First of all, I apologize. It was too busy some time ago, so this article came half a month late...
Since it has been so long, considering that the popularity of "Black Mirror: Bandersnatch" has dropped a lot, and sincere friends have seen a lot of mode content introduction and easter egg process analysis, I will try to bypass those things, Let go and say some thoughts.
To borrow from what I said in the fourth quarter of the drama review: "Black Mirror" is a work that ostensibly reflects on the changes and influences of contemporary scientific and technological achievements on human nature, society, politics, morals, and public order, but its essence is the media (media ) Invasion, because the technology is obvious, it is a tool to achieve the goal of "surrounding", used to focus on all desires driven by the "media", more specifically, the "black mirror" refers to the screen, as long as there are humans Where the senses exist, there must be human hearts waiting to be connected, bought, and controlled.
Thus, while this "潘达斯奈基" tells the story of a place in 1984 under the background of "retro" little story, but it's very conception and are essentially "black mirror" of - it was let in interactive mode The audience thought that "you are the god who decides the course of the plot", and then they shattered this feeling with similar endings and even different paths, telling the audience that "you are still a slave to the screen".
But the fact is that the audience didn't pay much for this work, and the media ratings and audience word-of-mouth hit a new low for the "Black Mirror" series.
The reason is not that the theme and spirit of "Bandersnatch" is not authentic enough, but that its expression is serious and the form is greater than the content . After the (possible) freshness faded, everyone quickly fell into a repetitive and entangled plot. Watching fatigue, even if the audience can get something in the end, but after the empathy is exhausted, the refreshment is not enough.
What does "Bandersnatch" talk about?
In 1984, Stephen, a male protagonist who grew up in a single-parent family, was influenced by the book "Bandersnatch" left by his mother and determined to design a video game that allows players to choose the plot direction by themselves.
The following story is about the outcome of the game production process and Stephen's psychological problems.
The biggest feature of "Bandersnatch" this time is the "interactive mode" . The audience can control the plot through the mouse, touch screen, and remote control. Different choices will bring different content and endings.
This TV movie does not have a progress bar at all. The viewers who want the best viewing experience can only watch it online on the Netflix official website-even if it is downloaded, it is useless, because the total length of the film is more than 5 hours, but it is actually gone. It takes at most an hour and a half to complete the (relatively) complete process. It’s no wonder that the subtitles group directly voluntarily abandons / quits after the resources are released...
The author was fortunate enough to participate in the "Black Mirror" New Year's Eve event, and experienced an "original" "Bandersnatch". But when you look at it, you will realize that the so-called "interaction" is just a guise for chicken thieves.
The selection scenes in the film are roughly divided into two categories:
One type is "pseudo-choice" that will not change the plot later, no matter how you choose, such as which cereal to eat in the first option, and which song to listen to, which record to buy, etc.;
The other is the "true choice" that does trigger different plots . For example, Stephen's first key choice is whether to accept Tucker's invitation to stay in the company to develop the game. If you choose "accept", you will welcome Come to the fastest "Dead End" in the whole film, and immediately turn to the scene of "The game is badly reviewed and Stephen is determined to re-select". Only by choosing "Reject" and letting Stephen go home to develop the game can he unlock more of the main story. .
By this time, I believe that many friends who have seen and haven’t seen it have already discovered a mystery: "Bandersnatch" on the surface gives the audience enough autonomy to let you decide the direction of the story, but secretly. There are several invisible links that guide you in the general direction. Not any difference choice can make people walk out of two very different plots.
If the audience is "obsessed", the film will "autonomously" help the audience make decisions.
For example, when Stephen was receiving psychological counseling, Dr. Haynes would ask about his mother. We chose "Talk" on the first visit, (so) we chose "Reject" twice in a row on the second visit. Talking about "Mother", but the story behind still made Stephen open his mouth, because otherwise, the key plot of Stephen's childhood memory would not be drawn out, leading to a fault in the story.
This paragraph is fairly cryptic... In contrast, Colin asked Stephen to choose whether to swallow the "seeing the big picture" potion or not to be explicit-even if you don't want to take it, Colin will put the potion into Stephen. Ask him to take it in the coffee, your choice will not bring any change at all , this kind of seemingly critical node is still a "pseudo-choice" in nature.
Of course, the above feelings are only produced after watching the same "wrong choice" more than twice or making multiple consecutive times... During the first viewing, there are indeed many bridges that can make the audience "having in it". part.
The most typical is the part where Stephen realizes that "someone is controlling his own choice" .
"Bandersnatch" played a lot of small jokes and played a lot of careful attention in this part, which greatly satisfied the audience's "control pleasure" : such trivial choices as letting Stephen scratch his ears or bite his nails are just for Afterwards, he can make people smile when he talks about such small details.
This kind of "deep interaction" with the people in the play culminated when the audience gave Stephen a "sign": you can choose to tell him the "Netflix" or "Game Fork" sign.
I believe that many people will choose Netflix with a slight "bad taste", and then "Bandersnatch" will follow the audience's desire to watch the lively emotions, and stage you more absurd God development——
When his father took Stephen to psychotherapy, Dr. Haynes would take the initiative to seduce Stephen (the audience) to make a more "violent" choice after hearing the truth : Since we are entertaining, why not stage a more exciting action scene? ? Then Stephen will spill coffee, and Dr. Haynes will take out two swing sticks...
Then, the audience can also let Stephen and Dr. Haynes fight, and even kick his father's balls...
However, there is a limit to this indulgent spectator "do whatever it wants" . If we don’t let Stephen and Haynes fight but jump out of the window, then the next scene will be cut to the set, telling the actors that they can’t jump out, "the script is not written like this", and immediately enter the "Dead End"; even if you choose The violent mode will have the same result soon.
Therefore, at this critical point, the audience can only choose the fork sign to actually go on the plot.
The more bifurcated roads the audience takes and the more different choices they make, the more they will realize that their "control" is actually not that strong. The film does have several endings, but it is far from reaching the "Nth power". Point.
Stephen will kill his father sooner or later, and he will not be able to escape the way to bury the body. When the story reaches this point, everyone will realize that the "choices" left to them are really few.
Even if there are still a few people who don't give up and want a certain road to go dark, "Bandersnatch" will only roll back to a previous key point over and over again, letting you choose again.
In the several endings prepared for the film, most of them ended with Stephen being arrested and imprisoned and watching the TV game reviewer Robin give a negative review of "Bandersnatch". Stephen can only (like the audience) once. Turning around again, drew another fork sign on the cell wall, eager to make a different choice, and then repeat the next plot rollback...
If you get to this step, it means that you have seen the ending of "Bandersnatch" ranging from 50 to 60% to 70 to 80%. It can be said that this is a worthwhile trip- relatively, repetitive fatigue. It will make you quickly withdraw from the shock of seeing through the film "intentionally".
If you have to choose the best ending for "Bandersnatch", in my mind, the ending of the most "black mirror" should be Stephen's "violent corpse" father. After he successfully made the game, he was confident. Tell Dr. Haynes's new understanding:
"Now I can see clearly... I always wanted to give players too many choices, so I just started over and removed a lot of things. Now they only have the illusion of free will, but in fact... the ending is up to me."
Stephen admitted with a slightly weird smile that it was a "happy ending" game. The camera switched to a room full of design paper. Father's head was placed on the cabinet like an ornament, and the blood on the head was still not dry...
This scene uses actual lines to tell the audience: You thought you were making a choice for me, but in fact, it was me who made the choice for you.
In fact, this is also the only ending of the "Bandersnatch" game in all endings that has received five-star praise . Thinking about it, it is really a very scary thing...
However, this is just an alternate ending of the film (and not the final ending). When the story comes to the modern age and Netflix employees want to restart the "Bandersnatch" game, the plot will still return to the key choice.
So, do you like this work?
Why do we like "Black Mirror"?
Before thinking about answering the above question, let's talk about why we like the series of "Black Mirror"-there may be many answers, and I will give a few more common reasons based on my own experience.
A sense of powerlessness that is engulfed by "consumerism" and "entertainment to death" but hard to resist.
Like my favorite S1E2 "The Value of Fifteen Millions", the male protagonist Madsen wanted to use his own blood to accuse the fucking reality and society in front of everyone...
But his anger and despair were easily dissipated by the judges as a kind of "performance." Madsen was then bewitched and bought, and moved from a small cramped room to a larger room... What's more powerless is that we are watching After such a story, few people were able to make substantial changes after being shocked.
When the huge reversal appeared, he was shivered and shivered by the absurd and real reality.
For example, the popular S2E2 "White Bear" is very typical. After dozens of weird minutes, we realize that the heroine Skylan is the subject of trial in "White Bear Justice Park" who has been punished countless times by the public.
It is a normal emotion to want criminals to "retribute evil to evil". It is precisely because everyone thinks that they are on the side of "justice", there will be this trial platform that will allow criminals to recover from disasters and allow the public to experience justice. And this kind of violent thoughts and behaviors in the name of justice have been happening all the time and never stopped.
Indulge in the illusion of falsehood, drunkenness, life and death.
S3E4 "San Juni Pello" is an extremely "deceptive" episode. Many viewers may even feel that this episode does not have any discomfort throughout the entire episode. On the contrary, they are very fascinated by the state of "transcendence from life and death".
Although the play has implied that "immortality" will fall into endless nihility, this does not affect Yorkshire and Kelly finally indulging in singing and dancing in TCKR's database... As for the real doubts hidden behind it, there are really people. Do you care?
Countless possibilities have been devised, and in the end there is still no accurate result.
S4E4 "Hanged DJ" has many angles of interpretation, but the best thing is: even if two strange men and women fall in love through the "ultimate blind date software" a thousand times, the match rate has reached an astonishing 99.8%, but they are still the same. To strangers.
It is reasonable to say that the relationship between the male and female leaders should be natural, but until the last scene, we listened to "hang the dj" repeatedly, but we still didn't know whether Amy walked towards Frank or turned away.
Excellent works (especially like "Black Mirror") often only raise sharp questions without providing standard answers, leaving room for contemplation for the audience to argue and clarify.
If you use this "formula" to evaluate "Bandersnatch", it can actually get a high score, because it has almost all the advantages of "Black Mirror" in the past.
The title of "Bandersnatch" is "self-awareness, control and anti-control, different destinies after different choices".
On the one hand, it tells you the "irreversibility" of fate through continuous hints in the early stage, and after triggering the core plot of Colin, it breaks this hint and tells you in the tone of "I tell you the truth" Fate can be changed, and everything in front of you is just a huge conspiracy.
In order to express the feeling of "looks different and familiar", a lot of interesting baggage is buried in the film : for example, when Stephen comes back to Tucker Company, he will directly mention the game name and "buffer" that Colin said last time. For example, after Colin fell and died, if Stephen re-entered the plot, Colin would greet him as a "coming man".
In addition, there are many eggs in "Bandersnatch" : S4E5's killing weapon "Metal Head" is one of Tucker's signature games. The psychiatrist Haynes has the same name as the curator of the Black Museum in S4E6. Stephen sees The fork logo is the "White Bear" LOGO, Netflix also specially designed the game "Nohzdyve", as well as the website that can be found according to the final sound code, etc...
There are reversals, frights, coldness, confusion, details, and even many endings.
In addition to the "five-star praise" ending mentioned in the previous article, my favorite is the ending when Stephen traveled back to the past to get the rabbit. The childhood Stephen and his mother died in an accident, and the adult Stephen died in the counseling room.
Unlike the previous ending that squeezed the audience's throat and gave out a smirk, this ending further highlighted the imprint and influence of Stephen's childhood shadow, and cleverly concealed the aggressiveness of the environment with tenderness and sadness.
But the problem with Bandersnatch lies here: its direction and ending are still too many.
If it can really offer different plots of "2 to the Nth power", the reality is that it only lasts more than 300 minutes... The audience thinks that they see a good ending, but they don’t know where to stop, so they can only follow. Instructs to move on, and the mentality of "eager to see more different plots" will make the audience make more different choices. If you want to complete the process without repeating the plot within an hour and a half, it is impossible-the only one The way to avoid the sense of complexity is to quit watching.
Therefore, the most obvious selling point of "Bandersnatch" has also become its most fatal weakness: the audience has realized what the work wants to express under the continuous and repeated impact of the plot, and their emotions are gradually withdrawn from the work. ... the film did not try to truly capture the audience. By the time it yelled "You are all my slaves", few people were still in the cage without closing the door—the audience would usually only be unknowingly Cheers will only be released when detained.
It can only be said that the "interactive mode" is the last bold attempt by Netflix in "Black Mirror". The innovative spirit is worthy of recognition... But they also used reality to tell everyone that this attempt was unsuccessful .
Interactive movies existed as early as decades ago, and they have always been in the awkward situation of "thunder and rain," and games that want to let users "enter into the play" and have a stronger sense of substitution (such as last year's Detroit: Becoming Human") is obviously a better choice.
Netflix failed this time (at least not), because this model is not suitable for the mainstream of film and television production at this stage (and forever) . Through this lesson, the creator of "Black Mirror" made it clear that future new episodes will no longer be in interactive mode.
I sincerely hope that when the small circle turns again and the black screen is broken next time, everyone will see more indescribable stories.
[Also welcome everyone to pay attention to my official account "Youai Comment Area"~]
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