"Dune," which was officially released in the mainland market this weekend, seems destined to become a film with both ice and fire.
After its world premiere, it was hailed as a sci-fi masterpiece, and director Dennis Villeneuve was expected by critics to be the next Kubrick. Many netizens may not know who Kubrick is, in short, Hollywood's unparalleled film genius.
Before the film was released in the two major markets in China and the United States, the global box office had easily exceeded 100 million US dollars, the freshness of rotten tomatoes in foreign countries was 89%, and Douban opened a score in advance, up to 7.9 points! The Douban score of "The Wandering Earth", which is also a science fiction film, is also 7.9. "Chosin Lake" is 7.6 points.
No matter how you look at it, this $165 million (about 1.1 billion yuan) Hollywood classic science fiction adaptation starring Sweet Tea is moving in the direction of science fiction gods, but it is obvious that it is frustrated by the average audience in China.
No matter how these audiences who give bad reviews of the film see the film, through the screening, the sea exterior or other ways, the result is that many viewers give a completely different evaluation from the Douban netizens: one star bad review.
The most representative review is: the film is "dull and hypnotic, drowsy".
Aesthetics have always been diverse, and people certainly have the right not to be interested in or even dislike the hard science fiction themes and complex plots of "Dune".
But why is it that a film that has not yet been released has already produced a very different evaluation among fans? Is this a failure of science fiction or an aesthetic difference? Will this be another Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster that has suffered box office Waterloo in the Chinese market?
It's time to talk.
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Let's start with What Dune is.
The film is adapted from the 1965 Frank Herbert novel of the same name, a total of 6 books have been published, the most classic and prestigious is the first, the book won the Nebula Award that year, the following year won the Hugo Award, but also influenced "Star Wars", "Star Trek", "Game of Thrones" and "Valley of the Wind" and other later works, in short, is a super big IP.
The movie "Dune" was filmed in the first half of the book.
The story of "Dune" mainly takes place in the distant future, a dune planet called Erakos, in addition to an endless desert, but also rich in a spice resource that the whole universe is crazy about, the most famous sentence of the novel is: Whoever controls the spices will control the universe.
Originally, the Dune Planet was in the hands of the Hakenam family, the protagonist of this film, but the emperor wanted to do things, deliberately let another large family, the Ertridi Family, take charge of the spice mining rights of the Dune Planet, and then sit on the mountain and watch the tiger fight, and by the way, take away the Hakenam family's confidant.
For a long time, many filmmakers have wanted to bring this grand saga to the screen, but the famous director David Lynch's 1984 "Dune" failed at the box office, and Lynch himself was not satisfied with the work.
Later, the big director Alessandro Zodlowski also tried to adapt the book, but after years of doing it and investing millions of dollars in upfront production costs, the film did not even have a shadow. The reason is that it is too difficult to squeeze the "Dune" novel into a movie, and the film industry believes that it is an impossible task to make those complicated worldview settings into an easy-to-understand science fiction story.
Until the son of the Chosen, Villeneuve, appeared.
The number one newcomer in hollywood science fiction in recent years, who was a die-hard fan of the original "Dune", after filming "Blade Runner 2049", Warner not only gave him a budget of $165 million, but also gave him a fantastic all-star cast, "Sweet Tea" Timothy Challemet played the male protagonist Paul, "Apocalypse" Oscar Isaac played the Duke of Reato, mission impossible heroine Rebecca Ferguson played Mrs. Jessica,
"Dekkers the Destroyer" Dave Batista as Laban the Beast, "Aquaman" Jason Momma as Duncan,
There are also big stars such as "Thanos" Josh Brolin and Javier Baden, and of course, Dr. Yue, played by Zhang Zhen.
As a result, to put it simply, he made a Blade Runner version of Game of Thrones.
Following the fatalistic tradition of space opera, the film blends visual spectacles with superb editing and Hans Zimmer's music to weave an immersive, epic world.
The film's high reputation is certainly not blind, this is indeed a science fiction fan who will sincerely feel that "it is very good that the film can be invented".
Others will think that Villeneuve has opened the most shocking science fiction series in the third decade of this century, which is the reason for the film's science fiction god.
But now many Chinese film fans say: What a science fiction god, as soon as it came up, it put me to sleep.
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Why can't the sci-fi gods play here in Chinese movie fans?
Three simple points: First, you must not look at pirated copies.
Why, here is not to explore the issue of genuine ethics, but as long as you watch pirated copies on mobile phones or even computers, no matter how high-definition the picture quality, you will basically fall asleep.
Because the movie is not only made for the big screen, or even specially created for IMAX, you see the pirated version, which is equivalent to automatically filtering out the most beautiful parts of the movie, and scolding the movie hypnosis, which is definitely unfair, and the director did not want you to watch it on your mobile phone.
Well, then when I look at the genuine version, will I definitely feel the science fiction god? Not necessarily, because there is a second point:
The film has many advantages, but it may not be on the appetite of Chinese audiences.
The biggest advantage of the film is that the promotional copywriting "brings an extraordinary audiovisual feast and creates a very immersive audiovisual experience." ”
Visual immersion, really absolute.
As a science fiction blockbuster, more than 90% of the scenes in the film are filmed by live-action, especially the desert part. Director Villeneuve wants to be real with the audience from beginning to end, giving hard goods, that is, to take the audience from the light, wind, sand and dust of nature to truly feel the dune world.
The film is indeed very beautiful, Villeneuve's personal style has also been continued, the concept design, audiovisual language, including the actor's performance style are unified, presenting a magnificent, desolate, atmospheric beauty.
Whether it's the boundless sand sea of mysterious Erakos, the planet Haknam, the golden quicksand, the sandworm whirlpool, the exquisite interior space, to the various futuristic creations, the wonders are endless. In particular, the appearance of the real owner of the dune planet, the sandworm, and the sandworm special effects that took a year to create, are definitely a real audiovisual spectacle on the big screen.
So for the audience who like this mouthful, the film's artistic style and photographic editing can be called god-level, the atmosphere that belongs to the dune world is unique, the service is the ultimate intention, the epic is magnificent, the rhythm is relaxed, people are immersed in the sci-fi atmosphere jointly constructed by the director and the original, and the starring sweet tea and his every dream and prophecy that emerges are suffocatingly beautiful.
And the actors are all good.
Paul, played by Sweet Tea, has a slightly childish face but a deep and gloomy look, and the fragile and slender feeling of the first half and the transformation of the latter part are in place, and the original party can be satisfied.
Laban, played by Batista, was also pleasantly surprised, and from the first line of his first scene, the audience will forget "Guardians of the Galaxy".
Our Zhang Zhen's Doctor Yue is not a cutscene, but the number one traitor in this film with a complete character arc, and finally the most tragic character in the whole film, vividly explaining what is a traitor will not have a good ending.
So the question is, since there are a lot of advantages, why are many viewers not so polite to the evaluation of the movie?
That's the third point I'm going to make: the film has great technique, good picture effects, and a good soundtrack, but in the popular sense, it really isn't good enough.
For the average audience, the film is a bit of a cloud.
The story of the film actually continues a common theme of science fiction movies - "savior".
All of Dune's characters revolve around the core of the young lord Paul, because he is the "chosen son".
The original worldview of Dune is very large, there are many characters, and there are various unique ecosystems that exist on different planets, and it involves politics, religion, ecology, anthropology and other fields, so it is called "science fiction Bible", but if you have not read the original book, the names of the families, the names of the characters, and even the names of the planets in the story are too difficult to remember.
And the story did not start for long, and a long literary drama began, starting with a palace fight.
But palace fighting you know, even "Game of Thrones" in the domestic palace fighting drama is only a primary entry level, these big families fight you to the death, one family to kill the other story, for domestic audiences too small.
When the story begins to tell the growth of the young lord, the male protagonist begins to dream in various ways, and for the general audience, especially the friends who watch pirated copies in front of the computer and mobile phone, they basically fall into these scenes.
It was hard to survive until the sandworm appeared, and the movie was almost over.
In the end, this puts Dune in an awkward position, because even fans of the original book have a hard time summarizing what kind of story it is, saying that it is "an epic family story"? It didn't seem to say anything.
Because this is not a book that is easy to explain to laymen.
As a result, the film has tried to accommodate the general audience, and the ordinary audience still feels confused.
The characters of the gods and gods, the plot that does not burn at all, the way to make science fiction films into literary films, for the audience who like it, the film is an independent work of art. But judging by the standards of Hollywood cool films, the film is completely failed.
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So why did the film touch the scales of Chinese audiences?
The answer is to succeed Villeneuve and defeat Villeneuve.
In the final analysis, Villeneuve's personal style and aesthetics cast the core of the film, and the Hollywood industrial system has become the packaging box of the film.
The style of the films he created is biased towards classical space opera, and if you like this style, you will feel that it is thick and atmospheric and spectacular, and if you don't like this style, you will feel that it is mysterious and obscure.
The reason why the original novel is difficult to change is also because of the most imaginative world construction in the novel— which just prevents it from being brought to the big screen.
To Villeneuve here, his 2016 "Arrival" and 2017's "Blade Runner 2049" are the representative works of Hollywood science fiction films that are popular in foreign media and enter the Chinese market box office, a high-pressure science fiction director, and meet the science fiction bible "Dune" that ordinary people can't understand, and the results can be imagined.
The original "Lord of the Rings" has been much better than "Dune", but before the re-screening of "The Lord of the Rings", the audience also complained that "a broken ring sent for three hours", in fact, this broken ring sent 9 hours.
The new generation of viewers who are accustomed to watching short videos for three seconds without seeing the key points can't even stand "The Lord of the Rings", how can they endure "Dune".
Some people have praised it, saying, "In today's world of cheap popcorn movies flooding the mainstream commercial films, it is like witnessing dinosaurs running rampant on earth again."
That's right, so the dinosaurs went extinct.
Villeneuve's strong artistic cinematic character determines that this is an emotionally led narrative, very different from the general science fiction blockbuster. But the general audience to watch Hollywood science fiction is looking for sensory stimulation, and the film in the 155 minutes basically does not have a real sense of the climactic scene, if you watch the film is not good to cry, not funny, not hot blood, no violent conflict and no reversal and other "cool points" on the right, the director wants this effect.
Therefore, the film is destined to be complained about "can't understand the plot" and "has no ending", the focus is: not cool enough. But this is a dark fairy tale of science fiction metaphysics filmed for science fiction dead fans.
The audience who watched with a complaining mood could not understand the world view of the film at all, and even after watching the whole movie, they would ask: There are huge spaceships, crazy gunboat firepower, and hand-to-hand combat with cold weapons?
But the film has long explained that in the future of ten thousand years later, in order to avoid nuclear retaliation between families, human beings have invented a technology called shielding field, which can block any high-speed weapon attack, especially bullets. So human beings have developed a way of fighting with close cold weapons, in the final analysis, even advanced technology can not stop the nature of human war, how to fight the battle, high-tech does not allow to use, then take the knife to cut each other.
Audiences who have read the original novel are easy to understand, and those who have not read it will complain in their groggy sleep. What to do?
Human sorrow and joy are not the same, and the aesthetic vision of watching cool films to see "Dune" is of course only a hypnotic bad film.
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So is the movie worth watching? Don't ask about the Douban score, don't ask about North American word of mouth, ask yourself.
There is a saying that the film is good-looking, but the story is not easy to understand, the core is very grand, but extremely brain-intensive. It is destined not to please most Chinese audiences who love cool films, even if the film is still good at the overseas box office.
Objectively speaking, "Dune" is a work of great ambition and great standards, with a good aesthetic texture, and it can be regarded as "washing eyes" for audiences who have watched more shoddy science fiction works.
But for Chinese audiences, its only problem is that it is not timely, the Chinese people have not yet collectively watched this kind of science fiction movie that brings together business, literature and literature, and the easy-to-understand Marvel blockbuster is the right way to open hollywood science fiction in the mainland market.
This is likely to mean that even if There is no piracy of "Dune", the box office in the Chinese market will not be better than the director's previous films "Blade Runner" and "Arrival".
Because this is a work that you feel with your heart, or even invest in experiencing this strange dune world, you have to get it. And the reason why many audiences go to the cinema is to enjoy two hours of brainless time.
Now that it is likely that it will not be able to shake the box office advantage of "Chosin Lake" and encounter a storm of more ferocious reviews after its release, those who do not sleep comfortably in the theater are likely to reciprocate the unspiring viewing experience with retaliatory ratings.
"Dune" is a movie that was truly made for the screen, perhaps a new science fiction classic that cannot be missed in this era, but it does not belong to most ordinary Chinese audiences, and no matter how wonderful the feast, it is also someone else's.
Some netizens quoted the affirmation of foreign media: "Watching "Dune" at the moment is like watching "2001 Space Odyssey" in 1968." But Chinese audiences wouldn't have watched "2001: A Space Odyssey" in 1968, and it's hard to be fascinated by Dune now.
It's like a love affair, it's not the audience's fault, it's not that Dune isn't good enough, we just have no part.