Four days after its release, the total box office of the movie "Want to Meet You" exceeded 100 million yuan. When seeing this news, the reporter found that its Douban score dropped by 0.1 points.
"So I temporarily close your eyes, and my expectations float in the darkness..." After three years of waiting, the movie version of "Want to See You", which once triggered a craze for watching dramas, was finally released on December 24 this year. Although the original cast recreated the suspenseful and brain-burning love affair and seemed sincere, the drama version of "Want to See You" scored as high as 9.2 on Douban, while the movie version of "Want to See You" now only has a score of 6.6.
As early as when the series was on the air, many viewers called for a sequel. Now the release of the movie is also called a "gift to fans of the series." However, the drop from 9.2 to 6.6 proves that this gift is just "cutting leeks" in the end?
Watching a drama extra in the cinema
The drama version of "Want to See You" premiered on November 17, 2019. It is an urban fantasy suspense love drama starring Ke Jiayan, Xu Guanghan, Shi Boyu. The play tells the story of heroes and heroines in 1998 and 2019 respectively, traveling through time and space through a tape to find each other's love story.
In the movie version of "Want to See You", the timeline restarts to three years before the drama version. In order to find their lost lover, the hero and heroine rely on a tape to travel from 2017 to 2014, trying to change their destiny and start over. The story telling method and core design are very similar to the drama version. From the director, screenwriter to starring, almost all of them are the original cast, ensuring the authenticity of the film. However, compared to the TV series, the one-and-a-half-hour movie is a bit perfunctory in its narrative. Many details are passed by montage , which is far less surprising than the explosion of information when watching the drama. The film did not further sublimate the story or expand the world view. Many people even felt that the story became smaller and smaller as it was told.
Moving from the small screen to the big screen, not only does the screen size increase, but the more important issue that needs to be considered is that after entering the theater, the work will not only face drama fans, but also a large number of ordinary audiences. However, trying to please both fans and general audiences at the same time is an almost unsolvable paradox. The attitude of the film's creators in previous interviews was quite ambiguous, "(Making this movie) we originally wanted to give back to the many fans who love us - but if you haven't seen the drama version, you can still watch it. It is also a relatively independent story."
In fact, whether you have seen the drama or not, the difference in viewing experience is still very big. The movie does not specifically review the character settings and relationships in the play. The characters of Li Ziwei and Huang Yuxuan who have more roles are relatively full-bodied, while the characters of Mo Junjie and Wang Quansheng who have less writing are slightly thinner. Audiences who have watched the drama are equivalent to understanding the history of the characters and can automatically make up for the thin parts of the movie. In the eyes of viewers who have not watched the drama, these characters are very similar to tool men. This viewing experience is probably equivalent to the audience's common perception of the new character in the movie, Yang Hao, played by Jin Shijia : inexplicable and unclear.
Jin Shijia is not a drama, it feels like he is trying to reduce his sense of existence with the mentality of "I am here to join this family, not to tear it apart" and try not to ruin the story, but this character has little connection with the whole story. Moreover, regardless of whether it works or not, the addition of Yang Hao is a major flaw in the movie. In the drama version, Chen Yunru and Mo Junjie have an emotional relationship, but in the movie, half of Chen Yunru's emotional scenes are given to Yang Hao. The originally slightly tense narrative has to be added to the story. Not only is Yang Hao not portrayed, but Mo Junjie is also hollowed out. When I think of him with a stubble on his face and a melancholic look on his face that is hesitant to speak, I feel that what was hastily filled in in the end is not the story he originally wanted to tell.
moving from the small screen to the big screen requires even more production upgrades.Many popular Japanese dramas will launch theatrical versions, that is, movie versions, which require further upgrades in terms of story framework, costumes, casts, and even scenes. Including the two recently released Japanese anime movies "Detective Conan: The Bride of Halloween" and "One Piece: The Red-Haired Diva" are both theatrical versions of anime series. Whether it is the appearance of popular characters to unfold new stories, or thrilling scenes, action scenes, etc., they have become selling points to attract audiences to the theater.
In the movie "Want to Meet You", the story only expanded from Taipei to Shanghai, added Yang Hao played by Jin Shijia, and reinterpreted the original story in a different timeline. Although the core of suspenseful love was retained, it was not upgraded enough. A "paid unlock" special episode was enough. This also makes watching "Want to See You", even though the screen has become larger, just like sitting in a theater and watching an extra episode of an online drama. In particular, the projectionist in the theater the reporter visited may be part-time, and the picture format was not adjusted to the best. There was a black border around the already small screen, which made the movie feel more like an iPad.
IPs without bonus points are consumed
Although "I Want to Meet You" was hastily announced on December 20 that it will be released on December 24, leaving not much time for announcement, the popularity of the drama's IP still attracted a lot of popularity during its first release weekend. On December 24th and 25th, the national single-day box office exceeded 100 million for two consecutive days. The proportion of "I Want to See You" in the film schedule is second only to "Avatar 2", which has a significant impact on the box office. According to data from Maoyan Professional Edition, as of 0:00 on December 28, the total national box office (including pre-sales) for the 2022 Lunar New Year period (November 25-December 31) reached 1.26 billion yuan. "Want to See You" is currently ranked third on the 2022 Lunar New Year box office list.
After watching the movie, some people felt very satisfied and it made up for the regrets in the series. Others thought that the movie was just a simplified copy of the structure of the series. Instead of calling it "Want to See You", it would be better to call it "I Want to Cut Your Leeks". Objectively speaking, "Want to See You" is by no means a bad movie or a money-making movie. It is better than most love movies this year, such as "Don't Forget I Love You" with a score of 3.1, "I Want to Go to Your World and Love You" with a score of 4.5, and "Wen Ruyan" with a score of 2.8. It is also far better than "Your Wedding" starring Xu Guanghan, which was released last year with a score of 4.6.
With domestic romance films generally scoring less than 5 points, it is considered a high score to pass.
Interestingly, when "Your Wedding" was officially announced as the leading actor, it was Xu Guanghan who became a new generation of male god with Li Ziwei in "I Want to See You", and the character setting and some plot routines of the film's male protagonist are vaguely imitating "I Want to See You". It even makes people think that this is a movie customized to meet the needs of fans to watch Xu Guanghan on the big screen.
Reporters at the time predicted that Xu Guanghan could use his personal IP to boost the box office once, but it would be impossible for him to do it a second time.
Perhaps unfortunately, when "Want to See You" appeared on the big screen with the original "Li Ziwei", fans no longer had the original little deer bumping into each other. "Want to Meet You" currently has a box office of over 100 million, but it is still far away from the 700 million "Your Wedding". In fact, Xu Guanghan's performance in "Want to Meet You" is far more layered than in "Your Wedding". One person plays the two roles of Li Ziwei and Wang Quansheng, which can obviously make people feel the difference between the characters. However, fans have already seen Xu Guanghan on the big screen. Moving
from a web drama to the big screen is undoubtedly an effort to extend the vitality of the IP, but for an IP, if the remake does not add points to it, then it is a waste.
"Want to See You" has a high degree of completion, and has serious ideas in the design of the suspense core and timeline. Unlike the movie versions of " Love Apartment ", "Three Lives Three Worlds Ten Miles of Peach Blossom", " The Best of Us ", " A Slight Smile is Alluring " and other fan-oriented works, it is difficult to say that it was shot for the purpose of "cutting leeks". But regardless of whether it wants to cut leeks or not, the helpless fact is that its reputation is far from the height of the drama version, and the value of its IP has been irreparably damaged.
When the "Want to Meet You" series was released, the most attractive thing for the audience was the "Douban" on the left hand and the " Zhihu " on the right hand. While watching the drama with a microscope, the fun of sorting out the details and foreshadowing and reasoning about the subsequent plot.There are a lot of details and blank spaces in the series, giving the audience enough space to appreciate and interpret. However, due to different viewing methods, no matter how sophisticated the audience is, they cannot reproduce from memory the sketches Li Ziwei drew on the blackboard in the film. It is difficult to review and verify the details, and there is a lot less interaction and participation, which also makes it difficult for the film to replicate the drama version of the drama.
Remaking movies, perhaps just like developing derivatives, is not a suitable method for every IP. Perhaps it is difficult for the creator of "Want to See You" to answer what the core of this IP is. Is it the love of "Want to See You", time travel, suspense, or the tape of wubai? Whether it's telling a love story in a suspenseful way, or constantly traveling back in time to change the past, these can be traced in other works. Is there really room for expansion of love-themed IP? The failure of "Want to See You" is also worthy of consideration by other creators.
column editor: Shi Chenlu text editor: Shi Chenlu
picture source: film official Weibo, Maoyan
source: author: Zhong Han
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