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When I met the director Ma Yuke, the first thing he asked was, "Do you think the movie is good?" I smiled and said, "I guessed you would ask this question, becauseboreWhen you were talking about "The Legend of the Condor Heroes", you often started your interviews and roadshows with this question. Ma Yuke also smiled, and seemed less nervous than before. He is completely different in real life from his image on the screen. In the movies, he is often perverse and violent, but in real life, he has the simplicity and honesty of a Northwest man, and speaks without beating around the bush - yes, he is from Lanzhou, and although he has acted in many Hong Kong movies, many audiences mistakenly think he is from Hong Kong.

At the end of last year, "The Raging Tide" directed by Ma Yuke was released, which received applause and controversy. However, I have always been in awe of Ma Yuke as a director, because I learned from the news that "Rebirth" had already started filming. A new director has finished filming the second part before the first film was released, and both are time-consuming and labor-intensive genre films. This requires great courage and a lot of pressure. Of course, as Ma Yuke himself said, this is not a bad thing. After the release of "The Raging Tide", problems in "Rebirth" can be adjusted in time according to audience feedback. In fact, we can see that "Rebirth" is indeed much better than its predecessor in all aspects.

For Ma Yuke, filming "Rebirth" was a process of adding to his own challenges. He continued to serve as director, screenwriter, and actor, with more difficult action scenes, more story twists, and more roles to play. This made people curious about how he was able to balance his various roles on the set. But Ma Yuke felt that these were not a problem. As early as in the process of writing the script, he and the other two screenwriters had rehearsed every scene for each character, and there was no need to use the script on the set, let alone Nick Cheung andEthan RuanThe role isZhang RongrongThe lines and required performance details of Nancy are all imprinted in Ma Yuke's mind. This is a relatively unique creative method for Ma Yuke as a director. Although it is a bit "stupid", it is solid and effective.

In the view of Ma Yuke, who started acting in movies at the age of 9, for the creation of movies, there must be a spirit of "fighting to the death". From the script to the shooting, every link must be careless, and the truth must be supreme. The background setting of the story of "Rebirth" this time is related to drugs. Ma Yuke led the team to do a lot of research in order to restore the underground drug world and the ecology of drug addicts without a trace of falsehood in the movie. It can be said that Ma Yuke used the shell of a gang-type film to convey a spirit of goodness to the audience: in the face of injustice and evil in this world, we must have the courage to fight, even if it costs our lives, this is also a kind of rebirth. As an actor, Ma Yuke has proved his ability with vivid roles one by one, and with this kind of "fighting to the end" seriousness, I believe that director Ma Yuke will continue to bring us vital works.

The following is a statement from director Ma Yuke, who shared with us his story about the movie "Rebirth":

"Raging Tide" was filmed in 2021, and this "Rebirth" was filmed in 2023. At the end of 21, when "Raging Tide" was in post-production, Brother Zhang Jiahui shared with me a real event in Hong Kong. A female customs police officer died while fighting crime, and the Hong Kong police held a very grand funeral. Brother Jiahui is a person who loves creation. He likes to tell stories. He said that he thought of a scene: a policeman died, a criminal boss died, and two groups of people held a funeral in a funeral home. Is there a lot of narrative space in it? You are in me and I am in you. Should the police arrest people? How to arrest people? Will there be cooperation or contact in secret? What is the reason for their death? I like this idea very much, so based on this scene, the story of "Rebirth" slowly evolved.

After I filmed "The Raging Tide" with Ka Fai and Ethan Ruan, I have always wanted to film another one together, because we are all pure and love movies, and it is a great pleasure to work with them. I really like crime films. Many people think I am from Hong Kong, but I am actually from Lanzhou. I have always wanted to make a crime film in the mainland. So I worked on the script from 2022 to 2023, and started filming in April 2023. This is the origin of all aspects of "Rebirth".

After the release of "The Angry Birds" last year, I received a lot of feedback from the audience. To this day, I can still find many areas that need improvement, so making movies is really a life-long learning process. Fortunately, I have the opportunity to put a lot of things I learned from "The Angry Birds" into "Resurgence". I will also put the experience gained from these two films into my next work. Learning is endless.

Many people asked me what supported me to do this job. I acted in my first movie "The Illegal Gun Owner" in 1988. It has been more than 30 years. Let's not talk about the hardships. Everyone will experience them. The driving force that supported me was passion. When you love this thing enough, many problems will be solved. Including being a director and an actor, I didn't find it difficult. This is why I must write the script myself. I have two screenwriter partners, one of whom is also an actor-turned-screenwriter. We first think of the story and come up with an outline, and then start to discuss it. You write three scenes and I write three scenes. After writing, we will put them together and we will act them out from the beginning. Where is unreasonable, where the lines pause, we have acted them out many times during the writing process. So I rarely read the script on the set. The rhythm, breathing and some serial arrangements during the shooting have been passed through my mind many times. I am already familiar with the role of Brother Jiahui, the role of Xiaotian, and even the role of Zhang Rongrong. Of course, I don't act for the sake of acting, because I am not a screenwriter, so my way of creation can only be perceived through performance, and I will naturally not be entangled when I arrive on the set.

As for putting a lot of reversal elements in the story, this is still out of my own preference. There are many classics in this type of crime film. I will try to make some innovations, such as putting some emotional elements in it. If I keep following the previous routine, let alone the audience, I don’t like to act. I don’t know if I can do it, but I want to try hard. This will definitely increase the difficulty for us in script creation, but we must push ourselves into a dead end to survive. I am in awe of movies. If I don’t put in 100% effort, it will definitely not work. I can’t just look at which jokes are playing well now and copy them directly. Movies are movies. Whether it is done well or not is one thing, and whether it is taken seriously is another. If I want to do something easy, I might as well go back to filming. Why should I be a director to shoot it myself?

Especially this time compared to "The Raging Tide", the overall difficulty of creation has been upgraded. In addition to the more complicated story, the action scenes are also more difficult to shoot. There are also many scenes that need to be conceived and designed at the art level. I can seriously say that there is no shortcut in the whole process. I also saw some viewers comment that I have made progress this time. The scenes, suspense, music, and actions have all been upgraded. What has regressed is that I am still in my own world and the story is not real. But in my cognition, movies cannot tolerate any falsehood. You must really listen, watch, and feel it. For example, in our play, there is a scene where heroin is put into beer, the lives of the families of drug addicts in the sewers, and even the police and criminals collude to attack the police station. All of these are based on real events. None of them are made up by us. You may not know it, but it does not mean that it does not exist. This is also what we really want to show you through the movie.

I am a person with a relatively stable mood on the set. I usually solve problems when I encounter them. For example, when we were shooting the scene of besieging the police station, someone suddenly complained during the shooting, saying that the noise was too loud. The police came and did not allow us to fire real guns or release explosive points. Time was very tight, so we could only hold the gun and shoot without making any noise, and then add sound effects in the later stage. The same is true for Mu Kun's mansion. There are many literary and martial arts scenes. The original plan was to shoot both literary and martial arts in 25 days, but in the end we were only given eight or nine days. We had to change the plan immediately on the spot to speed up the shooting progress. And we encountered the same problem. We used real guns to shoot action scenes, and the owner of the mansion came and said no, no, no, we could only hold the gun and do the action in the end. We also had to perform the real feeling of the rain of bullets, which required the actors to work harder and more devoted. This manor often has power outages, and each outage lasts for four hours. We can only wait there for the power to come back. As a director, if I am emotionally unstable on the scene, everyone will be more panicked, so I can only adjust my mind and think of solutions when I encounter problems.

Fortunately, my partners really support me this time. Movies are not made by one person, but by a group. From actors and directors to tea workers, everyone has contributed a lot. This is our common child. I am very happy to meet these friends. Frankly speaking, Ka Fai and Xiao Tian are both excellent actors. They have many years of experience in the plans, scripts and character settings of a crew shooting on the spot. After I sent the script to Xiao Tian, ​​I told him seriously that brothers are brothers and work is work. If you like it, we can talk about it. He replied that he liked it very much and thought it was better than the script of "The Raging Tide". He came to participate without saying anything. Not to mention Ka Fai, the origin of this story is here. After work every day, he would come to my room to talk about his ideas for tomorrow's shooting. Everyone is creating in an atmosphere of mutual stimulation and promotion. For example, in the sea fight scene at the beginning, Ka Fai personally took part in it. He needed to wear a hood. Thailand was very hot, and many staff members suffered from heatstroke and vomited. Ka Fai did not complain. Moreover, I shot it with a long lens, which required a lot of his movements. I am really grateful to these good brothers.

Some viewers asked why you guys put all the crimes in Southeast Asia? But we really have no choice. We still want to try more in this genre. Of course, we can't just have fun fighting. It will be tiring to give the audience the same dish all the time. So we incorporated some emotional elements, as well as some cognition of death and expression of resistance. Our actors will feel very involved in the filming process. For example, the construction of the sewer in our movie was inspired by a group called "Mole People" in Las Vegas. They live in the sewer. When we went to Bangkok to scout the location, there were really hundreds of such people living on both sides of the sewer. I was stunned when I went to see it for the first time. It was really shocking. Later, when we were filming, several extras had their families die because of drug abuse, and they went bankrupt to pay for the money. Their deep hatred for drugs is from the heart, so if our movie can make more people stay away from drugs and realize the harm of drugs, I will be very satisfied.

Although filming has always been my hobby, I still have to be in awe from the bottom of my heart. The story must be something I like and something that I really want to express. If I don’t like it, I won’t do it no matter how much money you give me. I might as well go back and choose a good role to continue acting. So I prefer to call myself a film and television worker. I need to maintain this original intention to create each work sincerely. The happiest thing for me since I was a child is to turn my hobby into a job. Filming "Rebirth" is a painful and happy process, but because I have more experience, the happiness is still greater than the pain this time.

I usually watch a lot of movies. In my mind, a good movie needs to be real and have self-expression. This time, in addition to hoping that the audience will remember to stay away from drugs, "Rebirth" also wants to convey a spirit of goodness, to have the courage to fight, even if it costs one's life, this is also a kind of rebirth. At the same time, I am also paying tribute to death. There was a sentence in the original script that I cut out: Death is not the end, it must be a new beginning. That's why we shot such an easter egg, all the dead people finally reunited in the illusion. Many people suggested that I cut it out after watching it, but I insisted on keeping it. That is the paradise I imagined. All the relatives and lovers who left us, including my deceased father, they will definitely watch us in heaven. That is a new beginning. Most of the things I insisted on this time were kept, so I say I am lucky.

As for what's next, I'm a relatively dumb person and can't do many things at the same time. It was the same when I was acting before. I never crossed over to different shows. People's energy is limited. I can only finish this thing seriously during this period, take a breath, and then think about the next step. Now there are some scripts given to me, and I'm very grateful, but I have to finish the release of "Rebirth" before thinking about the next thing. I will work hard to make the next work better.