Chapter 805: Premiere of "The Great Sage" (Part 2)

Jiang Wen's career development in recent years is indeed a bit subtle.

The movie "Let the Bullets Fly" released in 2010 can be said to have sent him to the peak in one fell swoop, and he was even directly deified by movie fans.

After the release of "Let the Bullets Fly", "Let the Bullets Fly for a while" became a popular online phrase, and various lines in the movie also became popular on the Internet, and even now it has reached the level of "applying for world heritage".

It can be said that "Let the Bullets Fly" not only made Jiang Wen a lot of money, but also made him a director who cannot be avoided in the history of Chinese movies. Even fifty or one hundred years later, this movie is estimated to be mentioned again.

For any filmmaker, being able to make such a movie is actually enough for this life.

But Jiang Wen certainly doesn't think so.

Even "Let the Bullets Fly" is not the most satisfactory movie for Jiang Wen. After all, in his opinion, this movie is still a little too "vulgar". Simply put, the metaphors are too straightforward, so straightforward that they can't be considered metaphors, they are completely explicit.

This is not enough for Jiang Wen, who has always loved leaving blank space in the plot of the movie, retaining imagination, and incorporating more profound meanings, so that fans can't understand it the first time and need to watch it repeatedly to understand it.

So, in the next few years, he released "One Step Away" in 2014 and "Hidden Man" in 2018. These two movies, together with "Let the Bullets Fly", are called Jiang Wen's "Republic of China Trilogy" or "Beiyang Trilogy".

However, compared with the heated discussions and rave reviews caused by "Let the Bullets Fly", the latter two movies are confusing and pretentious to fans.

"One Step Away" got 510 million box office, but at least 300 million of them were fans who came for the reputation accumulated by "Let the Bullets Fly", but they came with excitement and left disappointed.

The box office of "Hidden Man" is higher than that of "One Step Away", with a box office of 580 million yuan. However, considering the growth of the mainland film market over the years, in fact, this result has not increased but decreased. In fact, if we only consider the box office, the investors are not able to make back their investment.

But it is not right to say that these two movies are not well made.

Movie fans do not think that these two movies are not well made. At least, whether from the perspective of the picture or the character performance, they are the top level of Chinese-language films.

But these two movies are too "profound", and the completion of the multi-thread narrative of the film needs to be improved. In other words, they are too self-centered. Except for the director Jiang Wen, most other ordinary movie fans did not understand the complex and multi-threaded narrative and character relationships in the movie and the deeper secrets behind them.

It seems that Jiang Wen tried to press the fans' heads to make them understand his complex inner thoughts, but failed in the end. Few people could understand.

Wu Yuan can understand Jiang Wen's thoughts very well.

He wants to "earn money while standing"!

The success of Let the Bullets Fly made Jiang Wen think that he had the ability to make money standing up, that is, he could make movies that the public loved without compromising with the commercial.

Even if he made movies according to his own ideas and did not consider any commercial returns, he could still be followed by fans.

Well, the imagination is beautiful, but the reality is very hard. Obviously, the attempts of the two movies have proved that this money really cannot be made standing up, at least Jiang Wen can't do it.

He must compromise more with the commercial, not to say kneeling, but at least bend down, not so self-expressive, and consider the fans' understanding ability and commercial things more, so that fans can accept his movies.

But Jiang Wen really doesn't understand this stuff, or he doesn't want to do it even if he understands, otherwise he wouldn't be called Jiang Wen.

The biggest compromise he made to commercialism was to find Xu Qing to show off her body in Evil Never Dies, and this was because he loved to watch it, not just because the audience liked it.

Wu Yuan didn't expect to convince Jiang Wen, so when faced with Jiang Wen's constant complaints, such as the audience couldn't understand his movies, the audience of this generation had simple minds like single-celled organisms, and what kind of movies are there without art, Wu Yuan could only smile and comfort her:

"It's okay, the audience who understands you will always like your movies, and the audience who don't understand you are not your audience group."

"What is the fixed standard for commercial or not?"

"Just make the movies you want to make."

Well, Wu Yuan said this very carelessly, but Jiang Wen just fell for it, and the depression on his face suddenly became less.

A big director like Wu Yuan said this, so his idea of ​​making money without doing anything is definitely right!

As for whether Wu Yuan made money without doing anything?

In Jiang Wen's opinion, there are some, because most of Wu Yuan's Chinese films cannot be regarded as pure commercial films, and they all have some deeper explorations. For example, "Painted Skin" explores "Do you love the soul or the body?", "Ready Player One" is a reflection on virtuality and reality, and "Love Letter" is the conflict between the wrong time and the right love.

In short, they are not like Marvel superhero movies or vulgar comedies, which are purely commercial for commercial purposes.

In Jiang Wen's opinion, Wu Yuan has undoubtedly achieved the goal of satisfying his own ideas and commercial needs when making movies, and he has made money without any effort!

However, if he had watched "The Monkey King", he might have been shaken by his conclusion.

Because "The Monkey King" is really a pure commercial popcorn movie, without any depth and artistry, and there is no theme worth exploring after watching the movie.

Let's get back to the point.

After chatting with Jiang Wen for a few words, Wu Yuan also chatted with Chen Kaige and Feng Xiaogang.

Chen Kaige and Jiang Wen are brothers in distress. After entering 2010, the film industry was so difficult. Jiang Wen at least had the peak of "Let the Bullets Fly", but Chen Kaige's movies after "The Promise" were getting worse and worse, and now they are almost becoming box office poison.

He is somewhat discouraged in the film industry. Now his focus is on supporting the next generation. When chatting with Wu Yuan, he often brought the topic to his second son, implying that he hopes Wu Yuan will help him.

Feng Xiaogang still has aspirations in the film industry, and in the field of literature and art. "Youth" not only has a box office of 1.4 billion, but also has a great reputation. It's a pity that he was very ambitious in making this movie, in order to win awards, so he learned from Zhang Yimou and made such a movie about the 1980s.

As a result, although this movie received many nominations in both sides of the Taiwan Strait and Hong Kong, including many heavyweight awards, it ultimately failed to win any awards. The only thing it won was the best film and best director at the first Saipan International Film Festival, but this kind of influence is very small, and it is also the first overseas film festival, so it really doesn't mean much to win the award.

Feng Xiaogang was also talking to Wu Yuan about winning awards. His idea was the same as Zhang Guorong's. They had made enough money, and now they were just short of the most important reputation, and they were all focused on winning awards.

Unfortunately, Wu Yuan was helpless in this regard. After all, he didn't have any good ideas for art films to give now. Even if he did, he would definitely not give them to Feng Xiaogang, so he could only look around and talk about other things.

After much difficulty, after talking to several big directors, the guests and media from the various screening rooms finally took their seats one after another, and today's premiere finally officially began! (End of this chapter)