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This article comes from the WeChat public account: Yiyuguancha, written by Moyin Beet.

Before the movie was officially released, "Decryption" was highly anticipated.

The box office performance of the 2024 summer season was not good, and it was only maintained by "Catching Dolls". The market was willing to believe that the new work of "commercial film master" Chen Sicheng would be another 2 billion+, but the result was counterproductive. Seven days after its release, the box office of the film was close to 250 million. The ticketing platform predicted that the final box office would be less than 500 million.

In the public opinion field, the film encountered polarized reviews.

On social media, you can see passers-by complaining about the movie everywhere, with comments like "a waste of two and a half hours" and "an epic bad movie" being heard all the time. There are also serious reviews that believe that "Decryption" creates an unparalleled visual feast and is another breakthrough. Unfortunately, such comments did not become a consensus among movie fans and audiences, and "stitching" became their main judgment.

The Douban score dropped from 6.9 to 6.6, which is also a direct reflection of the film's divided viewing experience.

To a certain extent, the movie "Decryption" is like a bunch of fireworks launched by Chen Sicheng in this summer season. It is dazzling enough and has strong experimental value, but in terms of box office considerations, this bunch of fireworks is fleeting and drowned in the night sky.

Starting from the film version of "Beijing Love Story" in 2014, this is Chen Sicheng's tenth year as a director. In the past, he was called a "product manager" and a "commercial film master" by the market. In fact, this is true. Except for "Mozart from Outer Space", all his previous films have made investors earn a lot of money and also driven the market forward.

In the film "Decryption", we can clearly see that director Chen Sicheng wants to make a breakthrough in artistic achievement, just as he said at a special observation and seminar organized by the Film Association, Writers Association and Federation of Literary and Art Circles, "In terms of the audio-visual and feeling of the entire film, we strive to pursue the highest standards within our capabilities. I hope that through this movie I can tell everyone that Chinese filmmakers can make blockbusters that are not inferior to Hollywood production standards."

However, the current box office performance and split reputation of the movie "Decryption" tell everyone that the market is not yet willing to buy into a higher-level "Chen Sicheng".

01 To surpass Hollywood or become a "patchwork monster"?

A news fact is that before Chen Sicheng got involved in the creation of "Decryption" in 2020, the project was originally planned to follow the Hollywood movie route. The main controller, Chinese Film, found Canadian screenwriter Christopher McBride and took the lead in writing a script that was written along the lines of a political thriller.

Chen Sicheng's participation is very necessary. In his opinion, foreign creators have limited understanding of China's national conditions in the last century.

In fact, judging from the theme of the film, the character arc of the protagonist Rong Jinzhen is his in-depth understanding of the "country" and his life practice. This part has become the "main theme" expression of the film, rather than a political thriller.

Stills from Decryption

On another dimension, the creation and presentation of "Decryption" does remind people of several classic Hollywood films.

One of the ways Rong Jinzhen solves the puzzle is to enter dreams to find the answer. There are as many as ten dream scenes in the movie, which reminds the audience of "Inception". The music part of the movie brings people directly back to the scene of watching "Oppenheimer". The story of the growth of Rong Jinzhen, a paranoid and genius, is very similar to "A Beautiful Mind", the biographical movie of the same name about the 20th century mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr.

To put it roughly, "Decoding" is "Inception" + "Oppenheimer" + "A Beautiful Mind" + Mai Jia's novel story + Chen Sicheng's artistic ambition.

This imitation of classic Hollywood movies and the creation of standing on the shoulders of (literary) giants have become two sides of the same coin for this film, and both criticism and praise come from this. Critics think this is a patchwork movie with too much imitation, and the "high rate of plagiarism" represents the voice of some viewers, but the praise is that "Decryption" has created an unparalleled audio-visual experience for Chinese-language movies on the big screen.

Stills from Decryption

There is no doubt that, judging from the visual experience of Chinese blockbusters alone, "Decryption" is a first-class work, comparable to the visual world created by "The Wandering Earth 2" and "Fengshen I" - a leisurely storytelling method, a convincing historical reality world, and a beautiful dream part.

It is precisely because of the "stitching" of many classic Hollywood films and the literary foundation that "Decryption" has a strange and special viewing experience - the movie is not a spy film of the type of "The Sound of the Wind", nor is it a biographical film of real historical figures. It has too many shadows of classic Hollywood films, but the story has a sense of history.

On the other hand, the explosion of the atomic bomb and the appearance of characters such as Zhou Enlai and Qian Xuesen give the film a strong Chinese flavor, but the roles of Rong Jinzhen and his teacher Shees turn it into a Hollywood story of two heroes fighting each other.

This mixture of stories and images creates the special feature of "The Decryption". Some viewers find it unbearable, but others think it is a breakthrough for Chinese-language films. As the saying goes, what may be honey to one may be poison to another.

02 After ten years in the film industry, Chen Sicheng looks up to "Chen Sicheng"

In 2014, Chen Sicheng directed the youth romance film "Beijing Love Story", which marked the beginning of his transformation from an actor to a director. By the time of "Decryption", Chen Sicheng has been a director for ten years, and he has long since gone from a young director to a mainstay of Chinese-language commercial films.

Looking back on Chen Sicheng's directorial career, his debut film was "Beijing Love Story", followed by the "Detective Chinatown" series, which included movies and web dramas he produced, and then the "The Accidental Detective" series, "Gone Girl" and "The Third Squadron" he produced, and also a film he directed that did not perform well at the box office, "Mozart from Outer Space".

Chen Sicheng

Before "Decoded", and in addition to "Mozart from Outer Space" which grossed 223 million yuan at the box office, director Chen Sicheng can be said to have won numerous battles in the field of Chinese-language commercial films. He is known as a product manager and a master of commercial films. The "Detective Chinatown" series is still the most profitable Chinese-language film series. In addition, the "Accidental Detective" series, "Missing Girl" and "The Third Squadron" which he produced and supervised also proved Chen Sicheng's outstanding control over commercial films, and he has achieved success in commercial films of different themes and types.

Chen Sicheng is a filmmaker with a strong sense of purpose. This is a compliment when it comes to commercial films. He is very clear about the structure of commercial films and the public's expectations of watching movies. This ability to "grasp" the mass market is fully reflected not only in his personal directorial works, but also in his supervisory works.

But from another perspective, no director can achieve a 100% success rate, and Chen Sicheng is no exception. In the two films that failed at the box office, Chen Sicheng's goals and ambitions can be clearly seen.

For "Mozart from Outer Space", which will be released in the summer of 2022, Chen Sicheng wants to target the family market and create another series of movies that can sell IP derivatives (Mozart doll), which is still influenced by the Hollywood Disney approach.

Stills from "Mozart from Outer Space"

Unfortunately, this overly childish work was not popular with the mass market, and the IP development built on the successful movie became a "cook without rice".

In "Decryption", one can clearly sense that this movie has greater ambitions, which are more on the artistic level. He wants to tear off the label of a shrewd film businessman and tell the market that he is not inferior in artistic achievements. Chen Sicheng wants to become a more advanced "Chen Sicheng".

Judging from the final result, Chen Sicheng has also been successful in the process of becoming a more advanced "Chen Sicheng" and in some niche private movie-watching experiences.

To be honest, in this movie "Decoding", the audio-visual experience of the movie is excellent enough, and every dream has room for interpretation. What's more amazing is that in the restoration of historical events, "Decoding" also fully restores the emotions. For example, in the code war, the social customs of the mainland and Taiwan at that time were restored through just a few shots, which leaves a lot of room for "chewing".

Stills from Decryption

Unfortunately, such artistic expression has not been fully realized, and the "advanced Chen Sicheng" has only been recognized by a very small number of people. Neither the ordinary audiences that Chen Sicheng is good at pleasing, nor the movie fans who used to meet Chen Sicheng's many standards, have been able to find a thorough "sense of satisfaction" in the "more advanced Chen Sicheng".

Chen Sicheng, who is unwilling to give up, will continue to look up to the "Chen Sicheng" in his mind.

03"Chen Sicheng and others" collectively learned a lesson from the summer movie season

In the genealogy of Chinese-language commercial film directors, at the level of young and middle-class film directors, Chen Sicheng, Wuershan and Guo Fan are undoubtedly in the first camp, with their respective works being the "Detective Chinatown" series, "Fengshen" series and "The Wandering Earth" series. The second camp directors include Xu Zheng, Rao Xiaozhi, Lu Yang and other directors. Yan Fei and Peng Damo, with their unique Happy Twist comedies, are probably between the first and second camps.

It is interesting to note that these young great directors all suffered a setback during this summer.

The comic-adapted movie "Under the Alien" created by Wuershan finally grossed just over 100 million yuan at the box office, and Chen Sicheng's "Decryption" is expected to have a final box office of just less than 500 million yuan. On the eve of its release, "Reverse Life", directed by Xu Zheng again after "Lost in Russia" in 2020, was constrained by word-of-mouth and criticism of Xu Zheng's personality.

To a certain extent, "Under the Alien" and "The Decipherer" are by no means bad movies. On the contrary, these two movies have made due explorations in the genres of comic book movies and historical and biographical films. However, the final results are the same. They have not been recognized by the mass market. The so-called failure is not an empty word.

Although the market experiences of several films are similar, the specific reasons for their failures are different.

Before Chen Sicheng's "Decryption" was released, Yiyuguancha (ID: yiyuguancha) judged in the article "Multiple Hidden Concerns of the 2024 Summer Season" that this movie might once again ignite the popularity of spy war movies on the big screen, just as martial arts movies also need a big production to revive. The actual result is that "Decryption" has elements and scenes of spy war movies, but they are really pitifully few. Those viewers who came to watch "The Whistleblower" must have been greatly disappointed. This may be the most critical reason why this movie cannot be loved by the public.

In short, "Decryption" is not another spy film of the type of "The Sound of Wind". It is a reflection of Chen Sicheng's imitation and transcendence of Hollywood classics, and his ascent in the level of film audio-visual language. It is this mixture and unfamiliarity that prevented the mass market from paying for this film. Under the packaging of a grand narrative, the "emotional play" that Chen Sicheng was good at in the past was also abandoned. This also made the publicity and promotion only focus on the main creator Liu Haoran, and it was impossible to operate "Chen Sicheng's film" as a "TikTok film" as in the past.

It is difficult to judge how the commercial failure of this work will affect Chen Sicheng's future directorial career. Perhaps we can still praise his habit of "spending a lot of money" on film creation. Good audio-visual language is built by industrialization and budget. The few details in this movie are the high price paid for the Beatles' music copyright and the 90-day production of the red beach.

The same goes for Wuershan. While striving to open a new era of Chinese comic-adapted movies, he has also fully demonstrated the industrialization of the film industry. However, he is also struggling with the question of whether to meet the needs of the general public or to satisfy the original fans. As a result, both the original fans and moviegoers have complained, magnifying the shortcomings infinitely in the public opinion field.

Neither Chen Sicheng nor Wuershan primarily presented "what kind of self the audience likes" in "The Decoded" and "Under the Alien", which may also be a kind of lament in the current film market - it is better to maintain "self" than to break through "self".

The market changes too fast. All the movies that were big sellers in the summer of 2023 have generally failed at the box office this year. The big productions of big directors have all encountered box office failures. This is undoubtedly telling the market the tragic but true reality: when the big productions of big directors cannot make money, the risk of the film industry is undoubtedly greater, and the already not good investment market will become even more cautious.