Feng Shen： a grand opening ＂thrilling pass＂

Wen | Zero One

As the most popular drama in the summer, the bleak opening of "Feng Shen: Chao Ge Fengyun" (hereinafter referred to as "Feng Shen 1") is beyond expectations. The box office on the first day and the next day were 49 million and 58 million respectively, which were far lower than expected, which directly led to the stock price of Beijing Culture falling.

Fortunately, the film market is booming, and the score of Douban of Fengshen 1 is about 7.8 points and the favorable effect of social platforms have also begun to exert their strength. Fengshen 1 has reached more than 100 million box office in the first weekend, and has accumulated nearly 700 million yuan in the past week, which finally makes the filmmakers and the audience who love this film breathe a sigh of relief.

If the first film can finally reach the box office score of 2 billion+,the pressure on investors will not be too great, at least the second and third films will be "worth seeing"; But on the other hand, it can’t reach the long-awaited goal of domestic masterpieces, and the impact on box office records is expected to be placed in the second and third films with more magical scenes.

Feng Shen 1 is a film that is difficult to evaluate. Reading Entertainment tried to interpret the impression of this film from different angles: as a reinterpretation of traditional mythological images and a story conception, as the opening of a trilogy epic, and as the first truly industrialized commercial film of China’s traditional mythological story, it deserves different evaluations from different angles.

Because of the household name of the story, the thin limitation of the original novel in plot and characterization, and the failure of previous big-screen adaptations, public opinion was extremely harsh on "Feng Shen", and it suffered a large-scale "magnifying glass" stab before its release.

The original work of "Romance of the Gods" almost only emphasized fate, but now it seems that there are quite a few parts of "three incorrect views". And the characters in the original story are mostly storytelling and relatively paper-based. The primary problem to be solved in the trilogy of "Feng Shen" is the script, from which angle to cut into the world of Feng Shen Romance, and how to shape those well-known characters.

As a result, director Wu Ershan and the creative team chose a bold and prudent direction.

The story of "Fengshen 1" can be said to revolve around Yin Shou, the Shang king. Around the shaping of Yin Shou, the core figure, other core figures have the conflict point of the progressive story:

Yin Shou, the Shang King played by ChristianRandPhillips, has become a new interpretation of the character "Zhou Wang". His early heroic temperament, demagogic speeches, the release of ambition after receiving the help of the fox demon, his great desire for power and extreme selfishness finally broke out, and the characters have a credible and strong sense of flesh and blood and emotional rendering.

Yin Shou is the source of disaster behind da ji, the "demon queen". Da ji’s appearance was portrayed as a natural and animalistic monster image. She didn’t help or confuse Yin Shou out of any human social interests, but simply thanked Yin Shou for helping him achieve any goal. Her ability has become the external cause of exposing Yin Shou’s wild heart to the world, but in essence Yin Shou only went from hiding to not hiding, and its inner nature has never changed.

Yin Shou was Yin Jiao’s father and Ji Fa’s "spiritual father" in the proton period. Ji Fa’s growth path is to break the "absolute correctness" behind Yin Shou’s image as an idol of life and a spiritual father. Since then, Ji Fa has been able to make decisions with truly independent self-thinking and moral ideas. Ji Chang’s sentence "It doesn’t matter whose son you are, but who you are" is exactly the case.

Yin Shouben should have been recognized by Bigan, Ji Chang, other Shang courtiers, vassals and even overseas immortals as "the common master of the world". With all kinds of evil deeds of his ambitious expansion exposed, natural disasters and visions appeared, and the Shang King also lost the people’s hearts and the protection of heaven and earth. Four Bo Hou were killed, and Jiang Ziya fled with the list of deities, and the tone of the whole story of deities was basically stable in epic temperament.

"Zhou Wang" is often regarded as a somewhat stupid, brainless and fatuous dissolute emperor in the original works and past film and television works. If we don’t break away from the traditional narrative mode of obsessing the Lord after the demon, then the whole temperament concept of the new deity will be extremely old and boring. There are two advantages in the way the film "Feng Shen" is handled:

First, it is in line with modern values and historical truth. The fallacy of the narrative logic of "femme fatale" lies in the fact that "power is never in the hands of femme fatale", and whoever is the inflated ambition and evil deeds should be counted on; The second is to create fuller and more hierarchical characters. Zhou Wang and da ji are both more tenable and in line with narrative logic.

Therefore, from the perspective of reinterpretation of traditional mythological images and story conception, Reading Entertainment believes that "Feng Shen" has been done quite well, and it is not an exaggeration to score 85 points.

As early as the establishment of the trilogy, Wu Ershan’s shooting idea of "Three continuous shooting" was very similar to that of Peter Jackson’s filming of the The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

From the perspective of film shooting, the benefits of "Three continuous shooting" are that the total cost is easier to control and the total efficiency is higher. For example, from the perspective of actor’s pay, "Three continuous shooting" has no risks brought by the change of casting schedule and coffee spot, and continuous shooting’s pay is easier to depress, without considering the rising cost or the risk of changing roles brought by the sudden popularity of new actors in a few years. The same is true in terms of film preparation and team understanding.

Middle-aged and elderly actors like ChristianRandPhillips and Li Xuejian, and newcomers like Na Ran, if they are filmed separately in the long period of trilogy release, it is difficult to ensure the consistency of the lineup. However, under the model of "Three continuous shooting", middle-aged and old-aged actors can complete their own scenes in a coherent way, and new actors can also dig from sea selection to comprehensive customized training for their roles. The amazing performance of Na Ran as da ji is also largely related to this way of actor selection and training.

From the narrative point of view, Feng Shen 1 also plays the same "opening" role as The Ring Messenger. In The Lord of the Rings’s trilogy, most of the big scenes also come from the second and third films, and there is almost no big war drama in the first film. If only from the perspective of establishing the foundation of the world outlook and stimulating the audience’s interest, the story of "Feng Shen 1" is quite well laid out, and the audience will be highly interested with the eggs that Ji Fa came home at the end of the film and heard that Master Tai was still in court.

Therefore, as the grand opening of the trilogy epic, "Fengshen 1" is definitely above the pass.

However, there is an obvious misjudgment between Feng Shen 1 and the expectations of the general audience. The vast majority of the audience think that "Feng Shen 1" is a masterpiece of China’s magical mythology, but in fact, as the opening of the trilogy epic film, there are few magical and magical scenes in the feature film of Feng Shen 1, focusing on the short appearances of, Lei Zhenzi and others. The overall tone is a relatively heavy costume style, and the audience will feel that kind when Master Wen appears with the eggs that will be returned to the DPRK by the four devils.

Therefore, when everyone said "one person, one vote for Master Wen’s travelling expenses", it reflected the audience’s high expectations for the follow-up story of fighting. After all, that is the mythical story of deity in everyone’s impression. It is most important for director Wu Ershan to raise the visual wonders of domestic films in the mythical field to a higher level, as The Wandering Earth did in the field of science fiction.

But from this point of view, Reading Entertainment Jun thinks that "Feng Shen 1" is not successful. The film’s service aesthetic level is online, and the lens language texture is also in place, but the CG special effects level is not outstanding. The opening performance of Jizhou World War I is comparable to Canon’s international first-class blockbuster, while other special effects highlights have some make a fool of oneself:

One is that Jiang Ziya and his party were arrested, and elephants came in the background. The CG matting of the whole picture was very rough, which was almost or even slightly less than that of Hollywood’s clash of the titans ten years ago. The second is that in all scenes of Lei Zhenzi, the details such as skin and wings are also rough; The third is that some scenes are rough, and the scenes of Kunlun Mountain and Shen Gongbao in the sea have no features and memory points, while the cliffs and floods that Ji Fa fled also smell like domestic 3D animation.

As for the scenes in Yang Jian and Nezha films, they are basically when couriers are forced to go offline. Basically, what you can see in the trailer is the essence of them in the feature film. Therefore, when it comes to domestic visual effect blockbusters, Fengshen 1 can only be said to have achieved part of it, and it is difficult for the public to have an intuitive upgrade feeling like that in Wandering Earth 2. The audience can only look forward to Fengshen 2 and 3.

If it hadn’t been for July 2023, the strongest summer file in history, and the unparalleled trend of domestic films since 2023, the box office trend of "Fengshen 1", which was only 100 million in the first two days, would probably slide into the abyss and eventually be less than 1 billion, and the cost pressure of the second and third films would increase sharply, and the release progress and quality would probably be greatly affected.

Word-of-mouth proves that the quality of Fengshen 1 is not bad, and the main reason why it falls into such a dangerous situation is the complete failure of the previous publicity: First, almost none of the lightning spots to be avoided and the negative impressions to be reversed have been achieved; Second, there is no stalk.

On July 21st, the day after its release, Fengshen 1 ranked as high as 28.2%, and the attendance rate was only 8.9%, while the attendance rate of Chang ‘an Three Wan Li was 23.2%, and that of Octagonal Cage was 19%. Even the Super Family with a score of 4 was 10%. The extremely low attendance rate can be seen in the early announcement of Fengshen 1.

Because of the "3 billion cost" stunt thrown in the early days and the mythological theme, the project "Feng Shen" reminds people of a large number of domestic bad films instantly, while "Feng Shen" invited foreign special effects experts from The Lord of the Rings, which is inconsistent with the emphasis on promoting domestic blockbusters in the past two years, making people afraid that this is another monster of "combining Chinese and Western". The pre-publicity of "Feng Shen" should avoid and reverse these impressions.

As a result, until the film was released, most viewers’ impression of the film was still "a domestic blockbuster with a cost of 3 billion and I don’t know where the flowers went." There is no public reaction to the complexity and heavy publicity costumes and exquisite makeup. The released trailers will only make the audience feel bad one after another. The released stills posters are 108,000 miles better than the effect of the positive film, and Lei Zhenzi’s picture with poor effect is circled.

As for "no stalk", the early stage is normal, because all the young actors are newcomers, and they don’t have a familiar face. Naturally, they can’t bring their own controversy as YiBo and Jackson Yee did when they participated in movies. However, this topic has great potential and publicity has not been made good use of.

Da ji, played by Na Ran, was controversial, so it was difficult to explain it without spoilers. The film originally chose to hide, but when it came to the end, it didn’t hide the footage and the interview of imitating the fox. This way of "I spent a lot of time" didn’t work well, because the audience didn’t quite understand the animal shape of the fox side in the film, and as a result, one of the most amazing characters in this feature film had a counterproductive effect before the screening. It was better to hide it all the time.

Almost all the "stalks" in "Feng Shen 1" are ignited in the running water logic of "I make suggestions for Feng Shen", but the propaganda materials in the early stage have hardly played any positive role.

Therefore, "Feng Shen" is "a thrilling pass with a grand opening" because as the first part of a trilogy, "Feng Shen 1" has become its own task from the film content itself, which not only has the story tension of an independent chapter, but also shapes a complex villain and a growing decent figure, and also successfully stimulates the audience’s interest in the sequel. However, from the market point of view, "Fengshen 1" can only be said to have passed the risk and just passed the line of life and death.

* Original article, please indicate the source when reprinting.