Editor's note: This is a nostalgic theater.

Movie theaters are sometimes a place for self-cultivation. If you can watch a bad enough movie calmly, you can comfort yourself that nothing is difficult.

Most bad movies are forgotten after a glance, a waste of money to pass the time, at most they are treated like junk food, and the wine and meat go through the intestines. And there is such a bad movie, which is rarely as good as it has been in the 10 years since it came out, and later, when there are bad movies that reach new heights, there are always people who will turn them out and compare them for aftertaste. And it has never been afraid of being "bad", it has stood the test of time firmly, firmly occupied the throne of the king of bad movies, and left an indelible psychological shadow on a generation of audiences-it is A generation of magical film "Tianji · Dwelling in Fuchun Mountains".

Poster of "Tianji Dwelling in Fuchun Mountains"

Because this film has a unique style and temperament in an all-round way, it can be called a masterpiece of ugliness. On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the release of this generation of masterpieces, let's look back at the "birth of a bad film" that has been recorded in history .

Time goes back to June 1, 2011. The representative work "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains" by Huang Gongwang, a great painter of the Yuan Dynasty in his later years, was exhibited in Hebi, Taiwan, China. Known as "one of China's top ten famous paintings handed down from generation to generation", this painting was cut into two pieces because it was burned. Taipei Palace Museum.

It was Liu Changle, then chairman of the board of directors of Phoenix Satellite TV, who contributed to the combination of "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains". At that time, he wanted to find someone to make a documentary, so he found Sun Jianjun, the owner of "Paig Taihe Ubiquitous Culture Media".

Sun Jianjun is a strange person. In the 1980s, he learned the cello and entered the art industry. As early as 1985, he received a huge amount of sponsorship to initiate and organize the "Jiangsu Youth Art Week" to show his business ability. Later, with the help of foreign friends he met as a tour guide, he went to the United States to study abroad. In the United States, he played photography very well, and his works were shortlisted for the "World Photography Yearbook" twice.

Sun Jianjun had dreamed of filming for a long time. After he got his master's degree from the University of California, he wrote a special application letter to Beijing Film Academy, but it was a pity that nothing came of it. After returning to China in 1993, he established a joint venture with the Beijing Film Studio "Paige Global Film and Television Culture Company". In addition to producing TV commercials, he also planned and produced a large-scale documentary "The Record of the Diplomatic Affairs of the Republic" and so on. When the Chinese film market was not booming, he was the producer of blockbuster films such as "Love Call Transfer" and "Fate Before and After".

Such a producer has become the soul of "Tianji Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains". He also holds multiple important positions such as screenwriter, director, and visual effects director. After 3 years of preparation, the investment is as high as 160 million yuan, 33 "Tianji · Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains" created by staff from 10 countries is here.

Andy Lau and Lin Chiling were undoubtedly the biggest highlights of the film at the time, but in the end, this film also became the most terrible "stain" in their careers.

Back then, the frequent apologies of the main creators made a lot of headlines, and even after a while when their new work was released, they would apologize for their previous mistakes, for fear of hurting their new partners. There is one thing to say, although the film is very weird, but the attitude of everyone admitting that they made a bad film was very correct.

headlines of the year

In fact, one of the film's original producers, China Film, approached Andy Lau, hoping that he could take over the project as a director. Andy Lau, a good man, was not satisfied after reading more than a dozen versions of the script, but he couldn't refuse, so he dumped the director's blame and agreed to allocate about 50 days for the performance.

After that, Sun Jianjun also worked hard to find someone, "At first, I found an American director, but he insisted on making it into a western style, which deviated from the meaning of the film; later, he found a Hong Kong director, and said he wanted to make it into a police film... …Later on, I found a domestic director, but the ability and schedule were always inappropriate, and in the end I just directed it myself, which was forced and helpless.”… This was Sun Jianjun’s explanation for taking over this hot potato at that time. It sounds like, whether it is shot in the style of an American western or a Hong Kong police movie, it is not that bad.

Sun Jianjun is ambitious-"If you want to do it, make a blockbuster, strong movie. There are big stars, big scenes and passionate stories." It's all valuable."

With the ambition of "innovating Chinese-style blockbusters", Sun Jianjun gathered a group of big-name domestic stars and "top teams" from all over the world to jointly create a "refreshing" audio-visual adventure. Action, treasure hunting, rural areas, main themes, domestic police and robbers, domestic horror and other genres, supplemented by magic, acrobatics, rhythmic gymnastics and other novel "movies" debuted.

As long as you have seen the movie, it must be unforgettable at first sight. After all, there were countless bad movies in cinemas in those years, who didn't have a few bad movies in their lifetime? But it’s not difficult to shoot one type of film badly. If you shoot all types badly to show your own personality, you can also combine them in an unreasonable and logical way. A strange, brain-burning and nauseating chemical reaction.

And the emotional reaction of the viewer can also experience a roller coaster in the process of watching the film, right from the beginning? What? Why? Can it still be like this? To the trough! What the hell! Where does this follow? Later, hehe, hehehe, hahahaha... huh? Anyway, at the end of the day, in the absurdity of too much information and the brain CPU down, I actually tasted a sense of postmodern humor... No wonder some film critics said at the time, "I don't want to watch "Tianji · Dwelling in Fuchun Mountains" ", it's useless to read a thousand films."

In short, you deserve this kind of movie-watching experience with rich layers and long aftertaste.

I won't go into details about the plot, so let's post a few stills. Ten years later, it still, looks just... different.

Sister Zhiling, if you are kidnapped, just blink

In this play, the one who can understand the reason for accepting the play the most should be Teacher Tong Dawei, although, but... I can!

It is said that this Palace of the Five Elements was designed by the Tsinghua Academy of Fine Arts team for one and a half years...

Ten years later, I found out that there is Miss Tan Songyun in this movie...

To promote rhythmic gymnastics, movies are obligatory

We just want to ask, why do these pictures appear in the same movie?

"Because there are indeed a lot of spectacle and performance art in it. From the beginning, I hope that the film will be more sensory stimulation. This is what this type of film pursues, to take you through the fantasy time and space that you can't experience in person." The director's explanation may be It can explain to a certain extent why this movie can present such a pinnacle of "film aesthetics". He said frankly at the time that he knew that if he worked hard in the direction of "good filming", he was destined to fail to shoot mature directors. "Then I can only come up with some strange tricks, right? This is a kind of exploration, or A helpless choice."

With an investment of 160 million yuan, how much money is used to let the actors "let go of their burdens"? We don't know. Big production is an attitude, and it is unambiguous that this movie will burn money. The money "spent on visible places" includes enabling the 3D team of "Avatar" to shoot 3,000 shots and more than 200 hours of material. One second I was boating with beauties on the West Lake in Hangzhou, and the next second I was flying over the eaves and walls of the Burj Al Arab Hotel in Dubai, and then I opened the curtains to see Mount Fuji in Tokyo... Calculated according to the 120 minutes of the cut version, the average 1-minute picture is worth it More than 1 million. Sun Jianjun said in an interview, "We think this is not about showing off wealth, but about making a real Chinese blockbuster."

In order to shoot scenes at the seven-star Burj Al Arab Hotel in Dubai, Sun Jianjun was "very satisfied" with the approval of the Sheikh of Dubai, who regarded them as "the most comprehensive and best foreign film crew ever filmed in Dubai", and personally called the hotel management to let the hotel any The corners are all matched to provide shooting. In this way, the Chinese became the world's first film crew to film in the world's only seven-star hotel. And the one-day insured amount for the crew in the hotel lobby was as high as 25 million dinars, or 43.25 million yuan. At the same time, in order to achieve a stunt level comparable to "Tang Ge", the Chinese side sent 200 people from China and hired 200 people locally. And the "Five Elements Palace" of the post-modern rural heavy metal nightclub style, which is the main scene of the hot eye, costs nearly tens of millions from design to site construction... After watching a movie, we really want to ask the director, how poor What a joyful pain to be left with nothing but money?

For this messy pot of stewing, many reshoots were carried out. Moreover, there have been many re-shoots overseas, so it is hard not to make people suspect that this is another place where they want to travel at "public expense". After all, such operations appeared endlessly in the later bad co-productions of various cross-border filming. What "European Raiders", "Grand Thieves Alliance", "Amateur Agent"... It is almost an iron law that the more places it crosses, the worse the movie will be.

According to an insider who did not want to be named, the start of "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains" was a business plan, not a script. Until the day the film was financed, the script hadn't been written yet.

This statement should have been confirmed. According to China Culture Daily's report at the time, Sun Jianjun himself revealed that when "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains" signed contracts with three investors, he hadn't even started writing the script, but he had already prepared a complete set of market operation plans. "As far as "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains" is concerned, my first identity is actually the film operator, and the next is the director." At that time, Sun Jianjun proposed that commercial films should not follow the old path of script first, but reflected in the plan. Including film positioning, promotion plan, financing plan, cost recovery, operation model and other planning.

This set of logic is still used in the film industry today, and the PPT legend of beasts near Sanlitun also evolved from this set of logic. Since then, more and more films have put marketing in a more important position than the story itself. Roles such as screenwriters and directors who were only responsible for creation have also begun to demand themselves as "project managers" and "product directors". .

Feng Xiaogang once commented, "It's like from silent to sound, from black and white to color. From now on, we can use the pre-"Dwelling in Fuchun Mountains" and "Dwelling in Fuchun Mountains" to divide film history." Carnival is a kind of peaceful atmosphere, inside and outside the industry, inside and outside the circle, where film creators and audiences complain about movies together. The 360-degree distribution of slots without dead ends makes many sharp and joyful film critics look better than movies. CCTV's "The Tenth Screening Room" has accumulated quite a lot of views on the Tucao video of the film. So far, people can see people looking for happiness in the barrage.

Tucao video barrage

The reason why "Tianji Dwelling in Fuchun Mountains" still has some nostalgic commemorative significance ten years later is not only because of the wonderfulness of the movie itself, but also because of the innocent social atmosphere at that time-bad movies can be sold, everyone The silly innocence and courage to even pay to see how bad a movie can really be.

In June 10 years ago, when the film was released, it coincided with the Dragon Boat Festival of that year. At that time, there was no such thing as a "Dragon Boat Festival" in the film market, and there were no other competitive films. "To Our Dying Youth" with a box office of 700 million yuan and "Chinese Partner" with a box office of 500 million yuan have already sold out. Natural box office cycle. As a result, the first-day box office of "Tianji: Dwelling in Fuchun Mountains" exceeded 46 million yuan, surpassing the 36.5 million yuan of "Tai囧" in one fell swoop. This result was second only to "Journey to the West" and "Painted Skin 2". The third place in the history of domestic film premiere box office.

The film's screening rate continued to increase on the day after its release, reaching as high as 37%, and it is expected to become the best-selling domestic film in the summer. In the end, the film earned 300 million at the box office amidst a lot of shouting and scolding, ranking fifth among domestic films that year. Although today it seems that this is not such a high number, but time goes back ten years, and being in the "100 million club" is still a sign of a director's success. And for such a good result, people can't help but ask, is this a distortion of human nature, or a loss of morality? No, this is the innocence and kindness of the audience who once loved Chinese movies.

Today's movie market is often cold, and "technical reasons" are not uncommon. No matter how much filmmakers have worked hard, they can't grab the audience. In the cold winter of movies with long dramas, short videos, scripts and other entertainment time, these people obviously heard that movies are ugly, and they are willing to really Jinbaiyin entered the cinema only because there were good audiences who didn't have many other choices in the same period. It was once a huge boost for the Chinese film market to rush from 20 billion to 60 billion.

Afterwards, Chinese movies started a carnival of demons dancing, hot money continued to pour in, bad movies competed to appear on the stage, making money while being scolded, elites were speaking, "hanging silk" was consuming, and the "little era" of aesthetic division appeared in full bloom. In less than a month, Sun Jianjun's record for grossing bad movies was surpassed by Guo Jingming, who put the "product manager" theory into practice.