Observation of 2017 Summer Animated Films: How can domestic animation get out of the bottleneck period

2017 summer animation is not really the "worst" caused by the sharp decline in quality, but the total decline in the absence of a large number of foreign animation and the lack of domestic "dark horse".

before the end of the summer vacation, some netizens anxiously discussed in "domestic Animation Bar" whether this year's domestic animation is the worst summer vacation in recent years. Compared with the return of the Great Saints, which created the miracle of typesetting in 2015, a number of Hollywood animations in 2016 did look relatively dull.

the 2015 summer animation "the Great return of Journey to the West" not only historically refreshed the box office record of animated films with an impressive achievement of 950 million yuan, but also stimulated the audience's unprecedented enthusiasm and confidence in domestic animation. "return of the Great Saints", along with the 2016 "Big Fish Begonia" (560 million yuan at the box office) and this year's "Great Protection Law" (80 million yuan at the box office), has been known by netizens as the "big three" of domestic animation. It is their strength that makes ordinary audiences in addition to animation fans see the strong attraction of domestic animation for adult audiences. On the other hand, however, the box office of the "Big three" series continues to decline in the face of rising enthusiasm and expectations. Therefore, between the fervent expectation and the following weak predicament, how to get out of the bottleneck period of domestic animation has become a topic that we are more concerned about.

< strong > get out of the myth of "Dark Horse" < / strong >

< strong > calmly deal with < / strong >

so far, this summer's animation basically presents a dominant situation. In July, "Divine stealing Daddy 3", which was released in July, easily grossed more than 1 billion yuan without other Hollywood animation competitions. By contrast, the 80 million yuan of "Great Protector Law" is not "successful" enough. Doraemon: Nobita's Antarctic Frozen Adventure, which was released in June, continued the success of the super IP, earning 140 million yuan: other cartoons were almost silent. "Doll Rhapsody", "Food Rhapsody with Big ears", "Legend of Doufu" and "Adventures of A Tang" are less than 50 million yuan, while "the Legend of Makino" and "Elephant Lin Wangzhi's sudden fame" are even more bleak. The biggest highlights of the August edition are "Sail Movie 6" and "100, 000 Cold jokes 2". As of Aug. 24, the box office of "Sail Movie 6" was about 86.34 million yuan, and "100, 000 Cold jokes 2" was about 96.57 million yuan, which did not change the possibility of the whole market of the summer animation file.

"the worst" obviously refers to the great success of the "three" series at the box office and word of mouth, especially the strong "Dark Horse" and "the return of the Great Sage", which is a masterpiece of the rise of domestic animation. let people unconsciously delimit it as the production standard and output requirements of domestic animation, it seems that it must be as successful as the Great Sage. Objectively speaking, the box office miracle of "Tap Water" in "the return of the Great Saints" is almost impossible to replicate, otherwise the equally affectionate "Big Fish and Begonia" and the well-known "Great Protection Law" should not be so far apart at the box office. Therefore, in the face of the bottleneck of domestic animation, what we should do is to get out of the myth of "dark horse" and treat "the rise of Guoman" calmly.

behind the box office achievements of the" Big three "series, there are some data that people are not very familiar with, such as the domestic cartoons of about 2x3 failed to earn more than 20 million yuan at the box office in the past five years, or the first three films of the" Kuiba "series have a total investment of over 100 million yuan, but the box office is less than 60 million yuan. In other words, instead of taking the return of the Great Sage as the benchmark and regarding the 2017 summer vacation as a serious retrogression, it is better to regard it as a reminder that the rise of our domestic animation is still very difficult, and the Great Sage is more suitable to be seen as a phased achievement.

Let's take a look at a more convincing set of data: 25 animations in the summer of 2016 grossed 2.4 billion yuan at the box office. Six of them-Angry Birds (510 million yuan at the box office), finding Nemo 2 (250 million yuan at the box office), Doraemon: new. Nobita's birth in Japan (110 million yuan at the box office), Big Fish and Begonia (560 million yuan at the box office), Big Secret (380 million yuan at the box office), Ice Age 5: interstellar collision (440 million yuan at the box office)-contributed 2.25 billion yuan, that is to say, the average box office of the remaining 19 films is less than 8 million yuan, and this is the real situation of domestic animation. From this point of view, the 2017 summer animation is not really the "worst" caused by the sharp decline in quality, but the total decline in the absence of a large number of foreign animation and the lack of domestic "dark horse".

< strong > carefully polish the content < / strong >

< strong > explore the type of domestic animation < / strong >

of course, even if we are not too critical of the 2017 summer animation, we can not avoid the bottleneck of domestic animated films after a wave of the best parts. The box office decline of the "Big three" series has once again proved to us that word-of-mouth is not a guarantee, the film itself is, more accurately, reasonable typing is. Take "one hundred thousand cold jokes" in Rihe style and "the return of the Great Sage" in beautiful and comic style as examples, reasonable typing is the foundation, and perfecting narrative and polishing details under the framework is the fundamental guarantee. On this basis, the former invokes the embarrassing / complaining culture that has become popular in recent years, cultivating a large number of fans in the TV series, while the latter activates the traditional classic Journey to the West. In other words, the success of these two films is not the manifestation of the spirit of Guoman, but the success of the creators.

on the basis of typing, we have to patiently polish the story, and on the basis of the improvement of production skills, the script is still the key. Primary-age animation for children usually needs the pre-training of the audience, such as "Pleasant Goat and Grey Wolf", "Bear presence", "Sail", "Big ear Map" and so on, which has accumulated a small audience in the TV version. On the other hand, non-primary-age animations of the whole age have higher requirements for the script, especially under the cultivation of many Hollywood animations, the audience's requirements for stories have gradually increased, and the slogan of supporting domestic cartoons alone cannot go too far. what is more important is how to use types to activate their own culture. In the light-chasing animation aimed at "Pixar of China", two consecutive works "Little door God" and "Adventures of A Tang" have suffered box office failures. It should be said that the technical pursuit of light animation has indeed improved the production level of domestic animation, but the mediocrity of the script is obviously the key reason for its failure. The Little door God divides the story into two lines between heaven and earth, trying to activate the lost traditional culture under the intersection of the two, but the fact is that the door god line is not enough to excavate the traditional culture, and the human story is too didactic. Compared with "Little door God", "Adventures of A Tang" is more Hollywood, and it looks like a Chinese version of Toy Story. However, the problem still lies in the script. The adult audience thinks that the narrative is too simple, the gorgeous technology flows in the accumulation of Chinese elements, and the primary-age audience finds it not interesting enough, so they go back to the typing problem mentioned earlier. Incorrect positioning and rough script are the root causes of the failure of light-chasing animation.

in short, we should not only have higher requirements, but also have more patience in dealing with domestic animation. On the one hand, we have to understand that in the gap between Japanese comics and American comics, it is still difficult to get out of their own style, on the other hand, we should also see that there is still a lot of room for the expansion of the domestic animation market. Although this summer animation appears to be insufficient combat effectiveness, but the entire domestic animation has indeed entered a new stage of development. Whether it is a steady stream of original animation projects on various popular funding platforms, or strongly promoted by Bilibili, the entire output environment has begun to improve, and batch after batch of potential audiences are being cultivated. As long as we can tell more interesting stories, I believe we can activate more audiences in the future.

Edit: mary