From a commercial point of view, the detective chinatown series is undoubtedly successful. Since the first film was released in 215, the box office revenue of the trilogy has been rising. A big chess game with a span of five years and a layout of thousands of miles has thrown away word of mouth, and its ambition is indeed extraordinary.
If you talk about a scene in the detective chinatown series that impressed you the most, it is estimated that 99% of the audience will think of the evil smile played by Zifeng Zhang in the first film. Countless people were scared to scream under this lens, and Snow also stole countless lights from the protagonists Wang Baoqiang and Haoran Liu as supporting actors and villains because of this smile.
On rotten tomatoes, American audiences equate this smile with Hopkins' evil smile in The Silence of the Lambs and Audrey Tatu's strange smile in Angels Love Beauty. It can be said that it is a history.
A girl who loves to laugh is not too bad luck, even if this smile makes your hair stand on end.
The success of the detective chinatown series is inseparable from the pre-announcement and excellent plot, and it is also due to Sinoe. Countless people rushed to the cinema just to see Sinoe smile, and have since become loyal fans of the Chinatown series.
In the third part, Sinoe appeared again and smiled many times, but this time, the audience stopped buying it. The continuous decline of Douban scores and the high opening and low going of the box office made people wonder, can the Chinatown series continue?
Detective Chinatown 3 can be described as a phenomenal film. The so-called phenomenal film, that is, while being loved by ordinary audiences, broke 4 billion at the box office in half a month and went to the top five in China. On the other hand, it has been attacked by the broad masses of educated young people, which seems to be unworthy of its name.
there is sea water on one side and flame on the other. So, how did Detective Chinatown 3, whose reputation is polarized, walk on such a wire rope?
The reason why Detective Chinatown 3 suffered from word-of-mouth waterloo was that he first violated the sensitive topic in the current social context. Taking nurses and women as negative narrative labels would face the risk of public opinion.
Many people who are "more positive than the five senses" will not hesitate to give a one-star bad review without watching the movie plot at all, and will rush to the four labels of "Chen Sicheng, China-made, teasing nurse and miserable woman".
In fact, it is not uncommon for such films to be attacked for offending a certain group. Even Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero, Farewell My Concubine and The Sun Also Rises were criticized for self-doubt for similar reasons.
As for the Hollywood movies with female stalks, such as Marriage Story, Parasite, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and The Clown, it is worth pondering why they have not been criticized by the "leftist" warriors at all.
Therefore, whether it is said that Detective Chinatown 3 was born at an untimely time or that Chen Sicheng is overconfident and lacks sensitive judgment, these social factors may greatly affect the rating of the works, but they have no influence on the artistry of the film itself.
Get rid of the factors other than these films and go back to the film itself. The real failure actually lies in two women.
First of all, the biggest failure came from Masami Nagasawa. This girl with a sweet smile, who was loved by the audience in China because of "Diary of the Sea Street", staged a Japanese drama of great sadness in Detective Chinatown 3.
The world-weary face from beginning to end is very different from the relaxed and cheerful atmosphere of the whole movie. Maybe the film wants to express this kind of emotional opposition and make the story more tense. However, most people really can't appreciate this sense of disunity. In particular, at the end of the drama, the father and daughter love each other and kill each other, which is smelly and looks like a Korean drama, but also allows the audience to play in minutes.
Ning Hao said that the most affectionate comedy is to laugh in tears, and Chen Sicheng may understand it as crying after laughing. This combination of emotional expression is too blunt, which is a major failure of the film.
the second failure is the failure of group images. The appearance of Sinoe is very representative. Group play is recognized as the most difficult scene to shoot. How to fully show everyone's characteristics and highlights in a short group play without being noisy has been a difficult problem since ancient times.
Success like Infernal Affairs and Gunfire is rare. Even Marvel Comics's The Avengers I and II, a veteran of Hollywood, have met with unanimous ridicule in the industry-it was not until Iron Man 3 and Avengers 3 that they focused on Iron Man and weakened others that they barely recovered their reputation.
In Detective Chinatown 3, whenever Sinuo appeared, he always wore a signature smile. This kind of repeated use of fried leftovers may make people feel aesthetic fatigue, and there is no surprise when they first met. Life is just like seeing it for the first time.
As for the others, it is even more bright. There are too many people who appear. The director wants everyone to show their abilities, but his ambition is great and his talent is sparse. The vulgar jokes and empty imagination make the characters highly overlap. In the end, he can only lose sight of one thing and lose sight of another. Not only are the supporting roles dull, but the two leading roles are not as vivid as they used to be.
If Tang Tan is just a simple comedy, what is the significance of Sinoe's existence?
In fact, it can be seen from the clues that Chen Sicheng is ambitious. What he wants to do is not just a simple detective series. The real purpose of the series "Tang Detective" is to create a detective universe in which two philosophies conflict.
At the beginning of Detective Chinatown 3's film, a sentence suddenly appeared: "A trip to the Avenue is also a public affair." This famous saying from The Book of Rites and Liyun just symbolizes Qin Feng's Chinese philosophy.
From the whole series, Qin Feng is like a fan of Taoism. He has been rejecting the scepter of God, but only as a person, to observe and experience all kinds of human beings.
in the first part, he gave up pursuing the ultimate murderer, Sinuo; in the second part, he spared the real murderer, Song Yi; in the third part, he even refused the invitation letter handed by Q. This thought of letting nature take its course and doing nothing is the philosophy of Taoism that respects everything and makes everyone his own master.
On the contrary, it is Q's idea of "natural selection and survival of the fittest".
in q's view, ordinary people are just fish maws that can be harvested and cut at any time and mice that can be sacrificed at any time. The real world should be in the hands of smart people like them. The strong decide the right to speak-there is no truth in the world, and what Q says is the truth.
these two values, like water and fire, summer and winter, can never exist.
Therefore, Qin Feng always said that the total amount of good and evil in this world remains unchanged. He wandered between Yin and Yang, maintaining balance in the way of Tao.
Qin Feng school and Q, like being good at evil, are at two ends of the world balance. Only when they reach a balance can the world live in peace.
The key to this balance is Sinoe.
At the end of Detective Chinatown 3, a "Justice League" composed of 1 people appeared on the rooftop (in fact, there are 11 people, but Qin Feng Tangren has always been inseparable from Meng, so count as one); There is an 11-member Q-group headed by Andy Lau in the Tower of London, and Snow is one of them. At this time, the total amount of both sides is actually unequal.
how to keep a balance?
If Sinoe is divided into two parts without introducing other roles-both a member of the Justice League and a member of Q, then the world can maintain a balance as Qin Feng said.
In fact, Sinuo itself is both good and evil. When she framed her stepfather, it was difficult for people to define her clearly with simple "good" or "evil". When Qin Feng went to prison, she didn't refuse, and she didn't come to the rescue directly, but pushed people to give hints.
In the Chinatown series, Sinoe is always a split and semi-hidden existence. She interprets the unspeakable complexity of human nature and also carries the pattern and ambition of Chen Sicheng to tell a grand story well.
In fact, Sinoe represents the vast majority of people in the world.
In Detective Chinatown 3, there is such a plot: In order to save Kobayashi sauce, Qin Feng and several other detectives participate in a game set by Q. One of the customs is this: two loaves of bread, three people, only one knife is allowed, how can we divide them equally?
When others could do nothing, Qin Feng made a move. Instead of cutting bread, he cut a person to death.
This level is the embodiment of Q's values: the resources in the world are unequal, and if you want to achieve real fairness, you have to kill and plunder. Qin Feng, the leader of the Justice League, approved this plan. Does it mean that there is a trace of "evil" in him?
If even Qin Feng is like this, how can others simply guard the "goodness"?
In fact, "good" and "evil" are relative. If there is no "evil" in the world, there is no "good". Wang Yangming said that good and evil are one thing, and that is the case. Just like cooking in a pot, the doctor uses medicine, and the food is not cooked, and the rice is either raw or burnt; The dosage is not allowed, and the patient feels uncomfortable after eating it.
Therefore, what we really need to do is not to resist "evil" with our mouths, but to learn to grasp the boundary between "good" and "evil", and to hurt lightly is not enough.
Back to movies, this Spring Festival file has steadily broken through 4 billion yuan. Despite the constant controversy, Chen Sicheng has indeed built the series "Tang Tan" into a cultural IP. The target audience of the film itself is stable, and the series IP sometimes raises feelings, especially the participation of the layout on the timeline, which will make most people willing to tolerate the logic of the plot. After all, the filter of "Ye Youth" is invincible.
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