To "confront" Hollywood, Chinese films must first consolidate the foundation of the film industry

if you want to confront Hollywood head-on, don't just count on cleverness and hot money, let alone the theme and publicity to save the market. The key is to lay a solid foundation for the genre industry.

if you want to confront Hollywood head-on, don't just count on cleverness and hot money, let alone subject matter and publicity to save the market. the key is to lay a solid foundation for the genre industry. When we can easily make excellent genre films like Busan Travel and Haiyuntai like South Korea, we will talk about other films then.

strong > phenomenon: the May 1st Chinese film failed miserably, and "Fast 8" topped the list / strong >

May 1st short holiday Chinese film box office data, which makes people feel a little cold. Four Chinese-language films with high hopes, "bomb disposal expert", "memory Master", "like you" and "Chunjiao Save Zhiming" have only reached the 50% and 60% range that the major media had expected at the box office by May 4. It can be said that not a single Chinese film has exceeded expectations, let alone a blockbuster.

the embarrassing thing is that during the three-day holiday of May 1st, the box office one-day champion of April 30 and May 1 is still "Fast and Furious 8" which has been released for half a month. Under the circumstances of weather, geography and harmony (production volume), Chinese films are still beaten to the teeth by Hollywood.

what is even more depressing is that these four Chinese-language films are actually written by film directors from Hong Kong and Taiwan. There are veterans and novices, but they have nothing to do with the group of mainland directors. Those who compete with Hollywood are mainly directors of Hong Kong and Taiwan films who are more mature and go northward. For example, Qiu Litao, a former B-rated film veteran and genre veteran in Hong Kong, was in charge of action film production for the first time; Chen Kexin and his studio, who first went north to try the mainland market, began to nurture new people; and two young directors from Hong Kong and Taiwan, Chen Zhengdao and Peng Haoxiang, who developed best in the mainland, continued their genre experiments. But Rao is like this, when they are facing to shake Hollywood, they are still defeated one after another when they are pioneering the development of Chinese-language films.

the decadence actually began at the beginning of the year. since mid-February, the final Chapter of the biochemical Evil, which can only be classified as a B-rated film in Hollywood, has easily harvested nearly 1.2 billion of its income, even for many days in March. The top five at the box office every day are Hollywood imported films. Only actor-turned-actor Alec Su directed the second film, the dedication of suspect X, with poor box office figures. It can be said that such a fiasco for Chinese-language films has never been seen in the mainland market, where the box office is growing at an annual rate of more than 40% since 2010.

some people argue that maybe large-scale Chinese language productions are clustered in the summer or in the second half of the year, and the spring schedule in the past was not strong either. However, from our vertical comparison, we can see that no matter how bad Chinese films were at the box office in the past, there was no shortage of mainland filmmakers. For example, in the May 1 stalls in 2012, there were "Golden robbery", "Kill" and "Man". The three directors are all mainland directors; in 2013, there was the annual box office runner-up, "to our lost Youth"; in 2014, there was "your deskmate" and "hypnotic Master" competing on the stage.

in addition, from the box office data, May 1 is precisely the fastest growing period at all critical moments in recent years, and at the same time, spring is precisely the best time for new directors to come out, because directors who are more experienced and master more resources are all going for the Lunar New year, summer and National Day festivals, and it has become a consensus that newcomers are in the spring.

strong > reason: it is easy to drop the chain if the film industry is lack of foundation. / strong >

what does the collective weakness of Chinese films show this year? In fact, everyone can understand after a little thinking that it is still because the mainland film industry lacks the foundation and falls off the chain at a critical moment.

from the beginning of lost in Thailand, we look back at the box office journey of Chinese-language films over the past four years and find that comedies are still the biggest comedies in the mainland. With low input and high output, it has become the only killer mace that can compete with Hollywood in Chinese films. Hong Kong directors are mainly in control of magic themes and action themes, which are highly dependent on and invested in the film industry, from the conceptual design in the early stage to the color blending process in the later stage, as well as the most important CG lens production, each link is closely related to the overall strength of the film industry. It is precisely these links that have so far not been implemented by a particularly outstanding team in the mainland. so far, they have all been outsourced-- those with deep pockets, those who work directly with Hollywood and European and American teams, and those who almost have funds, they are carried out by South Korean teams, and Thailand and India do not dislike them. However, basically, no one dares to find a mainland team to carry out the implementation from beginning to end without foreign help.

the serious consequence caused by the false fire in the market in order to make money a few years ago is that the only thing the mainland can do is to take advantage of a few excellent actors recognized by the market in the past few years, and then pick up a few fairly stable screenwriters. Among the following young directors, there are only a handful of young directors who can really make genre films, and most of them are actors, so they can use their fame to pry resources and find a few good producers to control the quality. In this way, we can barely cope with the market. It can be said that when the pursuit of profit as the only goal of hot money passed, the truth emerged.

Hong Kong directors who go northward are in fact the most sober. They began to sum up their lessons at the beginning of this century. The reason for the decline of Hong Kong films at that time was that they only earned quick money from actors, but were reluctant to make great efforts to consolidate their industrial foundation. At the same time, Hollywood is engaged in a digital revolution, upgrading the technology of the film industry, trampling on Hong Kong films that were once of similar quality in less than a decade.

so Hong Kong directors seek market and financial support in the mainland, but never forget to attach importance to the film industry. Tsui Hark, Stephen Chow, Guo Zijian, Zheng Baorui and other directors who attach importance to technology have more and more voice, and now even Galaxy Image (Hong Kong Film production Company) is beginning to experiment with new technologies for mass production.

by the way, since 1999, Korean films have sprung up as a new force, with not only directors, screenwriters, and actors emerging in large numbers, but also the film industry has not fallen behind, and every aspect of the film division of labor has a tendency to keep up with Hollywood. The reason is that they attach importance to the cultivation of industrial talents who are badly needed in genre films. After gradually breaking the local film quota system, it came head-to-head with Hollywood, not only did not lose the market, but rose from Asia, but also led to the breakthrough of the author and director, both commercial art and commercial art. At present, there should be no objection to say that South Korea ranks first in the overall strength of the Asian film industry.

so, if you want to fight Hollywood head-on, don't just count on cleverness and hot money, let alone subject matter and publicity to save the market. the key is to lay a solid foundation for the genre industry. When we can easily make excellent genre films like Busan Travel and Haiyuntai like South Korea, we will talk about other films then.

Edit: nancy