Just as "Travel to Busan" (hereinafter referred to as "Bus") was still blowing up the circle of friends, our own theater chain also appeared. A word-of-mouth work - "Operation Mekong" (hereinafter referred to as "Mei"). At first glance, these are two irrelevant films. One is a domestic public security film, and the other is a Korean zombie film. But a little comparison, we can find that the two films have many similarities. From this, we can roughly see the development path and possible prospects of Chinese, Korean and even Asian commercial genre films.
First of all, both can be classified as anti-gunfight action movies. Mae is adapted from "Assault on Chinese Crew in the Golden Triangle in 2011", which tells the story of a Chinese merchant ship being attacked on the Mekong River, killing 13 crew members. In order to find out the truth, the Chinese police went deep into the Golden Triangle to investigate and solve the case. But the entire film has little to do with the Mekong except for the attack on the crew at the beginning and the boating on the river at the end. In other words, the Mekong River is not actually the place where the story takes place, but only the reason why the story takes place. It is still possible to move the three scenes to the Suzhou River. In terms of genre, this is a Hong Kong-style police and gangster film written and directed by Hong Kong director Lin Chaoxian. Today, Hong Kong-style police and gangster films no longer use a large number of shooting scenes as the main entertainment element, so the director is very restrained in arranging the shooting. In the first two scenes, the shootout was not the point. Even when guns are used, the police install slow-moving rubber bullets. Peng Yuyan's "illegal revenge" also used the drug dealer's own gun to make it legal on the spot. The last scene must be loaded with live ammunition, but since the ultimate goal is to catch people alive (to bring drug dealers to China for trial), the use of guns is also very cautious. The main character even died because of it.
The place where the cauldron took place is in South Korea, which is a country that bans guns, so the protagonists can't shoot with submachine guns like Americans, and can only fight close to the zombies in the interval of running. This may be the only one in history that does not Zombie movies of the gun battle scene. Of course, there is a gun at the end of the film, but the director just endured that he didn't shoot, so he missed the ruthless ending that many people said could rise to a higher level.
Second, they are all using closed spaces. Many media believe that Mae is a breakthrough of domestic theme movies. For example, NetEase News has an article titled "The theme movie can also have a double harvest at the box office", which seems to say that the theme movie and "good-looking" are contradictory. However, many excellent films in Hollywood have the main theme, and South Korea can often make good themed films (last year's "Assassination"). Our main theme movies are not good enough, which only shows that the current film industry is not developed enough. So, why is Mae good-looking? Or, where is its breakthrough as a main theme movie? Originally, Mae has been quite successful in typifying the main theme movie, but director Lin Chaoxian is not satisfied with this. He tries to find a breakthrough within the framework of Hong Kong-style police and bandit movies. An important way and way is to make full use of enclosed spaces. This is also the strangest part of the film. On the one hand, a large number of overhead shots are used to express the spirit of the main theme, but on the other hand, the stage is limited to a nearly closed space. Even the jungle decisive battle in the third scene created a sense of crampedness through the three-way cycle.
The kettle takes this enclosed space to the extreme. Most of the scenes take place on a train bound for Busan. The surviving passengers have to face the crazy zombies in the cramped space. The tension and tremors it brings have surpassed the zombie-rich Hollywood. Today, enclosed spaces have become the best platform for action films. This is why the most exciting part of Mae is the shopping mall scene in the middle, and the most burning part of the cauldron is the journey of the male protagonist, the fat uncle, and the teenager. After getting out of the car, although more zombies appeared and there was a full-view overhead shot, most of the tension disappeared. Of course, an enclosed space has another benefit, and that is, it saves money.
Third, they are all facing extremely ferocious enemies. Many introductions refer to the kettle as a zombie film, which is not accurate in the strict sense. Zombie movies are a unique genre of Hong Kong cinema. Zombies are different from zombies. Zombies originate from the processing and imagination of African voodoo beliefs in Western literature, and its English name is "Zombie". Zombie, also known as jumping corpse, is a kind of resurrected corpse derived from Chinese Ming and Qing folklore. It has an exclusive Chinese loanword in English, "jiangshi", which can also be translated as "Chinese hopping zombie". There are many differences between zombies and Chinese hopping zombies. For example, zombies change from living people, while zombies change from dead people. A living person becomes a zombie, usually due to virus, bacterial infection, chemical poisoning, parasite parasitic, and contagious; a dead person becomes a zombie. Oblique, indistinguishable, non-decomposed corpses are generally not contagious. Zombies can control the desire to suck blood, zombies can not, it needs to keep eating. Zombies are afraid of the sun, but zombies are not. Zombies act alone, zombies in groups. There is no Eastern "zombie" in Western culture, and similarly, there is no Western "Zombie" in Eastern culture. So the cauldron is facing zombies from the west that are more powerful than zombies.
So is there a more ferocious enemy than zombies? Of course there are, like the heavily armed drug dealers in Mekong and China. These drug dealers have the ability to think independently that zombies do not have, and they also use weapons. Of course, the most powerful ones are the Boy Scouts. There were young people, old people, men, and women in the crowd who turned into zombies in the kettle, but there were no zombie children. This shows that the zombies also have a bottom line. But the drug dealers in Maezhong don't care. They frantically raise Boy Scouts, make children take drugs, shoot, kill, teach children to play Russian roulette for entertainment, and even make children act as human flesh bombs. Therefore, the drug dealers in Mae are more brutal than the zombies in the cauldron.
Fourth, the scene is extremely bloody, and it is not a movie suitable for all ages. In addition to the scenes that directly show the killing and shooting of children, Mae also has many close-up shots of floating corpses and headshots in pursuit of reality. Hengfei, extremely tragic, deserves to be "the largest theater movie in history". Unfortunately, I saw parents with children in the theater again. If we can enter the venue because we don't have a grading system, then it is the parents' problem if we don't leave the venue halfway and insist on seeing the end. On the other hand, although the floor is full of rotten flesh and corpses, it is directly banned as 15 in South Korea, and high school students and below are not allowed to enter the venue. The film also has a certain educational significance for the high school students who enter the stadium, that is, the benefits of playing baseball. "As the most common sport in Korea, the protagonist in "Train to Busan" chooses baseball as a means of self-rescue. A defensive weapon."
Fifth, they all imitate Hollywood to varying degrees. In 2012, Du Qifeng already realized the seamless connection between mainland public security films and Hong Kong-style police and bandit films in "Drug War", so Mae is not the pioneer. As far as the genre of police and bandit films is concerned, it is probably the type of commercial film that Chinese filmmakers, including those from across the Taiwan Strait and the three places, are best at in addition to martial arts films. In the golden age of Hong Kong cinema, the genre was even a subject of study for Hollywood. But today, except for Johnnie To who can still stick to his style, other directors have begun to imitate Hollywood in turn. Meizhong's fast action rhythm, fierce high-speed editing, and stormy soundtrack, audiences familiar with Hollywood movies can clearly find that these are the styles of "Bourne Bourne". So Mae doesn't deserve too much praise.
In contrast, although Kettle comes from Hollywood from subject matter to character setting to narrative rhythm, and even strictly implements Hollywood's "principle of "children's immortality (this may be the reason why no shots were fired in the end)", it has successfully It has achieved localization and created a new type of Asian commercial film. In contrast, "Jazz", which also belongs to the National Day file, is still in the stage of Wei Yuan and others opening their eyes to the world after the Opium War, an imitation of Hollywood fantasy films. Of course, Korean commercial genre films have definitely not reached the height of throwing a few streets in China. For example, although the last survivors are pregnant women and girls, they are not the protagonists. Because their escape came at the cost of their husbands and fathers' lives, it's still a regular action movie full of male hormones. Action movies in Asia have yet to develop to the stage where women have the lead roles.
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