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In the hit movie "Safe Evacuation from the 21st Century", director Li Yang uses a creative and flashy form to present a sad story about growth, love, and human powerlessness.

In the film, Li Yang not only showed his wild imagination, but also presented the growth and transformation of a creator with unique style. From a "young and outstanding pilot" (Li Yang's online name at that time) who spent two years alone in front of a computer to create a 20-minute online animation "The Adventures of Li Xianji", to now spending five years with his "brainwave-matched" partners to create a gorgeous, bizarre and fantastic real-life cinema feature film, Li Yang, who had been "missing" for a long time, returned with many expectations and lived up to everyone's expectations.

Poster for "Safe Evacuation from the 21st Century"

The film tells the story of three boys chosen by fate on the unknown planet K, who can travel back and forth 20 years into the future by sneezing. Faced with a terrifying conspiracy to destroy the world, they have nothing but pure stupidity and single-digit combat power. The "King Bomb" brothers, who look like adults but have extraordinary minds, prevent the world and individuals from "going bad" in their repeated trips through time and space.

Audiences who have watched the film have gradually come to their senses from the initial "so crazy" evaluation, and the hidden plot codes about the timeline stream of consciousness have been interpreted from various angles.

Poster for "Safe Evacuation from the 21st Century"

Audiences who walk into the cinema without any expectations are likely to be surprised by the director's wild imagination. This expression method breaks all the established rules of movies and "explodes" the pictures and plots, making the high-speed plot crackle like exploding fireworks. Those who have seen Li Yang's works can see his always burning romance and extremes, and can also read the pain and regrets that have never been eliminated.

Li Xianji traveled through the bad future and came to the 21st century

In Li Yang's movies, the protagonist is always someone who tries his best to travel through time to change something. In "The Adventures of Li Xianji", Li Xianji beats through the game again and again, wanting to go back to the day he met Wang Qian; in "Bad Future", Sun Bai split his body in half and risked his life to get a "pardon" for his first love Zheng Xiaoyan. In "Safe Evacuation from the 21st Century", the "small-minded" Wang Zha, with his best brother, travels between the past and the future to protect the beautiful future of his beloved girl.

Stills from "Safe Evacuation from the 21st Century"

Li Yang said that he always wanted to change something because his growth in reality always seemed to be accompanied by the disappointment of others.

"I have been disappointing people since I was a child. Now in my 20s, I have done many disappointing things. Whether it is people who are close to me or people who are a little distant, I have almost disappointed their expectations every time."

Born in 1981, Li Yang has loved watching anime and playing video games since he was a child. His parents sent him to Germany to study computer science, but he skipped classes all day to date, and eventually dropped out and returned home. In 2004, he studied in the director training class of the Animation School of the Beijing Film Academy, but he was still lazy and didn't attend classes much. Until 2007, his old computer configuration was not enough to support him playing games, but he could still use AE to make animations. Two years later, he saw that the Beijing Film Academy's Animation Academy Award could win a prize of 300,000 yuan. Inspired by the prize money, he completed his 20-minute debut with one computer.

But he didn’t get the money or the award. The director of the Academy Award-winning film “Hit, Hit a Big Watermelon” that year was called Jiaozi, who 10 years later made the highest-grossing Chinese animation film to date, “Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World”. Unwilling to give up at the time, Li Yang uploaded his short film “The Adventures of Li Xianji” to Tudou.com under the name of “young and outstanding pilot”. It was played more than 10 million times and was praised by netizens as the best domestic animation in 2009. It also won the Best Animation Award at the 2010 Tudou Film Festival. In the past 15 years, more than 115,000 people on Douban have given “The Adventures of Li Xianji” an average score of 8.7.

The Douban score of "The Adventures of Li Xianji" is as high as 8.7

Li Yang sold the copyright of the animation for half a year's salary, and two years later, it was made into a live-action movie. Li Yang was in charge of the animation, and the director of the live-action part was Guo Fan. Guo Fan later worked hard for many years and took up the banner of revitalizing Chinese science fiction movies. The box office of the two "The Wandering Earth" movies has reached 8.7 billion. Although Tudou.com, which made Li Yang shine, is gone now, its founder Wang Wei later founded Light Chaser Animation and has been a screenwriter, and is still the most staunch force in China's animation film industry today.

When Li Yang talks about the ups and downs brought by "The Adventures of Li Xianji" today, he still thinks it is an important driving point in his life. When he was not selected at the beginning, he felt particularly disappointed. When it was posted online and seen by a lot of people, Li Yang was a little "floating" for a while: "I loved surfing the Internet at that time. I would answer questions from people, but after answering for a while, I started to hate myself. I found myself becoming a know-it-all. When I answered too many questions, I spoke in a pretentious tone. Even when I was making the next film, I began to doubt my own personality."

The Internet has made grassroots creators like Li Yang more widely known, and has also given Li Yang, who is always lazy, the motivation to "quickly improve". The praise of "genius director" and "the best animation" made Li Yang start to examine himself. Because he was afraid of "disappointing people again", Li Yang urged himself to "learn quickly, improve quickly, so that people will not be disappointed in me".

In 2013, Li Yang released his first live-action short film "Bad Future", and this time he changed his stage name to "Bad Pilot". On the day of the start of filming, Li Yang shouted "Start" to everyone, and everyone was stunned - they had never seen a director who couldn't use a walkie-talkie.

"Bad Future" Douban score 8.2

"Bad Future" was invested 500,000 yuan and filmed in 10 days. Although it seems simple and crude now, its unconventional creativity and strong and unique spiritual core still conquered many audiences. The unbridled and ingenious lens language made many netizens call it the new power of Chinese-language films, and also made his future male lead Zhang Ruoyun completely conquered by Li Yang's talent through this movie.

In an interview, Zhang Ruoyun said that it was through Bad Future that he saw Li Yang's ability as a film director: "It was obvious that the filming of Bad Future was very cramped, and there was no way to correct it through reshoots after filming, but this film still accomplished everything the director wanted to express."

"Bad Future" attracted the attention of Youku's "Young Director Support Program" that year, and Li Yang also announced plans to shoot a feature film after the short film.

I know I've become bad.

In the second decade of the 21st century, Chinese-language films have flourished, and peers who once worked with Li Yang have become increasingly successful, and the ranks of young filmmakers are also growing. "I thought everyone was just idling away like me, until I saw the premiere of Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World, and I was shocked. I wondered how people could grow and improve at that speed."

At first, Li Yang comforted himself that Jiaozi was just an exception, but later he saw more of his former partners making great strides forward at a level that shocked him, such as Sun Haipeng, the director of Young Lion, and Guo Fan, the director of the Wandering Earth series... "It turns out that such progress is the norm for human beings, and I am the one who is lagging behind."

Li Yang joked that he was "very familiar with digesting disappointment in himself", but at the same time he thanked these fellow creators for the strength they gave him. When talking about these people, Li Yang said that he once again clearly felt that "time seemed to be rushing past me", and "I found that my impression of them was still stuck in the time when Tudou.com existed."

Stills from "Safe Evacuation from the 21st Century"

Time flies, and Li Yang's script has become the "bottom of the box" inventory of the film company for many years. In fact, the script of "Safe Evacuation from the 21st Century" was completed in 2015, "but at that time no one could understand it, and didn't know why the logic was set up that way." It was not until 2019 that Zhang Ruoyun saw the script, "He completely understood it at the time, and knew what I was talking about in 2015. After he came in, the project had the opportunity to move forward."

On Douban, the entry for "Safe Evacuation from the 21st Century" was created in 2016. In the discussion thread of its group, every year someone would ask "Can I see this film this year?" Later, someone even asked, "Can I still see it in the 21st century?"

It took Li Yang ten years from finishing the script to actually starting the project and then releasing it. This is just like the two and a half years he spent making a 20-minute short film before, which is not a very cost-effective thing. Li Yang also knows that he has always been "out of touch with the times", and Li Xianji's "time difference" has been playing on him for so many years.

Poster of The Adventures of Li Xianji

After all, at the beginning, he studied computer science, which was a field with "limitless money". So much so that during a long period of "precarious years", Li Yang said that he envied those programmers who were paid high salaries. He also worked in the game industry, which had a bright future, but as a worker, Li Yang's only achievement was "becoming very good friends with everyone and forming a clock-in alliance. As long as one person arrived early every day, everyone could have a happy week."

This experience became Li Yang's most interesting memory of work. "When I was young, I always thought I would meet more interesting people and encounter more interesting things. At this age, I feel that it is difficult. Maybe the most interesting partner and the most loving girl in your life have disappeared from your life and you will never meet them again."

Because life is hard to be interesting, Li Yang wants to make the movie more interesting. He said, "I am afraid to tell such a story in my own voice, so I always want to hide behind something so that I can be open and honest, so I have to put on an unrealistic shell for them."

Stills from "Safe Evacuation from the 21st Century"

As for the always fascinating romance in the movies, Li Yang said that is exactly what he longs for, "I really want to be that kind of person, or I used to be that kind of person." But because passionate love requires too much life energy, "it's like you are constantly burning all your senses to make up for the grandeur of love, but the structure of the human body determines that you can't keep burning your energy. As a result, the more impressive the love, the shorter it will be."

"Safe Evacuation from the 21st Century" premiere

After watching "Safe Evacuation from the 21st Century", Guo Fan said at the premiere, "Li Yang is still the same Li Yang, he has not grown up." But Li Yang himself believes that he has largely become a less lovable adult.

"I know I have become bad. When I found that I no longer believed in and could not do what I said before, I felt that I had not struggled at all on the road to becoming bad. It was all compromise." Li Yang further recalled the process of "compromise". "It happens imperceptibly. You don't even realize it until someone you haven't seen for a long time thinks you are the same person as before and tells you about the things you did in the past. Then you realize that I am no longer that person at all."

Making movies changed my selfishness

Part of the inspiration for "Safe Evacuation from the 21st Century" came from Li Yang's sadness at the distance he felt from his former friends. Li Yang would agree with his former friends that they would exchange their experiences and recent events every time they met. Even if they hadn't seen each other for a long time, they would continue reading from the last save when they met again. At that time, they were very proud of discovering this method and felt that they could "fight time." But as they grew up, their lives were filled with all kinds of trivial matters, and they communicated less and less, and the method of saving and continuing reading gradually became ineffective.

Stills from "Safe Evacuation from the 21st Century"

This caught him off guard. "My friend had to follow the rules and walk into the dark night of middle age, and my growth process was accompanied by various confused decisions. I feel at ease and confused until today."

Compared to the lonely and brave protagonists in "The Adventures of Li Xianji" and "Bad Future", the people who traveled through time in "Safe Escape from the 21st Century" upgraded from individuals to a three-person team. "In real life, I can no longer find the friends I have had since I was 18 years old. So I turned the three 'defects' in my personality into three protagonists."

Stills from "Safe Evacuation from the 21st Century"

Li Yang revealed that the three main characters were actually his own "three shortcomings" when he was 18 years old: fear of the future, always missing out on precious things in the intersection of time, this is Wang Zha; not asking for help from others, like to handle difficulties by themselves, this is Wang Chengyong; no clear understanding of self, this is Bubble. "I transformed them into partners in the film, and these states are still with me now."

It is this kind of Li Yang who creates his own unique movies. The protagonist is always running hopelessly in the gaps of time and space, and rushing towards a tacit person like a moth to a flame. Similar themes, the same romance, and the same sadness. When talking about the theme and expression path of creation, Li Yang does not avoid his "self-repetition". "It is difficult for me to talk about things I am not familiar with or have not experienced - time is always there, others leave me again and again, or I disappoint others, these things happen frequently, and they are the stories I am most familiar with."

Li Yang on the set

When filming "Safe Evacuation from the 21st Century", the familiar plots have undergone many changes. From a "self-employed" animation director to a theater movie with the support of big-name stars and high-standard film industry, Li Yang has maintained his unique style and also embraced more possibilities.

Meeting Zhang Ruoyun, who is on the same wavelength, is the most crucial thing. When he called himself "the best actor" and broke into Li Yang's fantasy world, he not only revitalized this long-shelved project, but also awakened the middle school mentality and passion that Li Yang once thought he had lost, so that Zhang Ruoyun's performance on the set made Li Yang feel distressed and jealous. "It turns out that we have all seen the fangs of tragedy in life, but we dare not retell the true face of tragedy. We don't want people who haven't suffered such hardships to experience such suffering, so we tell jokes like two big braggarts."

Li Yang and Zhang Ruoyun

Li Yang was once very "willful" in his creation. In order to make the audience "worth the money", in addition to polishing the story itself and striving for excellence in creation, Li Yang also used the most straightforward and simple way to bring the audience the most worthwhile experience - "bringing more shots to the audience in a unit of time", and the super-fast editing rhythm in 98 minutes, the setting of changing shots every 3 seconds, the easter eggs hidden in the details of the picture, and the unrestrained imagination brought a super visual impact.

"I used to be very self-centered. I did whatever I wanted when I made animations. I thought I could easily cross the threshold of so-called industrialization, but it was actually very difficult."

The large number of shots increased the workload several times. "I am very grateful that they didn't beat me," Li Yang said about the shooting process. Because the shot was too big and there were too many scenes, the photographer was so angry that he jumped up and down during the preparatory meeting. "I had no experience in shooting feature films, and I thought the number of shots I designed was natural." At the beginning, the film's production plan was to shoot for 70 days. Li Yang didn't know how many shots could be shot in 70 days, so he drew more than 3,000 storyboards.

As a result, the working method was to coordinate the arrangement of Group A and Group B, with one group specifically responsible for shooting scenes that were almost completely unrelated to the main storyline, while Li Yang led Group A to shoot day and night with only four hours of sleep a day, while trying to keep a low profile and "avoid conflicts because I was afraid of being beaten."

Li Yang's film has a huge amount of shots

Li Yang recalled that in the middle and late stages of filming, the weather was getting hotter. One day, a tall and strong photographer took off his thick coat. "I found that this person had become a dehydrated camel. How could he be so thin? That's when I realized that I had been overloading the team."

When it came time to edit, some scenes had to be cut for various reasons. Abandoning the fruits of collective creation became the most painful thing for Li Yang. "I suddenly remembered the bad environment and hard work when I was shooting on the scene. I no longer had the courage to decide to delete those scenes. It seemed like everyone had wasted their time and their efforts had gone to waste."

So the director, who came from animation, picked up his paintbrush again and painted the various shots that maintain the narrative frame by frame, in order to "defend this story", a joint effort of a large group of people.

During the interview, when Li Yang was asked about the change from making animation to film, he answered without hesitation, "I changed my selfishness."

Director Li Yang