Chinese Entertainment: Starting from 1996

Chapter 564 Milestones and Reasons
With Mingming being successfully rescued, the whole movie is almost coming to an end.

With a click, the picture froze, and the image of the soldiers running with light in their arms turned into a black and white photo.

The camera gradually pulls away, and the audience sees a soldier carrying Mingming's photo and hanging it on the wall. Subtitles appear next to it, and the time has come to 31, 2007 years later.

The camera gradually moves out of the room and into the city, quickly scanning Tangshan City more than 30 years later. There is only this shot of less than three seconds.

During the preparation period of the film, Tangshan hoped to film more of the present Tangshan and the changes in the past 30 years, but was later rejected by Liu Zhou.

Although they were barely convinced by relying on Liu Zhou's reputation and reasons, they were not completely unhappy in their hearts.

In their inherent concept, how can they show the changes in Tangshan over the past 30 years without capturing the current cityscape?

But later he was persuaded by Liu Zhou's plan to bring the film overseas. If the film was shot according to his plan and released overseas on a large scale, it would spread Tangshan's fame overseas, which would be great.

In the current domestic situation, any positive impact that can be created overseas will be touted as much as possible.

With this in mind, and with the approval of squad leader Tangshan, the film was officially handed over to Liu Zhou for filming.

Seeing this, they couldn't help but admire Liu Zhou. Even an outsider like them felt that the expression method chosen by Liu Zhou was more advanced.

There are many children in the movie. They are brave and strong. They are the future of the nation. The audience can feel hope from these children.

You don't need to say much, just seeing these people, seeing these children, everyone believes that this city will be reborn from the ashes!
In the past they thought that what Liu Zhou said was too abstract, but now they think they are narrow-minded.

At the end of the movie, the camera moves to Liu Yifei's house, where he is cooking, and then to Zhang Yi's house, where he is talking to his son on the phone.

Then the story goes to Ms. Zhou's home. She and Mr. Hu have reunited as a family and they are taking a family photo.

Finally, the camera passed through Mr. Zhou’s house and slowly moved towards the earthquake monument. At the same time, Wang Fei’s ethereal voice sounded, singing the song "Heart Sutra".

The ending song of Feng Kuzi's version of "Aftershock" is also "Heart Sutra". I have to say that he has a good vision. This compassionate song is very suitable as the ending song.

So Liu Zhou also chose this song as the music at the end of the movie to comfort the souls of those who died in the earthquake.

However, it took some effort to obtain the copyright of this song, because several companies hold the copyright of the song and Golden Harvest does not have much influence in the music field.

In the end, we had to entrust Emperor Entertainment Group to resolve the issue, otherwise it might take some effort to let Golden Harvest negotiate.

On the screen, the words "Deepest condolences to the 240,000 compatriots who died in the Tangshan earthquake" appeared, and then the list of main creators began to scroll by, and the film ended there.

Wang Fei's singing voice was still echoing in the Tangshan Sports Center. The whole scene was extremely quiet, without a sound at all, as if all the audience were immersed in the music, and as if they were all worried that their voices would disrupt the solemn atmosphere of the scene.

The first person to stand up and applaud was the deputy of the Beihe Provincial Government, followed by other leaders.

After his applause rang out, the whole world came alive. People around him stood up one after another and began to applaud. Finally, the entire audience stood up collectively and clapped their hands vigorously.

The applause gathered together and became more and more enthusiastic. More than 10,000 spectators applauded in unison, the sound was deafening, and the applause was like a tsunami, rising straight into the sky from the stadium.

There was no one to organize or arrange it. The more than 10,000 spectators at the scene could hardly suppress their excitement and could only vent their emotions through applause!
This movie is so well made and deserves their applause.

Be it the story, the characters, or the special effects, they are all very good, and they can really empathize with the film while watching it.

Even for many audience members at the scene, they have served as extras in the crew or donated props to the crew.

Not only the audience, but all the people in Tangshan hope that the great director Liu Zhou can make a good movie.

In fact, shortly after the earthquake, there was a movie called "After the Blue Flash" which tells the story of this disaster.

However, after the movie was released, it was severely criticized by the Tangshan audience.

The reason is that it is too unrealistic. For example, a worker is buried in a mine and is still thinking about launching movements to promote production.

So after many years, when the people of Tangshan heard that the great director Liu Zhou was going to make the movie "Aftershock", their biggest expectation was that the movie would be true and not fabricated.

Liu Zhou achieved this, and better than they imagined.

Not only did the visual impact shock them, the story was told in an unexpectedly brilliant way, and scenes like the rescue of the steep river, pregnant women delivering babies, saving children, etc. in the movie were all things they had heard of or seen before.

The stories in the movie are almost all true.

And precisely because of the authenticity of the movie, it is more powerful and touching.

At this time, the leaders of the Zongju and the Film Bureau still had red eyes, obviously they had just cried, but they clapped very loudly and excitedly.

When "Aftershock" was being prepared, it received a lot of attention from above and was even registered in Haizi.

Therefore, the green light for this film was not only due to the relationship with Tangshan, but also the considerable support from their General Ju. Not to mention the review, they also did a lot of work as Tangshan agreed to give up the dominant position.

They can be said to have great trust in Liu Zhou. After all, his reputation and past achievements are real.

Now after watching the movie, Liu Zhou did not disappoint them.

"Aftershock" has achieved the pinnacle of domestic films in terms of special effects, pictures, sound effects, etc., and it can even be said to have reached the level of Hollywood.

Like the Tangshan audience, they felt that the movie was better than they had imagined, and much better.

This is not the most important thing. What is more important is that they discovered that main-theme movies can be shot in this way.

They saw in this movie something that had never appeared in previous mainstream movies - human nature!
This is not to say that the characters in the mainstream movies in the past are inhumane, but that the mainstream movies in the past emphasized collectivism more and thus ignored the individual.

This results in a lack of humanity in the film, and even gives people a very unreal feeling.

Just like the previous movie "After the Blue Flash" that reflected the Tangshan earthquake, the first reaction of people trapped in the mine was fear, and then they thought about saving themselves.

This is human instinct, not trying to promote production even when you are in a desperate situation.

Even people with strong faith would find this too fake.

If you keep making the main theme sound so fake, it will only deepen people's disgust and make them more and more averse to this type of movie.

Therefore, this also leads to the fact that mainstream movies can't sell much box office except for booking theaters, and even cause audiences to criticize them. Now Liu Zhou's "Tangshan Earthquake" abandons the old filming method of the past, abandons the greatness and justice of the characters, and makes them more fleshed out.

From the perspective of ordinary people, the film tells their joys and sorrows in the torrent of history, amplifies the role and value of family affection, and hits the softest part of people's hearts.

This is groundbreaking for domestic mainstream blockbusters and a new milestone!

Therefore, this movie is not only of great significance to Tangshan, but also to domestic mainstream films and even the entire Chinese-language film industry.

Listening to such warm applause, Liu Zhou couldn't help but smile from the bottom of his heart.

The audience's applause was the greatest affirmation of him and proof that he had succeeded. The joy of this success was stronger than ever before.

Because "Aftershock" can be said to be a truly original film by Liu Zhou, and it did not borrow from any other film in the original time and space.

It can be said that he put more thought and effort into this movie than into "Interstellar". Perhaps "Aftershock" may not be able to break the box office record of "Interstellar".

But at this time, the sense of accomplishment he got from "Aftershock" was even stronger than when "Interstellar" broke the box office record of "Avatar".

Although the film has not yet been released on a large scale and its success or failure is still unknown, judging from the audience's recognition of the film, its success will be a foregone conclusion.

After all, the audience for the premiere was not two or three hundred people, but twelve thousand people, which is very representative and proves that Liu Zhou's choice was correct.

In fact, Liu Zhou had the idea of ​​filming "Aftershock" a long time ago, but at that time it was because of a dispute of pride with Feng Kuzi.

Because of the conflict he had with him in the past, Liu Zhou wanted to intercept him.

His Feng-style comedy films cannot be interrupted; they are films unique to his style and cannot be interrupted.

But films like "Assembly", "Aftershock" and "Youth" do not bear the same strong imprint of Feng's comedies.

These three films can be said to have greatly enhanced his status in the industry.

"Assembly" competed head-on with "The Warlords" and won, but this was all thanks to the appeal of Feng Kuzi. The lead actor Zhang Hanyu was only slightly better than an ordinary person at the time.

Of course, this is not the biggest gain. The most important thing is that the movie was on the news for 30 minutes, which earned him recognition from the higher-ups.

Then "Aftershock" further deepened his impression of the above, and earned more than 600 million yuan at the box office, setting a new domestic film box office record.

This greatly enhanced his status in the industry, almost catching up with Zhang Yimou, who directed the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games.

Later, as audiences grew tired of Feng's comedies and Feng Pants was somewhat out of fashion, the nearly 1.5 billion box office of "Youth" defended his reputation and status.

So if these three movies were snatched away, Feng Kuzi wouldn’t have that much influence anymore.

This is indeed the case. Although Feng Kuazi is now among the top four directors in mainland China, he is only slightly better than Chen Shishi, whose prestige has greatly declined. If we add Hong Kong directors, he is even worse than Xu Ke.

If he didn't shoot Feng's comedies, he might not be as good as Chen Kexin and Wu Baige.

As for Liu Zhou and Zhang Yimou, there is even less comparison.

The film adaptation rights of the novel "The Lawsuit" were originally acquired by Liu Zhou, and "Assembly" naturally belonged to Golden Harvest, and then "Aftershock" was also led by him.

Finally, there is "Youth". He also wrote the novel of the same name, so the copyright is naturally in Liu Zhou's hands, but it has not been adapted into a movie yet.

Without these three films, the appeal of Feng's non-Feng comedy Feng Pants might be reduced by half. After all, "The Banquet" and "1942" were not very successful.

Even now, Feng's comedies still have a large audience in China, and the excellent box office performance of the two "If You Are the One" films is proof of this.

Although this consolidated Feng Pants' position, it was also the last peak of his Feng-style comedy.

After all, it has been more than ten years, and the audience is a little tired of it. Moreover, the audience may have changed and may not necessarily like his style of comedy.

In the future, he may have one or two comedy films that may achieve good box office, and then he may be eliminated by the mainstream film market.

And without "Youth", this process will be accelerated.

There was no way. Who made him look down on me, a rookie, by relying on his seniority? Now that they had become enemies, Liu Zhou would certainly not show mercy. Even with the golden finger, Liu Zhou would certainly not let him off easily.

However, Liu Zhou himself had never thought that it would come to this. Given his status, these grudges were certainly not worth his attention, but that didn't mean he would just laugh it off.

Not targeting him specifically was already Liu Zhou's greatest kindness.

So his idea of ​​filming "Aftershock" at that time was indeed due to a dispute of personal feelings.

There is no such thing as copyright for subject matter like this. As long as a cooperation is reached with Tangshan, anyone can shoot it.

But Liu Zhou is not without a solution. After "The Blade of Embroidery", he is no longer a newcomer in the industry. Although he is a little younger, he is also a well-known director in China.

Therefore, he vaguely hinted at the time that he had some idea of ​​making a movie about the Tangshan earthquake.

This may not mean that he has already occupied a position, but it can prevent some people from competing with him and also give him a first-mover advantage.

As Liu Zhou's status became higher and higher, others were even less willing to compete with him since he had already made his intentions.

Even Hua Yi and Feng Kuzi were the same. They did not have the golden finger like Liu Zhou to predict the box office of this movie, so they did not dare to become enemies with Liu Zhou because of an unknown movie.

Later, when Tangshan wanted to shoot a movie reflecting the great earthquake, the first person they found was Liu Zhou. In addition to his fame, there were also rumors that he had wanted to shoot this movie several years ago.

After achieving success, Liu Zhou began to seriously think about the movie "Aftershock".

After all, he didn't even care about the grudge between him and Feng Kuzi, so he certainly wouldn't go out of his way to disgust him.

Instead, Liu Zhou felt that the subject matter of the movie "Aftershock" was indeed very good and there were many things that could be filmed.

Especially after he had a deeper understanding, his desire to make this film became stronger.

Even if there was no feud with Feng Kuzi, he was still prepared to make this movie.

(End of this chapter)