Hong Kong Entertainment: The King of Kung Fu

Zhiming and Chunjiao are both die-hard fans of Yang Ye. On their son Zhang Tianle's ninth birthday, the couple gave him a set of illustrated editions of the novel "Xiao Yao You" as a birthday present.

From then on, Zhang Tianle opened the door to the fantasy world.

Ever since the news of the filming of "Xiao Yao You" came out, this movie has been what little Zhang Tianle is most looking forward to.

This novel, based on Harry Potter, was published in 1985 and took a full ten years to be serialized.

The reason why it took so long was not only because Yang Ye didn't have time and the adaptation was very difficult, but also because Yang Ye did it on purpose.

Like Rowling, Yang Ye wrote it as children's literature.

The number of new words in each novel increases gradually, and the story of each novel takes place within one school year.

This ensures that young readers can read one book after another smoothly as they grow older.

In the original time and space, because Rowling was not famous, after "Harry Potter" was written, it was rejected by twelve publishing houses.

The novel was first published in June 1997, with a print run of only 6 copies.

Three hundred of them went into book form, and only two hundred were sold on the market.

Twenty years later, each of Harry's first edition books was worth up to £30,000.

Many people think that the popularity of "Harry Potter" is brought by the movies, or that Warner took a fancy to Harry Potter and spent money to make the novel popular.

In fact, it's just the opposite. "Harry Potter" is a novel that brings the movie together, not a movie that brings the novel together.

It became a huge hit as soon as it was published, and was circulated widely, so it was soon reprinted.

After it was published in the United States in 1998, it immediately dominated the charts, and its sales crushed all other novels.

"Harry Potter" was noticed by Warner because of its explosive sales.

Otherwise, Warner would never have discovered it.

Even if it was discovered, Warner Bros. is not crazy. Why would they risk investing hundreds of millions of dollars to make a movie out of a novel that no one cares about?
"Harry Potter" was introduced to China in 2000, and the first three parts were released at one time, which quickly caused a sensation and became popular on campus.

At that time, the top three best-selling novels in the Chinese book market were all Harry Potter.

The movie was not released in China until 2002, which means that its popularity in China was not driven by the movie.

The legitimate sales volume of "Harry Potter" in China is 2000 million copies.

In the fantasy novel category, it is second only to "Grave Robbers' Chronicles" with 2600 million copies and "Dragon Clan" with 2100 million copies, and is on par with "Ghost Blows Out the Light".

Of course, the success of the movie further boosted the sales of the novel.

The publishing situation of "Escape Plan" is somewhat different from that of "Harry Potter". It was not released with a movie, but only the novel itself.

In 1985, after it was serialized in "Blue Bird Pictorial", it immediately became popular among primary and secondary school students. Later, it began to be published as a single volume and gradually became popular in the Chinese world.

Even though the mainland market has not been developed and all the books sold are pirated, the sales of genuine Chinese versions combined still exceed 10 million copies.

In the non-Chinese market, the book was endorsed by Yang Ye's fame and translated into multiple languages, with the genuine sales volume exceeding three million copies.

As of 1997, the legitimate sales of "Xiao Yao You" reached 1500 million copies.

Although this sales volume is insignificant compared to that of "Harry Potter", it is a Chinese novel and this is already a very terrifying number.

Moreover, piracy in the domestic market is very rampant, and if it is taken into account, the number would at least increase several times.

After the novel was serialized, Yang Ye started to develop the copyright.

As a world-renowned film director, the first thing he did was of course to make it into a movie.

Yang Ye made a lot of preparations for this, and even asked Xu Ke to shoot three special effects movies, "Chinese Hero", "Wind and Cloud", and "The Legend of Shushan", just to practice for Ziqi Company.

Now, the film is finally coming out.

……

Zhang Tianle sat between his parents Zhiming and Chunjiao, eating free popcorn, drinking Coke, and staring at the big screen with anticipation.

The lights in the theater went dark and the screen lit up.

A little boy rode his bicycle across the night sky, and the iconic title sequence of Poplar Pictures appeared on the big screen.

Following them are the logos of companies such as United Artists Pictures and Kadokawa Pictures.

Yang Ye did not star in this movie, and he has no plans to star in a movie again in the future.

Therefore, we brought in many partners to jointly invest in order to ensure strong support for the film in the country's market after its release.

After the opening credits, the movie officially begins.

In an ordinary residential area, the street lights suddenly went out, and Yu Chenghui, dressed in a white robe and with an immortal look, slowly walked out from the night.

Then, a fox appeared on the screen.

Yu Chenghui said to the fox, "I knew you would come."

The fox transformed, and Zhang Manyu appeared on the screen. After she greeted Yu Chenghui, she asked, "Is that rumor true?"

"I'm afraid so!"

"Where's the kid?"

"It should be coming soon."

At this moment, a ray of light flashed across the sky.

The burly Cheng Kui-an stepped on the sword light and landed in front of the two people. He was holding a child in his arms and handed it to Yu Chenghui.

Zhang Manyu took a look at the child and asked, "Are you really going to hand the child over to this family? I have been observing them all day and have never seen a more stupid mortal than them."

Yu Chenghui said: "This family is the only relative of this child. For his safety, he has to stay away from our world temporarily!"

Yu Chenghui said, putting the child at the door of a house and said softly: "When you grow up, I will take you to our world!"

The child was lying in his cradle, sleeping soundly, with a shocking wound on his forehead.

The wound was Z-shaped, like lightning.

The camera zoomed in, and the wound emitted a golden light, which instantly turned into the title of the movie: Happy Journey!
"Wow!"

This title was so creative that the children, including Zhang Tianle, couldn't help but exclaim.

……

In the blink of an eye, ten years have passed and the poor little protagonist is online.

He lived with his aunt, but his relatives didn't treat him well, and he dreamed of escaping every day.

When the children saw this, they naturally felt very sympathetic towards him.

Rowling is a genius. She set up Harry's mother Lily to cast a protective spell on him at the cost of burning her own life to protect him from Voldemort.

This protective spell is a blood magic and can only be effective when Harry is with his maternal blood relatives. Therefore, Harry can only stay at his aunt's house usually.

At the same time, Rowling made Harry's aunt Petunia a person with a complex personality.

She envied and feared her sister, and felt that her sister deserved her death but was also sad.

She didn't like Harry, but she knew that he was her sister's flesh and blood, and he would be safe only if he stayed with her, so she raised Harry anyway.

This setting puts Harry in a very embarrassing situation. He has a bad life, but he has to stay here. When he finally has the opportunity to escape and go to a magical world, readers will be very happy.

Of course Yang Ye copied this setting. When the people from Shushan came to pick up Lin Xiao for school, they also punished his aunt's family a little, especially his annoying cousin.

After that, we took a train through the beautiful fields, passing by lakes and mountains along the way, taking in the beauty of nature, and finally arrived at the magical Shu Mountain.

In just a few minutes of the plot, the audience feels both comfortable and expectant.

The most interesting thing is that when Yang Ye was writing the book, he had already determined the shooting locations, and then described them according to the characteristics of the locations.

When the audience watched the movie and compared it with the novel, they found that it was a perfect reproduction and were immediately extremely satisfied.

……

After arriving at Mount Shu, you will start a novel, interesting, joyful and accident-filled journey of cultivation.

Yang Ye mobilized elements from later Xianxia novels and made magical changes to many of the original settings.

For example, the sorting ceremony at Hogwarts is that every freshman wears a dirty sorting hat, and the hat does some nagging before deciding which college you will go to.

The Shushan disciples went to the sword tomb to find their own flying sword. They would become disciples of the mountain whose flying sword they found represented.

After the flying sword recognizes its master, it does not need to be held in the hand or carried on the back.

Because this is very inconvenient, and this is a children's novel, and it's not good for a group of children to hold a sword all day.

Therefore, Yang Ye set the flying sword as a sword spirit. After recognizing its master, it can be hidden inside the body at ordinary times.

When needed, use the sword techniques to guide the sword spirit and it will leave the body.

For this purpose, Yang Ye also specially designed a set of sword techniques. When using it, he just strikes a pose and shouts: "Out of the body"!
With a "swoosh" sound, all kinds of flying swords will fly out of the body, with a very cool effect.

During the movie, every time a sword flew out of the body, the children would exclaim "Wow" loudly and were extremely envious.

Especially during Ye Xiao’s first flying lesson, when facing provocation, he shouted “out of body”, and the flying sword left his body, carrying him with a “whoosh”, soaring into the sky and breaking through the sky.

This shot is very similar to the scene at the end of The Matrix 1 where Yang Ye learns to fly and soars into the sky.

For Yang Ye’s fans, this was a tribute to his previous work. In an instant, the audience burst into applause.

Later, the Quidditch game was turned into the "Fairyland Cuju Competition". The rules of the game are similar, except that the game was changed from playing on broomsticks to playing on flying swords.

The wizard chess in "Harry Potter" is actually international chess where the pieces can move by themselves, so Yang Ye naturally set it to Chinese chess.

The first part of Harry Potter is called The Sorcerer's Stone, and Yang Ye also made a Hunyuan Pearl to correspond to it.

It is a treasure made by a cultivator using alchemy. It has the magical effect of granting immortality, and there is only one left in the world.

The story of the first part revolves around this Hunyuan Pearl.

If there really is a novel called "Harry Potter" in the world, then Yang Ye would become a clown if he made these corresponding settings.

But there is no such thing in this world, so these settings are all created by Yang Ye, giving people a very novel feeling.

Not only the children were fascinated by the show, but even the adults enjoyed it very much.

……

During the filming of "Harry Potter", because Emma Watson, who played Hermione Granger, was so damn cute, Rowling kept adding more scenes for her, even going so far as to delete the highlight moments of the two male protagonists and add them to her.

For example, in the first part of the novel, when Harry and Ron were entangled in the "Devil's Snare", Harry asked Hermione to use fire, but Hermione panicked and said there were no matches. Ron complained, "What a Harry, you are a wizard!"
Hermione suddenly realized what was going on and used a fire magic to save Harry and Ron.

But in this plot in the first movie, Hardy became Ron.

After the three were entangled, Hermione escaped easily, and Harry also escaped soon after, but Ron couldn't.

Harry was helpless after escaping, but Hermione wisely used light magic to rescue Ron.

Rowling's approach created a "Hermione and her two useless men" meme, as if she was the backbone of the trio.

But it is understandable, because people's values ​​are determined by their appearance. Hermione, who is plain-looking in the original book, becomes more and more beautiful as she grows older, while the two male protagonists become uglier and uglier.

There are also Ginny and Cho Chang, who are as beautiful as fairies in the original novel, but they become uglier and uglier in the movie, making Hermione the most beautiful female character.

In order to attract the audience, it is natural to give Hermione more scenes.

During the filming, Yang Ye also followed Rowling's approach, slightly weakening the roles of the two male protagonists in the novel and giving Liu Yifei a lot more scenes.

Because Yang Ye knew that Liu Yifei would become more and more beautiful as she grew older, and would reach the peak of her looks when she reached adulthood, while Shi Xiaolong, the male lead, would gradually grow ugly, and become like everyone else when he reached adulthood.

However, overall, the three main characters still follow the settings of "Harry Potter".

Harry is a resolute and decisive leader, Hermione is a far-sighted strategist, and Ron is an indispensable spiritual pillar.

The three of them have their own strengths and complement each other, and none of them can be missing.

The whole story shows their courage, wisdom and friendship, which are the most primitive emotions of human beings and are universal everywhere in the world.

While watching the movie, Zhang Zhiming whispered to Lin Chunjiao, "Have you noticed that this cultivation team and the tomb-robbing team in Ghost Blows Out the Light are actually the same type?"

Lin Chunjiao nodded: "Ghost Blows Out the Light is about Commander Hu and Staff Officer Yang, this is similar."

“Why must the protagonists be two men and one woman?”

"Maybe it's because it can take into account both friendship and love!"

"Yeah, that makes sense!"

"In fact, when he first started writing Kunlun, he had set up a story about one man and two women, but it was not as successful as the two subsequent books."

During their conversation, the protagonist Lin Xiao faced the final battle, and the villain Voldemort appeared.

Well, Yang Ye thought that the name Voldemort was a good one. Cultivation novels usually involve battles between gods and demons, so it was normal for the villain to be called something like "demon", so he just used it.

The appearance is somewhat similar to Voldemort in "Harry Potter", but also quite different.

His face was pale and his eyes were bloodshot, more like a zombie, and looked quite scary.

He also drew on the image of Wu Tian in "The Sequel to Journey to the West", with a black robe and black hair draped over his shoulders, which formed a sharp contrast with Yu Chenghui in white robe and white beard.

The actor was also Heizi, the actor who played Wu Tian.

Shi Xiaolong is a martial arts actor, so the final battle will naturally involve a lot of action scenes, assisted by flying sword fights.

After a dazzling battle, Lin Xiao defeated Voldemort's incarnation.

The film ends with the students leaving the school on a train.

Overall, the film's plot rhythm, atmosphere rendering, and visual effects are all very good.

In terms of actors, the performances of veteran actors such as Zhang Guorong, Zhang Manyu and Yu Chenghui are needless to say, and the performances of several young protagonists are also very eye-catching.

The older audience members expressed their approval, while the younger ones were extremely excited; for them, this was truly a great show.

Amid the enthusiastic applause from the fans, Yang Ye breathed a sigh of relief.

The changes to this movie are so huge that although the core is about love and courage, the external form of expression is completely different, so much so that it took him more than ten years to lay the groundwork.

Judging from the situation at the premiere, there was no smashing of signs.

Next, we will see how the film performs at the box office after its large-scale release. (End of this chapter)