Why didn't the long-awaited "Jiang Ziya" reproduce the "Nezha" effect?
The movie "Jiang Ziya" poster.
■Reporter Zhang Zhenxi
At the end of the hit animation "Nezha: The Devil Boy Comes into the World", a "Jiang Ziya" sounded, revealing the ambition of going abroad to create a "shenzhen universe", which instantly ignited the audience's emotions.
In view of the previous film's good box office record of over 5 billion yuan and good reputation, "Jiang Ziya" naturally became the first domestic film with a pre-sale box office of over 100 million yuan in this National Day file.
As of press time, the box office of "Jiang Ziya" has exceeded 1.4 billion yuan, but the online score is only 7.0, which is much lower than that of "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World", and the popularity of derivative topics on the Internet is far more popular. Not as good as the screen-sweeping event of the "Nezha Family and Friends Group".
"You can't boast, you can't scold." A netizen's comment on "Jiang Ziya" was very representative.
This work, which restarts the story of Fengshen from a contemporary perspective, took four years and brought together the efforts of thousands of Chinese animators. The character design and visual presentation are exquisite and exquisite, refreshing the audience; in the storytelling, what "My life is my life, I can't help it". "Become a god in my own way" in the same way, but failed to find the right emotional orientation and life "drop point". The seemingly grand theme finally failed to stimulate the audience's inner resonance.
After the feature film was over, a section of Nezha's family's New Year's greetings to "Uncle Jiang" became the best in the audience, and this precisely reflects the appeal of a down-to-earth living narrative to the audience.
"Jiang Ziya" failed to reproduce the "Nezha" effect, which is a good thing.
While this work has raised the aesthetic standards of domestic animation, it has also made a more meaningful exploration-exactly what kind of "new story" can enter the hearts of contemporary audiences.
Four years + thousands of people, the ultimate picture quality shows the artistic conception of Chinese aesthetics
Although it is the second work of "Fengshen Universe", "Jiang Ziya" and "Ne Zha" actually started almost at the same time, with a production cycle of four years.
Before the release of "Jiang Ziya", a full lineup list poster verified the work's tribute to the ingenuity and made the audience look forward to it.
The list lists the names of the animators who participated in the production and their length of time in the industry.
The list of thousands of people, ranging from 28 years to 1 year in the industry, shows the strong investment of "Jiang Ziya", and also pays tribute to the generational heritage of Guoman.
The ultimate picture creation ingenuity is also the biggest advantage of "Jiang Ziya".
"Jiang Ziya" has accumulated 2,317 conceptual images of the scene alone, and a single scene is iterated over 70 times on average. Many scenes use the superposition of two-dimensional hand-painted and three-dimensional special effects.
At the beginning of the film, a two-dimensional animation of the national style is the first to catch the eye.
This section draws on the hand-painted two-dimensional fragment of Dunhuang fresco style, and explains the background of the battle between the nine-tailed fox tribe and humans.
When Li Wei, the director of "Jiang Ziya", showed the original concept film to Zhang Chun, director of "Big Fish and Begonia", the other party blurted out: "You are a film like no one has come before."
Experts in the doorway amaze colleagues not only the beauty of the picture, but also the amazing workload.
Different from the static processing of general two-dimensional animation details, every detail in this two-dimensional picture in "Jiang Ziya" is moving, whether it is a human being bewitched by the magic of Nine Tails, or natural details such as horses, rocks, and waves. It is vivid; in order to withstand the scrutiny of the "magnifying glass" on the screen, the team also used a super large canvas.
Under such strict standards, there are more than 600 single scene layers in the clip, even exceeding the limit of hardware equipment. Even the top experts in the industry can only draw one or two frames a day, and the workload has increased exponentially. .
The character design is more perfect.
The final appearance of Jiang Ziya in the film was carefully selected by the team from more than a hundred versions originally designed.
The "feather cloak" on Jiang Ziya's body is actually woven from the meridians of leaves, which also confirms his principle of non-killing; the "divine beast" that is beloved by the audience has been endowed with contemporary cuteness. The trait of pet.
In order to create the four disparate natural and lovely hair textures, the team abandoned the automatically generated hair drawing system and chose the most primitive hand-painted. Just a few seconds of sleep shots would take three months to adjust.
The traditional cultural details reflected everywhere are also decorated with the Chinese aesthetics of the film.
The main creator has almost gone through classical works such as "Shan Hai Jing", tracing the jewelry and patterns in it, and the image design of each important role has its source.
Take the twelve golden immortals under the seat of Yuanshi Tianzun as an example. At first glance, the golden immortals have uniform shapes, but in fact, the flowers on each headwear are different, and the number of flowers on their headwear is three, which is taken from the "Three Flowers Gathering" One said.
Many viewers also saw the shadow of the cultural relic bronze mask on the Jinxian's mask.
Without a little "sense of grip", the grand concept is difficult to gain popularity
The score and reputation of "Jiang Ziya" tends to be in the middle reaches, which is related to the presentation of its story.
Jiang Ziya, who was originally entrusted with the mandate of heaven, disagrees with the concept of "sacrifice one person and save the common people", disobeyed his master's order, gave up being a god, and said the heroic declaration of "becoming a god in your own way".
With the rise of individual consciousness, the "revolution that broke out in the depths of the soul" has a strong idealistic color, and the propositions involved are very grand.
However, the story of "Jiang Ziya" has never been able to find a cut similar to the "family narrative" in "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World", which leads to more profound and insufficient moving resonance.
"Jiang Ziya" started at the end of "The Romance of the Conferred Gods". After the Great Conferring God, Jiang Ziya was demoted and cast aside by the world because of his compassion when beheading the fox demon and let him escape.
The story tells the story of Jiang Ziya searching for the truth and finding himself.
Jiang Ziya's master Yuanshi Tianzun was set as the villain. It was when he secretly traded with the fox in the Conferred God War, he wanted to achieve the goal of unifying the three realms by weakening the forces of man and fox.
This conspiracy allowed Jiang Ziya to complete the transition from "appointing the gods" to "overthrowing the gods".
However, this obsession of sticking to the heart and acting for the heavens has a weak internal emotional promotion mechanism, which makes the audience lack a sense of substitution.
On the other hand, Nezha’s "Defiance of the Devil's Child" comes not only from the fate setting of "Magic Pill", but also from his extreme cherishment of family and friendship.
Nezha is a "magic pill" from the sky, but also a "bear child" that parents and masters love and hate. The strong intervention of life narrative allows large and small audiences to find their own projections and form emotions in the characters in the film. The resonance also makes the declaration of "My life is my life" is more emotional.
And this resonance of understanding is exactly what Jiang Ziya lacks.
Interestingly, after the story of "Jiang Ziya" ended, a "Carnival" egg was praised by many viewers as the biggest highlight.
In the clip, Jiang Ziya used the exquisite New Year’s Eve dinner made by himself to entertain the Nezha family who came to pay a New Year’s greetings. Unexpectedly, the "bear boy" Nezha’s table etiquette was zero, and the neat arrangement was messed up. This can be anxious and have OCD Jiang Ziya.
After the meal, Jiang Ziya recalled that the rice grains that hadn't been wiped clean at the corners of Nezha's mouth could not sleep for a long time, and even went to Nezha's house to wipe his mouth... In the short film, the happy family atmosphere, obsessive-compulsive disorder and other small personal details, let him again. The audience has found the joy of contrasting their own lives—animated films need profound themes, and they also need to be "sorrowful" for the audience to take pictures of themselves.