(Observer News)
In the Spring Festival of the Year of the Tiger, seven films staged a scuffle, and at present, "The Water Gate Bridge of Chosin Lake" is leading the way.
This year's Spring Festival live-action movies are more special, comedy or "family fun" attributes of the film is less than in previous years, "Watergate Bridge" suddenly "killed" into the Spring Festival file, and several movies led by happy twist "Super Family" have subsequently been withdrawn. It can be seen that this time Ali Pictures and Bona Pictures have bet on many parties, and the former Spring Festival "explosive manufacturing machine" Huayi Brothers and Beijing Culture (ST Beiwen) have withdrawn from this year's market battle.
What is even more rare is that before the "Watergate Bridge" was finalized, this year's Spring Festival file already had a movie focusing on the history of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, Zhang Yimou's "Sniper". But Lao Mozi did not choose to withdraw the file, but emphasized that he would shoot a different story, "Chosin Lake" grand narrative, "Sniper" is from the details.
One is the "super IP" that has just topped the mainland box office list of Chinese film history, and the other is the work of the "fifth generation of famous directors", and the two anti-US and aid-Korea films meet in the Spring Festival file, raising the expectations of many audiences.
However, the expected "Dragon and Tiger Fight" did not appear, "Watergate Bridge" has led the whole field since the pre-sale period, and the box office has exceeded the billion mark in the two days of release, with an absolute advantage to be proud of the Spring Festival file; and "Sniper" although it is recognized as the best film in the Spring Festival file in the major platform ratings, but the box office performance is at the bottom, so far even 100 million has not arrived, and even less than the animation film "Bear Haunting and Return to Earth" that has always played a stable role. The schedule is even lower so that Zhang Yimou has to come forward to shout at the cinema in the hope of giving more scheduled films.
The unique pattern of "Watergate Bridge" is difficult to shake, "clearer and more compact than the story line of the previous work"
"The Water Gate Bridge of Chosin Lake" was suddenly fixed 20 days before the pre-sale of this year's Spring Festival file was surprising, but now it seems that it does have this confidence. With the first film to break the box office record of Chinese film history with 5.775 billion yuan, "Watergate Bridge" has become the first choice for many people to watch movies at festivals, since the opening of pre-sales, the box office and scheduling ratio is far ahead, the pre-sale box office is as high as 328 million yuan, and the 1 billion box office mark has been broken in less than 2 days after its release.
Yesterday, the first day of broadcasting ended, douban first round of scoring scores, "Watergate Bridge" scored 7.2 points, slightly lower than the first part 0.2 points, playing a stable role.
At present, the rating of Douban is mostly four stars and five stars, and many netizens have expressed the view that ""Watergate Bridge" is better than the previous one", especially after being independently operated by Xu Ke, many viewers believe that the camera language, war details, and emotional atmosphere have been further improved than the first part.
Wang Shuzeng wrote in his book "The Korean War": "In the extreme cold, the officers and men of the American Army heard a news that was more frightening to them than the howling wind and snow: on the way to Xianxing, there was an extremely steep pass, and the only bridge on the pass that could be passed had been blown up by Chinese soldiers. ”
The bridge that left the US First Marine Division with no way to bypass was called the Watergate Bridge. In an interview with a television station in his later years, the chief of the operations division of the US First Marine Division said: "If the Chinese has a certain amount of air power and logistical support, the First Marine Division will certainly not want to escape alive." ”
Continuing the previous game, "Chosin Lake's Watergate Bridge" tells that seven are connected to a new mission to blow up the Watergate Bridge and block the retreat of the US First Marine Division. The volunteers made great efforts in this crucial bridge bombing in history, and as long as the bridge is there, the task is still there.
The upper part of "Chosin Lake" adopts a three-line juxtaposition of narrative techniques, and although it can provide a holistic historical perspective, it is easier for some viewers to have a scattered view of the plot. "Watergate Bridge" simplifies the side line as much as possible and concentrates on telling the story of "three explosions of Watergate Bridge", which makes the narrative thread of this film obviously more concentrated and the narrative rhythm more compact.
The first time the Watergate Bridge was blown up, the volunteer soldiers successfully blew up the bridge deck in the face of bad weather, but they did not expect that the US military only took 1 day to repair the bridge deck. The Volunteers launched a second operation, this time the damage to the bridge was even worse, forcing the American major general to give a death order to the soldiers to repair the bridge at all costs and strengthen the defense with various guns.
However, the U.S. military underestimated the determination of the volunteer soldiers, who blew up the bridge for the third time in a very heroic way. This time, they almost blew up the bridge, but the price was also very painful. It was thought that this time the bombing was thorough enough, and it would take several months for the US military to repair the bridge, but the hardware conditions such as the strong logistics support and industrial strength of the US military left them with the opportunity to save their lives and escape.
In terms of plot, "Watergate Bridge" presents a "highlight moment" of seven steel companies through a tragic group portrait play. As the final chapter of the Battle of Chosin Lake, "Watergate Bridge" writes a different ending for each hero, and uses many details to take care of the plot that the film began to lay, drawing a conclusion for the whole story.
For example, the instructor "Mei Sheng", in the previous work, is gentle and elegant, looking at the picture of his daughter with tenderness, but in "Watergate Bridge", instead, he looks forward with determination. Believing that winning the battle and not letting the next generation get involved in the war was the best way to protect his daughter, he lit the crawler car and rushed from the top of the hill into the enemy position without hesitation.
The screenshots are from the movie trailer and promotional video
"Yu Congrong" usually grinned widely, and when he encountered the old acquaintances of the artillery battalion, he also interjected and jokingly "asked" the other side to help the seventh company to fire a few more rounds of artillery.
However, at the time of parting, Yu Congrong once again seriously stressed that he hoped that the other side would fire a few more rounds of artillery for the seventh company to protect his comrades.D. In order to divert the US aircraft that had come to bomb, he turned his back to the morning sun and strafed at the US aircraft with a small body, so that his brothers at the foot of the mountain could survive.
In the previous work, the doors of the train were opened, and what came into view was the Endless Great Wall under the sunset; in "Watergate Bridge", there were seven companies of soldiers facing the direction of the motherland, greeting the sun and saluting, and saying sonorously and powerfully: Long live New China.
At the beginning of the film, it is "Wu Qianli" who returns to his hometown with the ashes of his brother "Wu Baili" for burial, and the end of the film is that "Wu Wanli" returns to his hometown with the ashes of "Wu Qianli", co-authoring the lyrics of the theme song of the film, "Mom, Baili is back, Qianli is back, Wanli is back." Since ancient times, it has been said that loyalty and filial piety cannot be both", which is the most tearful.
In "Chosin Lake", when the commander ordered troops and walked to the Seventh Company, he once told Wu Qianli that he would give the Seventh Company a pennant, but the enemy could only issue a pennant after the war. In "Watergate Bridge", the commander arrives as promised, but only Wu Wanli is left to accept the pennant.
When Wu Wanli had tears in his eyes, but his gaze firmly reported that "seven consecutive should be 157 people, and the actual number of people should be 1", it became a tear-jerking moment that many viewers remembered deeply after watching the movie.
From the production point of view, in order to truly restore the historical Shuimen Bridge, due to the special terrain of the historical prototype Shuimen Bridge, it is difficult to have a suitable site for domestic filming, and the supervising producer Huang Jianxin once revealed that the film directly dug the mountain in proportion to create a landscape, and it took several months to restore the Watergate Bridge in the movie.
In addition, in order to present the real battle scene, when filming the plot of "Blowing Up the Watergate Bridge", the film arranged the set to the open air scene of minus 30 degrees in the early morning hours. In order to strengthen the feeling of cold wind, 4 blowers were also arranged to blow in turn against the actors. There are many magnificent pictures of soldiers being burned by flames in the film, and some of them are allowed to wear special protective clothing to present the "burning real people" scene under the condition of ensuring safety.
Overall, the vast majority of the audience is relatively satisfied with the perception of "Watergate Bridge", and some netizens have put forward the opinion that some of the details in the film are not exquisite, there are still loopholes in the tactical command of the "company commander", and the opinion that not watching "Chosin Lake" directly to watch "Watergate Bridge" may lead to the wrong understanding of the character image, but in the final analysis, it is a high score evaluation of "flawed Yu".
Judging from the current box office and scheduling trend, "Watergate Bridge" is difficult to shake the market pattern of a monopoly in this year's Spring Festival file, and the proportion of scheduled films on the second day of the Chinese New Year has risen from 27.2% on the first day to 32.4%, which shows the strong driving effect on the Spring Festival stall market.
According to the latest forecast of Maoyan Professional Edition, its final box office is expected to reach 4.886 billion yuan, or even more than 5 billion yuan, but it may be difficult to impact the box office record created by "Chosin Lake".
"Sniper" reputation for the best box office cold, "dry and anxious" Zhang Yi seeks to schedule the film
However, as a "competitive" film of "Watergate Bridge", Zhang Yimou first entered the Spring Festival film, and the "Sniper" created with his daughter Zhang Mo was lost at the beginning, although it led the spring festival film reputation with a high score of 7.7 points, but the box office performance was surprising, the first day of the box office was not even 50 million yuan, just a fraction of the box office of "Watergate Bridge".
Entering the second day, the box office of "Sniper" is still growing slowly, only more than 70 million yuan so far, which is the only work in the Spring Festival file that has not yet grossed more than 100 million yuan.
Up to now, the total box office/Douban score
Unlike the grand war scenes of "Watergate Bridge", "Sniper" is a rare and very "calm" war film. The film is based on the little-known and significant "cold gun and cold cannon" movement in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea.
According to the records of the war, during the "cold guns and cold guns" campaign, our side once beat the enemy army from "9 a.m. to 3 p.m. basically did not dare to take a step out of the fortifications," so that the enemy army only dared to "come out in the early morning to wash up, and come out at dusk to breathe." From May to September 1952 alone, the Volunteer Army killed more than 14,000 Allied troops in five months through "cold guns and cold guns", no less than the number of enemy annihilated in a large-scale battle.
However, the main body of the movie is not our initiative to set up an ambush, but the US military that has been rushed to do the opposite, setting up pockets for us to drill. The film tells the story of 9 soldiers of 5 squads of the 8 Company rescued a scout under the leadership of squad leader Liu Wenwu, and all this is a trap that the UN army has already laid, and there is a squad of 7 enemy snipers waiting for them. Behind this rescue, it is more about the competition for important intelligence.
"Sniper" mainly shows the cold gun tug-of-war between the enemy and us in squads, which is a very typical work of "seeing the big with the small". Whether our side can change from passive to active and eventually win the battle reflects the military wisdom and bravery and good fighting of the volunteer soldiers.
Because of this, judging from the feedback of netizens, "Sniper" did spend a lot of time to portray the tactical wisdom of volunteer soldiers in detail:
By "luring the snake out of the hole" to attract the enemy to open fire and expose the position, then reverse aiming, pulling the trigger, and killing the enemy sniper in one blow; in the face of unfavorable sniper angles, "catching the ducks on the shelf" takes turns to attack, and the anti-guest mainly forces the enemy to start a war, aiming at the opportunity to hit its key points; in the case of our side's backward combat situation, we should cultivate our strength and accumulate thick hair in a timely manner, and adopt "strike from behind."
Even if there is no first-class sniper and communication equipment like the US army, volunteer soldiers can still kill the enemy at a hundred meters away with such indigenous methods as rice spoons and telescopes.
The first climactic scene of "Sniper" appears in Fat Dun, in order to rescue the scouts, reflexively carrying bulky armor fragments as cover, dragged by the ropes of his comrades, and marching hard.
When the rope was broken by the enemy, he could only grasp the armor with his backhand and stand upright, and his exposed hands were shattered by enemy bullets. He shouted the name of his unborn child toward our position and sacrificed heroically.
There is also a paragraph that says that in order to make the wounded our scout show signs of life, the enemy then dragged our fighters to continue to rescue, coaxing the ignorant North Korean children who broke into the battlefield to inject him with a shot in the arm.
Under the extreme cold of severe injuries, also in order to "wake up" this dying scout, our soldiers relayed out the "Battle Song of the Chinese Volunteer Army".
In addition, the whole snow scene was filmed on the ground, returning to realism. "Sniper" was filmed in the Baishan Mountains of Jilin Province, where Zhang Yimou strictly required "not waiting for snow to shoot", shooting in the northeast mountain pass with a minimum temperature of minus 35 degrees. The actors all conducted a month-and-a-half-long closed military training, using real firearms.
Some viewers mentioned in the after-viewing feeling that the old strategist who habitually likes aesthetic showmanship has told a very good and complete story this time, but if it can better reflect the "why the volunteer soldiers fight", it will be a plus point for the film.
There are also Weibo big V people who have a slight criticism of the film's name change, and the original name of "The Coldest Gun" is more suitable for this film.
However, it is inexplicable that "Sniper" has the highest rating and the best reputation, but it has the worst box office performance.
There are many viewers who think that the problem lies in the scheduling: they reflect that many of the scenes they watch are only once or twice a day, "Watergate Bridge" has 149,000 scenes on the first day, and "Sniper" has only 50,000 scenes, a difference of nearly 3 times; and the scheduling time is very "hades", either early in the morning, or three in the middle of the night.
To this end, director Zhang Yimou also admitted when he recently participated in a live broadcast event that he is currently a bit "in a hurry" as a director, hoping that the studio can arrange some good time schedules for "Sniper", do not always arrange three more midnight scenes, and hope that the film can rely on word of mouth to become a "dark horse".
Some viewers also hope that the film can be overturned by word of mouth, just like the previous "Hello Li Huanying" and "The Wandering Earth" and other counterattacks to "grab" the film.
But at present, on the second day of the Spring Festival file, although the reputation of "Sniper" is already excellent, the box office performance still further affects the scheduling, and the shadow of "Sniper" cannot even be seen on today's schedule.
According to Jimu News, a number of studio managers in Wuhan said that although "Watergate Bridge" was only announced to be stationed in the Spring Festival file more than ten days before the Spring Festival, considering that it is the sequel to the box office champion in The history of Chinese films, most theaters have consciously adjusted the schedule to provide it with the largest screening space. It is followed by regular Spring Festival films such as "Miracle Stupid Child", "Four Seas" and "This Killer Is Not Calm".
Film critic Chen Diandian believes that the main reason for Zhang Yimou's new Spring Festival file "cold" is the temporary entry of "Watergate Bridge". He said that a file period can not accommodate two war blockbusters, "Watergate Bridge" has the aura of the previous work, with its own innate advantages, many viewers after watching a war blockbuster, the next must watch a relaxed movie to adjust the mood, which will lead to the living space of "Sniper" is greatly compressed.
Which movie did you watch in this year's Spring Festival?
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