2024 is the blowout year of sequels to domestic TV dramas. The second season of the hit drama "Celebrating More Than Years" returned after five years and topped the "drama king" in one fell swoop; The second season of "Sauvignon Blanc" has just ended, and the second part of the current domestic costume suspense dark horse "Tang Dynasty Legends" is continuing to write the legend of the magnificent Tang Dynasty, and the prequel "Youth White Horse Drunk Spring Breeze" will show the young man's style again, and the much-anticipated "Crime Hunting Guide 2" will also be released soon.
The first season of Zhuyu is in front, which makes the audience have strong expectations for the sequel, but also has higher standards and a more critical eye. But judging from the current situation, the comprehensive market performance of most sequel works is slightly inferior to that of the first season. The Douban score of the first season of "Celebrating More Than Years", which was created in seasons, was 7.9 and 7.3 in the second season, and the Douban score of the first season of "Sauvignon Blanc", which was created in one drama and two broadcasts, was 7.8 and 6.2 in the second season. The sequels of the well-known works such as "Ode to Joy", "Heartless Mage" and "Jiang Ye" have declined to varying degrees compared with the original works.
The sequel's breakthrough and surpassing the previous work has become a relatively tricky problem. The sequel, how can it be continued?
The original team, unified style
The sequel must first face the test of fans of the first season. From the perspective of drama fans, what they are most concerned about is whether the sequel can achieve the collective return of the original cast. At the beginning of the preparation of "Celebrating More Than Years 2", it was rumored on the Internet that the actor Chen Daoming, who played the Qingdi people, might not be able to act, which broke the hearts of many fans and collectively called for Chen Daoming's return. Fortunately, in the end, Chen Daoming played Emperor Qing again as scheduled, portraying Emperor Qing's deep scheming and ruthless methods thoroughly, retaining the authentic scheming flavor of "Celebrating More Than Years". "Celebrating More Than Years 2", "Tang Dynasty Legends: Westward Journey", and "Song Dynasty Boys' Chronicles 2", these better-performing works have basically realized the collective return of the original team.
And "Young White Horse Drunk Spring Breeze" is a little special, although it is a follow-up to "Youth Song Xing", it tells the story of the older generation of the protagonists of "Youth Song Xing". In the casting of the work, actors who had played sons in "Shao Song" were used to play their fathers in "Shao Bai". For example, Bai Shu, who played the son of Xiao Ruofeng, the king of Langya, in "Shao Song", played Xiao Ruofeng, the king of Langya, in "Shao Bai"; Li Hongyi, who played the male protagonist Xiao Se in "Shao Song", played Xiao Yi, the founding emperor of Beili in "Shao Bai". This intimate casting has moved many fans.
However, the actor's appearance is affected by many factors such as salary, schedule, and public opinion, although the producer also very much hopes to achieve the collective return of the role, but sometimes the actor has to be changed. For example, Yan Bingyun and Ye Linger in "Celebrating More Than Years 2", Wei Yanei in "Da Song Youth 2" and other roles have been replaced. The audience has already equated the role with the actor himself when watching the first season, so the replacement of the actor is easy to cause the audience to play, and even many viewers instinctively reject the replacement of the actor. Some force majeure factors in personnel changes are a big challenge for the sequel.
And, sequel making is a long process. Most fans of "Celebrating More Than Years" are very concerned about whether the core role can still be played as scheduled if there is a sequel to the series. After all, there has been a five-year gap between the second season and the first season of "Celebrating More Than Years", and if the production cycle of the third season is a little longer, the appearance of the actors may change too much compared with the first season, and the timeline between the first season and the third season in the play is not so long, which is also easy for the audience to play. In contrast, the first season of "Tang Wei" will be broadcast in 2022, and the second season will be broadcast in 2024, which is a more suitable interval period.
In addition, whether the style of the sequel and the original work is unified is also something that the audience is very concerned about. As soon as "Tang Dynasty Strange Tales: Westward Journey" and "Young White Horse Drunk Spring Breeze" were broadcast, the audience exclaimed, "The taste is right!" ”。 "Strange Tales of the Tang Dynasty" still fully shows the magnificent fantasy under the prosperous era of the Tang Dynasty, with frequent and interlocking tricks, and full of unique Tang Dynasty flavor. "Young White Horse Drunk Spring Breeze" vigorously focuses on the vast juvenile rivers and lakes, and emotionally perfectly matches the vigor and happiness of the young people in "Juvenile Song Xing", retaining the essence of martial arts elements; In terms of special effects and scenes, "Shaobai" continues the martial arts special effects used in "Shaoge", and the scene layout of filming locations such as Apocalypse City and Qianjintai is consistent with "Shaoge". The sequel's style is consistent with the original work, allowing the audience to quickly enter the sequel, and these depend on the director and producer's control of the core of the play's style.
Connecting the previous and the next, the biggest difficulty
For the sequel, the most difficult thing is how to connect the previous and the next. How should the next season of the work inherit the end of the previous season, and smoothly transfer to the narrative of the new season, so that new audiences will not have too high a viewing threshold? and will not make the old audience feel that the beginning is too long and protracted.
For example, at the end of the first season of "Celebrating More Than Years", the question of "whether Fan Xian is dead or not" was left behind, and the beginning of "Celebrating More Than Years 2" spent a lot of space to explain Fan Xian's fake death, which led to a slight delay at the beginning, and the slow speed at which the plot got on track, which was criticized by some fans.
In contrast, "Tales of the Tang Dynasty" is more mellow in its handling of the connection between the previous and the next. At the end of the first season, Su Wuming and Lu Lingfeng were transferred to Qianling Cheng and Dali Temple Shaoqing respectively, and at the beginning of the second season, they directly entered the main plot line, and Lu Lingfeng, who was promoted to Dali Temple Shaoqing, took over the "Demon Transformation" case, and because the case did not go well, Su Wuming was transferred back from Qianling. The ups and downs between the two seasons are silky, and the plots echo each other, and in the second season of "Demon Transformation" and "Death of the Puppet", the key characters in the first season of "Towering Tower" and "Huangmei Murder" respectively appeared. Old audiences can naturally appreciate the unique intentions of the show's settings, and these settings have not caused obstacles to the understanding of new audiences.
It is relatively easy to connect the past and the next for male frequency novel adaptations such as "Celebrating More Than Years" and "Notes on Tomb Robbery", which take the main line as the narrative form, as well as detective unit dramas such as "Tang Wei" and "Crime Hunting Guide". If the audience hasn't seen the previous work, it's not too difficult to get into the sequel. However, it is more difficult to connect the past and the next for an adaptation of a female frequency novel like "Sauvignon Blanc", which is mainly emotionally progressive.
Affected by the new regulation of the General Administration that "no more than 40 episodes of dramas can be broadcast, and the same series of dramas can only be broadcast every 12 months", "Sauvignon Blanc" artificially split the play into two seasons, which will be broadcast one year apart. It stands to reason that with unified shooting, original cast, and consistent style, there should be no problem for "Sauvignon Blanc 2" to create brilliance again, but "Sauvignon Blanc 2", which is dominated by emotional narratives, makes it difficult for viewers who have not watched the first season to sort out the intricate emotional lines between multiple protagonists through a few words of previous review. New viewers were confused when they entered the second season, and it was difficult for them to stick to the drama and fail to arouse their interest in making up for the previous work.
The first season of "Sauvignon Blanc" became popular with "one woman and N man" and "many pairs of CP", but after a year, there is not much left of the audience's original CP strength. At the beginning of the second season, it happened to be stuck in the stage where the main CP line misunderstood each other, and the inappropriate splitting node was easy to make CP fans lose their enthusiasm for chasing dramas, and some netizens ridiculed "Sauvignon Blanc 2" as a "limited drama" specially broadcast for fans of the first season and the original book.
is not only "Sauvignon Blanc", but after the once popular sweet pet drama "The Beloved Concubine of the Two Worlds" was broadcast to the third season, fans who held high the banner of CP also felt tired of the emotional line of the male and female protagonists. Judging from the market feedback of "Double World Favorite Concubine 3", the hope for the creation of the fourth season is relatively slim. These all reflect the dilemma of the emotionally oriented female frequency drama with the audience taking "knocking CP" as the motivation to chase the drama, in terms of season-by-season broadcast and sequel creation.
How to connect the previous and the next with the sequel and the previous work more harmoniously, realize the solid powder and embrace the new, and create a truly interlocking IP universe is the key to the breakthrough in the creation of the sequel.
Characters need to grow, and sequels need to change
The sequel can be split into the words "continuation" and "work", which not only needs to retain the essence of the previous work, but also needs to be progressive and changed on the basis of the previous work, so as to achieve the logical self-consistency of the plot at the same time, avoid the audience's aesthetic fatigue, and let the work continue to be new.
The most intuitive thing is that the sequel needs to reflect the character's personality changes, rich experience, and maturation of world view with the promotion of the plot. "Tang Dynasty Tricks: Westward Journey" is well produced, but some viewers still pointed out that the role of Lu Lingfeng should not be so reckless and impulsive after being tempered by many tricks in the first season. In some impulsive moments when Zhonglang will "toughen up", appropriate modifications can be made to reflect Lu Lingfeng's growth. But on the whole, the director and screenwriter fully listened to the audience's suggestions and designed the case to be more complex, so that the audience could not guess the murderer just based on the ranking of the actors' coffee positions and cast lists, making the viewing experience more brain-burning.
Compared with the first season, the second season of "Celebrating More Than Years" can clearly feel the changes in the mood of the protagonist Fan Xian. Although Fan Xian still cherishes the belief that all beings in the world are equal and law enforcement is like a sword, after experiencing a series of conspiracies and conspiracies such as Teng Zijing's death, Baoyuelou's murder, and Lai Mingcheng's death, the young man's heart is no longer pure, and he begins to reflect more deeply on power.
Just as the OST "Borrow It" in "Celebrating More Than Years 2" sang "How dare you say that you can't be stained if you are in the quagmire in white clothes", Fan Xian is also struggling in the quagmire of power, and feels more and more deeply the helplessness and difficulty of being in the center of power. But Fan Xian "after weighing the pros and cons, he still abides by right and wrong", the characters have a natural and reasonable transformation in the sequel, not only did not lose the spiritual core of the characters, causing the collapse of the character design, but made Fan Xian's image more three-dimensional and complex and deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, so that the sequel can achieve a certain transcendence on the basis of the previous work.
While the sequel market is bustling, it is also accompanied by high challenges and difficulties. How to achieve innovation and breakthrough while retaining the essence of the previous work has become a problem that the sequel production team must think about. From the return of the original cast, the continuation of the plot, to the growth and change of the characters themselves, every link needs to be carefully created. Only by breaking through the bottleneck of sequel creation can domestic dramas truly realize the construction of the IP universe, so that each work will shine more brightly with the addition of the IP universe.