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"black myth: wukong" has been very popular recently, so popular that some people in the film industry have felt the pressure and believe that it has exacerbated the difficulties of the film industry to some extent.

there are also some others who think that chinese movies should be made based on game productions. the art style of "black myth: wukong" is so good. this is called games rectifying the film industry.

it is a fact that the lipstick effect that originally belonged to movies in the summer season has fallen on this 3a game, but the above interpretation of this phenomenon is extremely wrong.

games and movies, after all, have different positions in our eyes. if they were exactly the same, then their social influence should be the same, the standards of acceptance should be the same, and the level of public opinion they should receive should be the same.

but if these were all the same, "black myth: wukong" would have to be changed as the product name itself before it could be released, and it would be difficult to achieve the grand occasion it has today.

the cost of black myth: wukong was very high, but audiences have seen it in domestic films in recent years, which is the level of an a-level blockbuster, such as the battle at lake changjin, the wandering earth 2, and detective chinatown 3. however, with the same capital investment, the product made by the film industry with 400-500 million yuan gives people a feeling of being just mediocre, not as surprising as a game.

this involves factors such as the creator's ability, whether the original intention of the creation is pure, audience acceptance and market needs, but you and i know that these are not the main factors, they are just some superficial factors.when faced with the success of black myth: wukong, film practitioners sighed and talked about the superficial issues over and over again, which did not help to reverse the situation at all.

to revitalize the film industry, of course, we need capital, talent, and technology, but what we really need is an environment that maximizes the effectiveness of the above combination.

i often feel that some creators are born at the wrong time.

for example, wei te-sheng, a director from taiwan, is the same age as the sixth-generation directors from mainland china. of course, in the film market of taiwan, after the new wave of hou (hsiao-hsien), yang (dechang), lee (ang), and tsai (ming-liang), new directors have been fighting for their own survival regardless of generation.

after wei desheng became famous, he published a book called "diary of a young director's unemployment", which shows that he had a long period of hardship. the reason for his hardship was that the lofty ideals in his mind were seriously inconsistent with the cramped environment he was in.

he is a talented commercial film director who is obsessed with the concept of the film industry, but taiwanese films have art but no industry.

since the 1990s, the film market in taiwan, china has been completely defeated by hollywood. local audiences are keen on imported blockbusters. the new wave generation can win awards, but they cannot expect box office success. for all creators seeking survival, this is a very simple capital formula. the ceiling of chinese-language films is limited, and the budget cannot be too high accordingly.

wei desheng is not a person who is inflexible.in 2008, the love movie cape no. 7 directed by wei te-sheng was released. it earned nt$530 million at the box office with a cost of nt$50 million, and it is still the box office champion of chinese-language films in taiwan.the huge success of cape no. 7 made wei desheng famous.

cape no. 7 is not just about love, but also includes the historical element of japanese orphans. for wei desheng at that time, he did not have enough budget to shoot what he really wanted to shoot, so he could only start with a small investment and slowly accumulate strength.

the epic in his mind, as the world later knew, was seediq bale, which tells the story of the indigenous people's resistance to japanese colonial rule. if there was no such film, the history textbooks would have been much bleaker when talking about the "wushe uprising".

"seediq bale" is divided into two parts, "flag of the sun" of 144 minutes and "rainbow bridge" of 132 minutes. when it was later released in mainland china, out of commercial considerations of theater scheduling, the film company shortened the length to retain the essence and combined the two parts into one, totaling 153 minutes.

many people said on tiktok that this is the best anti-japanese film they have ever seen. it is very fierce, very real, and very cruel. it does not miss any historical details that should not be missed. for example, on the playground, when mona rudao led the seediq people to "sacrifice blood to their ancestors", their sharp blades were not only aimed at the japanese military and police, but also at foreign women and children.

the post-production of seediq bale was overspent, and it was completed by crowdfunding from a group of taiwanese artists including jay chou, and a long list of thanks was shown in the end credits. this is not only an example of industry mutual assistance, but also reflects how difficult it is to make a standardized blockbuster in a small market.

on the long road of fulfilling his vision and pattern, wei tesheng has made great progress. after "seediq bale", his next project is the more ambitious "taiwan trilogy", and he has been preparing for this epic for many years.

the taiwan trilogy, which will be the most expensive film in taiwan's film history, focuses on the history of the netherlands' annexation of taiwan, china in the 17th century. wei te-sheng will tell this story from three perspectives.

“burning body” is from the perspective of the siraya people, the indigenous people of taiwan;

“sea of ​​whale bones” is from the perspective of the han chinese during the ming dynasty;

"the promised land" is told from the perspective of a dutch missionary.

all three films begin with the dutch landing in taiwan, china, and end with zheng chenggong driving the dutch away.

for the filming, wei desheng built a 118-hectare historical and cultural park in tainan, and dug out an inland sea to create the scene when the dutch landed in taiwan, china in the 17th century.

but unfortunately, in late 2021, it was reported that wei desheng's new work was shelved indefinitely due to the epidemic and financial conditions, and would be converted into an animated film to continue filming.

i feel sad but not surprised about this situation. today, if a taiwanese local director has both genre elements and authorial characteristics, the more aggressive he is, the harder it is to find a market.

taking the "taiwan trilogy" as an example, the local market is unlikely to support the scale of investment, and if it is only released in taiwan, china, there is a huge risk of not being able to recover the cost.

international streaming media companies like netflix can act as financial sponsors, but its chinese-language film market has not yet been opened, so it is not worthwhile to spend the money.

the mainland can certainly afford the budget and provide a market, but it has many rules and may not accept the artist's ideas and perspectives. moreover, in terms of co-productions between the mainland and hong kong, hong kong director cheang pou-soi's "the battle of penghu" has already been launched, telling the history of shi lang. i am afraid that the manchus have already taken back the han people before the han people have recovered from the foreigners.

in wei desheng's story, he always lacks the right time, right place, and right people. he must have all three to complete his new work. but now, even if he was born as a mainland director, he can only do nothing. what i thought of was ding lianshan's words in "the grandmaster": "he is a great talent. if we go back 20 years, we could have tried our hand at it. what a pity."

but we know that what wei desheng lacked was never creativity. at first it was money, then it was time, and later on, the fleet ran aground, the route was suspended, and history was stuck in the strait.

cheng er is another director that makes me feel sorry for him.

after working with bona on "unknown", cheng er tactfully expressed a meaning in an interview, probably saying that this film was his most compromising creation.

the audience's first reaction will be to the popular stars in the film, but in fact it may not be the case. for a director who can train actors, these are not problems. in terms of training actors, cheng er can be called the "wong kar-wai of the mainland".

compare it with the wasted times produced by huayi brothers, and you will find that it is the truly authentic and richly styled work of cheng er. moviegoers will like the old shanghai tone and decadent splendor, and for cheng er, it also contains his true creative intention:how the old china ended was due to foreign invasion and internal revolution, both of which were indispensable.

cheng er is good at walking the line between propaganda and historical facts. for the latter, whether it was when he wrote "the wasted time" or now when he wrote "nameless", taking only one scoop from the vast ocean is an appropriate measure.

at the beginning of the film's creation, the main creator said, "through the film "nameless", we want to show the struggle of the 'nameless' in every detail and take the audience to see a world they have never seen before." but after watching the movie, i found that the world created by "nameless" is not unprecedented. even if it is not compared with ang lee's "lust, caution", "nameless" did not meet expectations. what's more, suspenseful spy wars have long been a popular theme in tv dramas.

the reason why it did not meet expectations is very simple. the creator is cheng er, who is not an ordinary film director or tv drama director. he should have done better. especially after "the last romance", fans have reason to expect him to shoot a spy war during the anti-japanese war.

the agents' anti-espionage operations are different from those on regular battlefields. many of them are carried out face to face, and the methods used are mostly close-range shooting, stabbing with knives, chopping with axes, etc. the scenes are very bloody.

for example, fu xiao'an, the mayor of shanghai during the wang puppet regime, was mentioned in the lines of lust, caution. on october 12, 1940, chongqing's ta kung pao reported that fu xiao'an was stabbed three times, "one in the eye, one in the chin, and one in the neck, with the neck being the most seriously injured, with his head almost cut off."

after the establishment of the wang puppet regime, due to the division of the chongqing system by the nanjing system, many of the targets of the killings behind enemy lines were former colleagues and friends, and the action team members had to bear great psychological pressure. the agents demanded to kill the japanese while punishing the traitors.

in 1940, dai li passed a plan formulated by the shanghai district of the military control commission: targeting japanese people in military uniforms, regardless of their military rank or position, without the need to report, and killing them on the spot if they succeeded. the execution location was limited to the japanese-occupied areas and their sphere of influence.

although the military intelligence bureau's shanghai station suffered severe damage after the fall of shanghai, it still used the concession to actively carry out more than 50 operations from september 1940 to before the outbreak of the pacific war, killing or wounding more than 60 japanese soldiers.

on june 17, 1941, after careful investigation, the 4th group of the 3rd action battalion of the military control commission's shanghai station, led by deputy group leader ye dongshan and group members li dechang, zhou zhenfang, yu senlin, yang jingwen and others, shot dead akagi shinyuki, a high-ranking japanese spy and the then deputy director of the international settlement police department (actually the emperor of the concession police), on yuyuan road.

akagi shinjiro was a leader in the japanese foreign police and had actively participated in the planning of the invasion of china. he was born into a samurai family, a fourth-degree kendo master, and a noble. during his lifetime, he was a senior second-class officer, a fourth-rank honor, and a military rank equivalent to a lieutenant general in the army.

all of the above are things we have never seen before, and the ending point of "nameless" is too similar to the narrative we are already familiar with, which is a pity.

of course, this does not mean that "unnamed" has no value in aesthetics and art. any fan who has watched this movie carefully will clearly and deeply feel one thing: that is, for the same old cliché, there is still a huge difference between having authorship and not having authorship.

the former can still allow you to savor it carefully within the limited shaking, appreciate those things that come to an abrupt end, and imagine the possibilities that have not yet unfolded, while the latter is empty from beginning to end, like "spider webs hanging in the dark window, and swallow droppings falling on the empty beam".

coincidentally, the military control commission’s number one killer, chen gongshu, once wrote a five-volume memoir titled “unknown heroes.”

the first volume is titled "exterminating traitors in the north", the second volume is titled "the whole story of the wang case in hanoi", the third volume is titled "anti-japanese operations behind enemy lines in shanghai", the fourth volume is titled "counterespionage activities in the late period of the war of resistance", and the fifth volume is titled "pacification and suppression of rebellion in the peiping-tianjin area".

i have not seen any of the current media or self-media interviews with the main creators, which shows that the current front-line film journalists lack historical accumulation and have a similar knowledge structure. in a sense, this is very suitable for the presentation of "unknown".

for an aspiring creator, what is worse than doing a good job but no one praising you is doing a not-so-good job but no one criticizing you.

when the movie was released, in the conversation with xu zhiyuan in rong's house, i could smell cheng er's "arrogance" towards the questioner between the lines. he was not keen on answering those bland and lukewarm answers, and he didn't even have a chance to reveal his own unspeakable secrets.

i understand this arrogance: he couldn't find anyone to talk to on the other end of the phone for a long time.

no.5953 original first article | author zang fei

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