, why don’t they just read the comics?

Ultimately, audiences don’t need the comic texture that movies imitate.

What's more, AI animation cannot be said to have the sense of comics - anime readers are the group of people who are most sensitive to painting style, and AI paintings happen to be the most lacking in style.

The blind pursuit of "similarity in form" is precisely the biggest misunderstanding of "Under the Stranger".

Very stylish painting style丨"Spider-Man: Across the Universe"

In contrast, most successful comic adaptations on the market are similar in spirit rather than form.

If we really pursue resemblance in appearance and follow the comic style, I'm afraid few actors can endure this ordeal.

As we introduced in the previous Cowherd article, when the texture of comics enters the three-dimensional world, it is usually an aesthetic disaster.

No matter how handsome a face is, it may lose its appearance if it is paired with a 1:1 restored cartoon hairstyle.

The most criticized junior uncle in the film, Zhang Lingyu, has a long, rat-like face and an aloof and noble look of a handsome man. Every time he appears, he is so ugly that people want to close their eyes.

But the actor Wu Jiakai is actually not ugly, and he is a handsome guy in daily life. The only thing that ruins the show is the "comic texture".

For many successful comic adaptations, the audience is not even aware of their roots.

For example, "Midnight Diner" and "The Solitary Gourmet" are full of a solid three-dimensional sense of daily life.

The early "Meteor Garden", "Sex and the City" and "Feng Yun Xiong Ba Tian Xia" are more similar in spirit than in form.

"Take My Brother Away" and "Go Away, Tumor-kun" are both adapted from comics.

"Hikaru no Go", the highest-rated TV series on Douban in recent years, has undergone major changes, with the background changed from Japan to China, the protagonist changed from an elementary school student to a middle school student, and many original plots with local characteristics added, and it still received a high score of 8.6 points.

Because even though the shell has changed, the "god" has not changed. The bond between Xiaoguang and Sai is still strong, and the love of Go players for Go remains the same. This is the soul of "Hikaru no Go" that has touched countless readers.

Unfortunately, while pursuing "similarity in form", "Under the Stranger" failed to maintain the essence of "similarity in spirit".

It's like a parent who tries hard to understand his child, and after diligently studying three "Crayon Shin-chan" books, he confidently walks into the comic convention.

The whole film is full of superficial understanding and stereotypes of the two-dimensional world.

The main plot of the original work, which is about exploring oneself and growing up, has been simplified into a series of lame misunderstandings and heroes saving beauties, just like in old romance dramas.

The rebelliousness of the corpse driver Liu Yanyan was externalized by wearing dreadlocks, sucking on a pacifier, and wearing heavy smoky makeup.

The whole film is filled with rap, dirty talk, street dance, pornography and other seemingly young and fashionable elements, but in fact, this may not be "youth" but "perceived youth".

In comparison, it is the non-comic adaptation "Safe Evacuation from the 21st Century" released in the same period that has more "comic temperament".

The nonsensical passion and youthful innocence are the youth that anime readers are more familiar with.

What is really rare in comics is the stories that are unique to comics. Lines that might seem a little bit immature in serious movies and TV series are no longer out of place in comics, and the passionate plots are also possible because of comics.

The "comic temperament" composed of these unique features is born out of the secular world, but is lighter than reality. It carries the frivolity and self-confidence of youth, believing that nothing is difficult in the world and that tomorrow can be changed.

And this is what is most worth preserving at a time when good stories are scarce.