Why was Wandering Earth 2 overtaken by Man Jiang Hong？

During the Spring Festival in 2023, the film market in China finally recovered. Up to now, the total box office has exceeded 5 billion, which is expected to hit the second place in the same period.

From the first day, "Wandering Earth 2" and "Man Jiang Hong" stood side by side, and soon put aside other films.

On the third day of New Year’s Eve, Manjianghong officially surpassed Wandering Earth 2, and by the fifth day, it had already opened a gap of 200 million, and the situation had changed.

As the first seed player in the schedule, Wandering Earth 2 was overtaken by Manjianghong, which surprised many people.

Looking back on the Spring Festival in 2019, The Wandering Earth’s first film was released, which was a dark horse and finally won 4.686 billion box office, becoming a story that was talked about in that year.

Fans affectionately called the film "Little Broken Ball" and praised Director Frant Gwo and his team for completing the film without being optimistic, which became the "pioneering work" of China science fiction movies.

Then, when it comes to Wandering Earth 2, it is no longer "not optimistic", but has high hopes. The area of the scene alone is ten times that of the first film, and there are six or seven teams shooting abroad, and the production volume is not the same. It is imperative to become the leader of the 2023 Spring Festival file.

Now being overtaken, many "fans" can’t accept it, and they are even incited by some big Internet V who took the opportunity to gain traffic. With the slogan of "defending China’s science fiction", they are dissatisfied with "Man Jiang Hong" and set off a war of abuse. Among them, the failure of the ticketing system and the temporary rescheduling of some cinemas on the fourth day of the fourth day are all regarded as small moves by the producers of "Man Jiang Hong". In the eyes of the industry, they are all ridiculous and unreasonable amateur fantasies.

If you think about it carefully, you will know that there are two companies with overlapping head films in production and distribution. Now that the market has just recovered, it is the focus of behind-the-scenes traders to work together to make a big market. It is really nonsense to say that the films are mutually black.

Let’s put aside emotional speculation and look at the reasons why Wandering Earth 2 is temporarily behind.

Time and multiple clues have become a threshold.

The movie Wandering Earth 2 has a duration of 173 minutes, which is a three-hour movie if rounded off. The movie Man Jiang Hong has 159 minutes, which is actually only 14 minutes less, but it is easily regarded as "more than two hours". If you look at the duration, the audience will easily tend to the latter during the Spring Festival.

The first release of The Wandering Earth was 125 minutes.(Replay version 137 minutes)Obviously, it is a more acceptable time for the audience. There is only one main line in the first part, and the movements of the characters are clear, that is, Liu Qi and the rescue team stop the earth from falling into Jupiter, and Liu Peiqiang’s sub-line in the International Space Station is also closely related to the main line. In terms of genre, the first film focuses more on disaster films, depicting the difficulties and obstacles encountered by the team in performing their tasks and the test of human nature. The sci-fi world view has not been widely developed, so it just matches the acceptance of ordinary audiences.

But the second part, as a prequel, needs to describe the formation process of the "Wandering Earth Project", and at the same time, the sci-fi worldview of the film needs to be expressed more clearly.

So the film chose the three-line parallel narration.

The first line is Liu Peiqiang.(Jason Wu)At this time, Liu Peiqiang was still a young guy. As an astronaut, he entered the space elevator to work in the space station and met his teammate Han Duoduo.(Wang Zhi)And become lovers.

Due to the "mountain moving plan"(The predecessor of "Wandering Earth Project")There are still many uncertainties, and there are still opposition parties on the earth, with the intention of sabotaging the plan.

The space station was invaded, and countless drones were controlled by the enemy. Astronauts such as Liu Peiqiang also had to fight to the death with the invading enemy.

Since then, Liu Peiqiang and Han Duoduo have successfully married and had children. However, Han Duoduo was unfortunately sick by radiation and his life was dying. Liu Peiqiang decided to work in the space station in exchange for the opportunity for his family to continue to survive in the underground city.

This line has two main tasks. First, the battle of the space elevator, which is more meaningful, is to open the history of the most popular figure Liu Peiqiang in the first film, so that the audience can connect the first film well, but it is not new from the plot. Jason Wu’s interpretation of the young Liu Peiqiang is also very routine, and the bigger point of view is the big scene of the space elevator fighting and the drone against human beings.

The second is the "monthly plan". Humans decided to blow up the moon with a nuclear bomb. When carrying out the task of landing a nuclear bomb on the moon, Liu Peiqiang left his hope for life to his comrades, but he left the moon with a Russian return capsule under the guidance of Master Zhang Peng. Watching Zhang Peng and other senior astronauts die because they manually started a nuclear bomb to blow up the moon.

At this moment, Liu Peiqiang has grown up again, and he is completely in line with The Wandering Earth. The behavior of many senior astronauts over 50 years old who spontaneously sacrificed for the continuation of human civilization has become the biggest tear point of the film.

The second line comes from the scientist Tu Hengyu.(Andy Lau)In the process of studying "digital life", he entered the consciousness of his dead daughter into the quantum computer 550, and from then on, he became obsessed and wanted to extend his daughter’s life in the digital world many times.

Tu Hengyu is also the most interesting character in this film. His ending and eggs in this film are the key to unlock the hidden plot of this film.

It turns out that at some point in the future, moss, the artificial intelligence of quantum computer, has awakened. It thinks that human beings should be destroyed, so it plans a series of human crisis events, and Tu Hengyu and his daughter Yaya who entered the computer have become variables.

In this process, Tu Hengyu also accepted the superior Ma Zhao’s view that "civilization without human beings is meaningless" and helped human beings with his own consciousness, so that their bodies can still live and find the future of human beings.

The third line is Zhou Zhezhi.(Li Xuejian)As an official of China, he adhered to the plan in the coalition government, which represented China’s idea of being a great power on the world stage. His strength enabled the "monthly plan" and the "wandering earth plan" to be effectively promoted, and also decided the fate of the earth and mankind.

The dialogue between Tu Hengyu and moss in the egg, combined with the constant appearance of the monitor lens in the whole film, is extremely frightening. The countdown process of the whole movie seems to be arranged by moss.

The suspense left by the film is that human beings have to face not only the escape of the earth from the solar system to a new home, but also the struggle against artificial intelligence to break the time limit.

Moss, who is omnipotent in the future, is a "god" created by human beings and controls the escape process of human beings. So in what form will human civilization continue?

It is estimated that it will not be fully revealed until the third part.

After reading the above story description, you will find that watching this film requires the audience to understand the contents of the three narrative lines first, and also to guess and piece together the real sci-fi worldview of this film through details and eggs.

This is undoubtedly complicated for the audience who just returned to the cinema for the Spring Festival. After all, China science fiction only developed in domestic cinemas soon, and science fiction films are not the main type of domestic cinema films.

Although this threshold is not too high, it becomes a disadvantage when it comes to the high-quality film "Man Jiang Hong" with a slightly lower threshold.

The general audience’s negative comments on Wandering Earth 2 include "loose plot", "too long" and "I didn’t understand it". In terms of wonders, only "the battle of the space elevator" is a big scene, but the subsequent "moon explosion" seems to be nothing new because of the previous films such as Moonfall and Moon Man.

As for the world outlook, artificial intelligence is the classic bridge of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which has been deeply discussed by many sci-fi films in the world.

How can Guo Fan make this point different and more local, at least not in this department. Even if the brain hole of Wandering Earth 3 burst, wouldn’t this movie become an extremely long trailer?

The cost is out of control and the production management is not up to standard.

According to the media and insiders, the original cost of Wandering Earth 2 was 600 million, but it was overspent when it was produced, and it can only continue to inject capital to 1.1 billion. Together with the 200 million publicity fee, it will take 4 billion box office to recover.

The film didn’t finish its late stage until a few days before the release, which almost canceled the premiere. At this time, "Man Jiang Hong" has completed two rounds of word-of-mouth fermentation.

Not only that, according to Frant Gwo’s self-exposure, Wandering Earth 2 was almost divided into upper and lower parts, but it was finally combined into one, so more than 80 minutes of content was cut.

There are many vague contents in the world view, which may also be caused by editing.

Whether these 80 minutes will be put into Wandering Earth 3 is still unknown.

No matter how enthusiastic the directors and fans are, this situation is obviously abnormal and shows insufficient control over the process of the film industry. At the beginning of the preparation, did the master think clearly about how much content to put in this film? Where does the world outlook end? Can the plot line be more concise?

The dilemma of these contents can be linked with the negative feedback of the above audience.

Although the success of the first film has opened the door to China’s sci-fi movies and achieved a higher level of industrial production, it will affect the sustainable development of this series if there is no upper limit investment and no production management and cost control to bear the expression of the main creation and the expectations of the audience.

At present, "Wandering Earth 2" is still far from the 4 billion box office. If it loses money, it will not affect the continuation of this series, but it will also sound an alarm for the later creation cost control and content volume.

Being used to incite emotions will only lead to expected deviation.

In the war of abuse mentioned above, the necessity of watching and loving Wandering Earth 2 was linked to the sense of national honor.

It is very outrageous to look closely at the content of Weibo he sent. In the China film market, famous Hollywood directors such as Spielberg and Nolan have never been "touted by all major circles", and they have never achieved "the box office broke one billion on the first day of release". Even the newly released Avatar 2 was once cold.

But such content has tens of thousands of people like it.

It is undoubtedly premature to regard The Wandering Earth series as sci-fi classics in opposition to the directors and authors of Hollywood sci-fi films, which has nothing to do with "worshipping foreign things and obsessing over foreign things" or the theme color of the film.

After all, Hollywood sci-fi films have developed for decades, and have already gone through many stages, from grand narrative to paying attention to individual feelings, as well as the inclusion and innovation of different types of film elements. It is impossible for one or two The Wandering Earth films to be all compatible, and there is even a bridge that pays tribute to western sci-fi classics in Wandering Earth 2.

Movies have their own laws of development. China sci-fi movies are still in their infancy, and they need tolerance and encouragement, not support and kill.

At this time, people with a heart use it to incite national sentiment, which is harmful to the film.

If you walk into the cinema because of this description, you may not get strong satisfaction, but there will be expected deviation.

The biggest tear in the film is that when the nuclear bomb blew up the moon, the senior astronaut took the initiative to sacrifice, but this action was completed by senior astronauts from all countries, not just Chinese.

Another emotional point is that Lao Zhou, played by Li Xuejian, strongly urged the foreign soldiers of the coalition government to continue the task when the Beijing team failed to complete the task of networking. He repeatedly said "I trust our people".

This period was once regarded as an absolute trust of China officials to China scientists, which seemed to show national self-confidence. However, according to the analysis of eggs, "our people" here may refer to "our own people" represented by Tu Hengyu in digital life, so the national sentiment among them has also been dispelled.

Therefore, the emotional climax in this film can be said to be completely less direct than the whole army reciting Yue Fei’s ci in "Man Jiang Hong".

Go emotional, maybe it’s not as good as "Man Jiang Hong".

One of the great advantages of the film Wandering Earth 2 is that in this divided and controversial world, people all over the world are once again brought together from the perspective of "the community of human destiny" to discuss the future destiny of mankind as a whole, and to promote the dedication made by human beings to continue civilization and protect their loved ones.

People who see this should not preach opposition and intensify contradictions. Therefore, it seems impossible to expand the emotional value of the audience indefinitely like some explosive movies in the past.

Is there any saving?

Up to now, Wandering Earth 2 still has the possibility of overtaking Manjianghong, after all, The Wandering Earth also attacked it.

The reason why the film "Man Jiang Hong" won the top spot is because the type of suspense+comedy has a clear positioning, the previous announcement is more solid and sinking, and the goal is clearer. Due to the poor popularity and reputation of the only comedy "Exchange of Life" in the schedule, "Man Jiang Hong" also attracted the comedy audience of this film, forming a coverage of multi-age groups and family members. Because the attendance rate has been the highest, the fourth row of films and box office in the third day of junior high school have formed a transcendence over Wandering Earth 2.

But after the festival, with the return of people in first-and second-tier cities, Wandering Earth 2 will begin to find its own audience. Some viewers who can’t see the special effects hall in their hometown will return to the big cities to "catch up" on this film.

At present, there are more "tap water" in the film, and the interpretation of the film is richer than other films, and the fermentation is faster, and the douban score is still maintained at a high score of 8.2.

As long as we can bite the gap with "Man Jiang Hong" and take a long line, we may be able to return to the championship in the same period.

It remains to be seen whether the Spring Festival stalls are strong or not.