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With the start of summer vacation, animated films have also ushered in a new round of hits in theaters. Starting with the release of "Doraemon: Nobita's Earth Symphony" on May 31, to "White Snake: Floating Life" on August 10, 21 animated films have been released in the summer season this year (including 5 re-screenings), with a total box office of 1.75 billion yuan. Unfortunately, this year's summer animations failed to reproduce the glory of "Three Thousand Miles in Chang'an" last year. The total box office of all films added up is less than the 1.824 billion yuan box office of "Three Thousand Miles in Chang'an". Even "White Snake: Floating Life", which has the most box office potential, is expected to have a total box office of about 700 million yuan. How can animated films further enhance their appeal to the audience? It is worth pondering by the industry.

21 animations released

The total box office is less than that of "30,000 Miles in Chang'an"

Data source: Maoyan Professional Edition

Among the animated films released in the summer, there are not only the Japanese fan-oriented animations "Haikyuu! ! Garbage Dump Showdown", "Blue Zone: Nagi", and "Doraemon: Nobita's Earth Symphony", but also the popular Hollywood classic animation IPs "Garfield Family", "Despicable Me 4", and "Inside Out 2". Domestic animations are not to be outdone. Among them, there is "Falling into the Mortal World", which has gained a good reputation with its excellent production, and "White Snake: Floating Life" and "Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Guardian", which have been built into series IPs. In addition, original Chinese animations such as "Erlang Shen: Deep Sea Dragon" and "Umbrella Girl" have also landed in theaters one after another.

Among them, the one with the best box office so far is "Despicable Me 4", with a Douban score of 6.4, a new low for the series. Audiences generally responded that "the plot seems familiar" and "a very lazy work", but with the influence of the IP and the cuteness of the Minions, it still attracted a wide audience and made a box office of 367 million. However, there is a huge gap compared with the 1.037 billion box office achieved by "Despicable Me 3" in China in 2017.

Inside Out 2, produced by Pixar Studios, followed closely behind at the box office. The first film in the series presents the emotional world of a little girl in the form of a fairy tale. It is not only suitable for younger audiences, but also makes many adults re-examine their emotions. It is suitable for all ages. The second film tells the changes in the life of a little girl after she enters puberty. The reputation is still strong, with a high score of 8.4 on Douban. The Chinese box office is 339 million yuan, and the global box office has approached 1.6 billion US dollars, far exceeding the 800 million US dollars of Despicable Me 4.

As for domestic animation series, White Snake: Floating Life, which was released on August 10, is still in theaters, and has earned 232 million yuan as of August 15, which is expected to exceed the box office of the two previous works. However, Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Guardian, the ninth film in the Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf series, is somewhat weak, with a box office of less than 84 million yuan, a large gap from the 160 million yuan of the previous film.

In addition to continuing the traditional IP animation, original animation represented by "Falling into the Mortal World" has also attracted much attention this summer. "Falling into the Mortal World" uses the mythological story of "Cowherd and Weaver Girl" and the setting of the twenty-eight constellations, and makes bold innovations to traditional mythology: it not only subverts the high-ranking status of the gods in traditional mythology, but also does not repeat the old-fashioned love theme. It takes the brother-sister relationship as the main line, which is refreshing to the audience. Unfortunately, this film failed to become a box office dark horse.

Breaking stereotypes

I want both box office and word of mouth

Animated films seem to be stuck in a dilemma of having both good reputation and box office. Innovative original animations are difficult to gain market recognition due to their low reputation and unfamiliarity with the audience; animated series based on IP face challenges such as creative bottlenecks and audience aesthetic fatigue. How to deal with this dilemma? Some past works provide us with some references.

For original domestic animation, it may still be a safer approach to rely on public IPs with high recognition, and the source of the IP should be clearly understood by the audience in terms of titles and promotions to avoid the same situation as "Falling into the Mortal World". The main creator said in an interview that "the market recognition of Falling into the Mortal World" was "too low", "including our title, people may think that "Falling into the Mortal World" is very poetic, but they don't know what it is about, it is not as direct as those public IPs. The natural weakness of original IP is that not many people know about it, and the animation itself does not have any star actors. We have taken a difficult path from the beginning."

"Falling into the Mortal Realm" is actually not a completely original IP. It is also derived from the public IP "Cowherd and Weaver Girl", a well-known mythological story. However, it is a pity that this IP was not fully utilized in the title and promotion to increase the audience's interest.

However, on the basis of relying on public IP and building audience awareness, it is necessary to interpret new stories through original plots to make the audience feel fresh. The most successful domestic animations in recent years, such as "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World", "Journey to the West: Hero is Back", and "White Snake" series, have all achieved this. The reason why "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World" has achieved a box office of 5.035 billion and a Douban score of 8.4 is precisely due to its bold innovation. Nezha in the film appears in front of the audience with an ugly and sad image, which is completely different from the stereotyped little hero Nezha. But it is precisely this seemingly unpleasant character design that gives the audience a new experience of the story, coupled with high-level production and smooth plot, which has created a double harvest of word-of-mouth and box office for the film.

Secondly, domestic animated films seem to be concentrated on the adaptation of various classical fantasy novels in recent years, and the presentation of real historical figures and events is relatively rare. This is actually a direction worth breaking through, so as to avoid excessive homogeneous competition for public IPs such as Journey to the West and Investiture of the Gods. The reason why "30,000 Miles of Chang'an" was a great success last year was that it took a different approach in the selection of topics, with well-known poets such as Gao Shi and Li Bai as the main line, showing the prosperous scenes of the heyday of the Tang Dynasty in my country and the rough lives of poets. The recitation and visualization of poems made the film a vivid ancient poetry lesson, which moved the Chinese who have been familiar with these poems since childhood.

As for how to break through the bottleneck of series IP, the Hollywood animation "Toy Story" series is a successful example. The Douban score of the four parts released so far is maintained above 8.5 points. The fourth part is a new development of the series after the third part is completed, when the audience generally believes that the fourth part is difficult to be innovative. When director Josh Cooley wrote the preface to the setting collection of "Toy Story 4", the first sentence was a quote from the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, "The only constant is change". After bidding farewell to their owner Andy, the toys have new adventures and experiences, and the theme has changed from the mutual dependence of toys and owners to the independent adventure stories of toys. "Toy Story 4" has not only been a great success in word of mouth, but also achieved a good result of 1.074 billion US dollars at the box office. It can be seen that the audience is happy to see the traditional animation IP dare to innovate and change itself.

In a context where animation production has generally reached a high level from a technical perspective, faced with a sluggish market, creators need to muster the courage to transform themselves and write more thoughtful scripts in order to achieve a win-win situation between word of mouth and box office.