Note: This article contains minor spoilers
Many people did not expect that Feng Xiaogang, once the creator of the Lunar New Year stalls in the Mainland and the king of the Lunar New Year stalls, would be the first to fall behind in the fierce competition for the New Year's Day stalls with his new work "If You Are the One 3". "If You Are the One" once ranked first in domestic film box office history (note: major media press releases at the time said the film had a box office of 325 million yuan), "If You Are the One 2" was also a hit during the Lunar New Year (471 million yuan), "If You Are the One" "If You Are the One 3" let alone the overall ranking in film history, the ranking of this New Year's Day release is already worrying.
"If You Are the One 3" poster
This is obviously not just because "If You Are the One 3" is the only commercial blockbuster to be released separately on New Year's Day. Is it because "If You Are the One 3" is a "bad movie"? To judge fairly, neither. It is considered okay among many urban romance movies in 2023, and it is not the worst movie or the worst romance movie on New Year's Day. "If You Are the One 3" is a stable performance of this series.
"If You Are the One 3" also has "emotional points" that other New Year's Day movies do not have. Not only does "If You Are the One 3" have a lot of callbacks to the first and second movies, but also the easter eggs that appeared right after the movie ended - the leading actors Ge You and Shu Qi talked to the audience in their own identities, talking about the 2008 "You Are the One" "If You Are the One", the past of "If You Are the One 2" in 2010, and the passage of time behind the three movies.
Ge You admitted that he was too old to make romantic movies, and Shu Qi also reluctantly said goodbye to the character Liang Xiaoxiao, which was really sad. In the end, the two actors gave New Year greetings to the audience, and the joyful atmosphere indeed felt like a New Year.
Posters of the first two movies
So why did "If You Are the One 3" fail to sell well? Because the audience has changed and times have changed.
It’s still the same form of Feng’s comedy
"If You Are the One 3" continues the main storyline of the first two films. The story is set in 2031. Qin Fen (played by Ge You) and Liang Xiaoxiao (played by Shu Qi) have been married for ten years. Qin Fen is 70 years old, and Xiaoxiao has been away from home for ten years - she chose to wander around the world and become an environmentalist. Activists.
Qin Fen (played by Ge You) is old
Qin Fen, who misses his wife eagerly, receives an artificial intelligence person (played by Shu Qi) who imitates a smile from beginning to end from Lao Fan (played by Fan Wei) who runs a technology company. This AI Xiaoxiao, except that she cannot eat or drink (to recharge her energy) and cannot sleep in the same bed, she looks the same as the real Xiaoxiao and is more submissive and considerate.
AI Liang Xiaoxiao (played by Shu Qi)
Qin Fen and the AI laughed and had feelings for each other. At this moment, Xiaoxiao came back. Qin Fen, who couldn't bear to send the AI Xiaoxiao directly back for reset, temporarily lived with the real Xiaoxiao. Qin Fen and the audience gradually became confused: which one is the real Xiaoxiao, the real Xiaoxiao and the fake Xiaoxiao?
Real or fake smile, which one is real and which one is fake?
From the perspective of "Feng's comedy", "If You Are the One 3" is Feng Xiaogang's performance in his comfort zone. The various quarrels between Qin Fen and Zhen Xiaoxiao, back and forth, are full of verbal agility, cunning and fun.
Feng's comedy is not only good at language humor, but also good at creating a sense of joy in hypothetical situations, reproducing social reality, reflecting social problems, and expressing social mentality. From "Party A and Party B" in 1997 to "A World Without Thieves" in 2004 (Feng Xiaogang only missed the Lunar New Year show in 2002), Feng's comedy dominated the Lunar New Year show in those years. One of the main reasons is that Feng Xiaogang accurately grasped the influence of urban citizens in the past. The inner confusion of changing times.
In "If You Are the One 3", Feng's comedy has not changed, and Feng Xiaogang is still serving the "citizens" in his heart. In fact, the protagonists of Feng's comedies are hardly out of Feng Xiaogang's class. Although many people refer to Feng's comedies as citizen comedies, we need to clarify: the "citizens" here essentially refer to the small group of middle-class people who can afford movies in first-tier cities such as Beijing around the new century. At that time, the size of the Chinese film market was very small. In the era of "If You Are the One", a film with more than 300 million was the number one film in the history of domestic films. Today, the box office of the number one film in history has reached 5.775 billion yuan.
The film market is getting bigger and bigger, citizen audiences are slowly turning into real ordinary citizens (including the majority of young people in small towns), and the film industry is also undergoing various earth-shaking changes. As for the comedy movies themselves, from the Feng Xiaogang era, the Ge You era, to the Ning Hao era, Huang Bo era, Xu Zheng era, and then to the Happy Twist era, each has been leading the way for a period of time. Nowadays, apart from Shen Teng and Ma Li, the only comedies that really have appeal are some comedies that are closer to the pain points of contemporary young people and have a more online feel, such as the New Year's Day "The Annual Party Can't Stop!" 》.
Even though the author likes Ge You very much, I have to admit that comedies starring Ge You may not have such great market appeal among young audiences; in today's rich and diverse comedies, glib comedies may not be satisfying; in terms of the hypothetical nature of comedies, Under the background that the situation has been thoroughly studied (special effects production such as "Walking Alone on the Moon" is very hard-core), Feng Xiaogang came up with the setting of the sketch "Funny Talk about Robots" that he wrote for the CCTV Spring Festival Gala in 1996. Not enough freshness...
The sketch "Funny Words about Robots" written by Feng Xiaogang
In short, at the comedy level, Feng's comedy is still in the same form, and the audience has changed one after another.
In the age of "love is powerless", what is true love like?
Let’s look at the topic level. Feng's comedies in the past captured the inner pain points of "citizens" in changing times. Although "If You Are the One 3" is a love movie, it still maintains one characteristic. Feng Xiaogang talked about his observation of the current love situation of young people. They are too "fast food", lack patience, and gradually lose their long-term love. He talked about people's views on love. "If You Are the One 3" combines the popular topic of AI at the moment, and wants to explore what true love should be like in the era of "love is incompetent".
"If You Are the One 3" tells a beautiful love story between two idealists. They are each other's only ones and their love is long-lasting. There are various golden sentences in the movie, such as "Missing you is too low to build a temple on a high mountain, but I still miss you when we sit face to face." When faced with the question of whether he had eaten "on the sly" in the past ten years, there was also a vivid metaphor of "making dumplings": If you want to eat a meal of dumplings, you have to take out the meat from the refrigerator, chop the fillings, pour in flour, and knead the dumplings. Noodles, cooked noodles, rolled into skins, put into the pot... The whole tedious process is just to get those scalding hot dumplings when they come out of the pot. If you can't help but be hungry during this process, and you've run out of snacks, when the dumplings come out of the pot, It doesn’t smell good anymore… Only when you resist the temptation with faith will you be rewarded with delicious food in the end.
There are many famous quotes from Feng
In terms of the degree of completion of the expression of the love theme, "If You Are the One 3" is better than many domestic love movies. The problem is still the same: Feng Xiaogang is still the same Feng Xiaogang, and he still serves his former audience, but times have changed, and the audience has also changed long ago.
In "If You Are the One 3", Feng Xiaogang very sincerely shares his views on love. Middle-aged and elderly people of the same class as Feng Xiaogang will definitely feel emotional watching it. These wealthy middle-aged and elderly people have already played and had enough of everything they should have played when they were young. They have already "passed among thousands of flowers". As they get older, they can clearly feel the decline of their bodies, and they have passed through thousands of sails. They suddenly discovered that it is best to have a long-lasting lover at home who will never leave, be obedient, and support each other.
Feng Xiaogang bluntly said, "What kind of creation should you do at what age?" "A generation of directors serves a generation of audiences." "If You Are the One 3" only serves the love pain points of a small group of people - no shortage of money, but no loyal lover by their side when they get old.
Generally, the older a man gets, the more he needs someone to take care of him and the more he believes in "love"
"Inability to love" is a pain point of the times, but the pain points of young people are not as metaphysical as in "If You Are the One 3". The pain points of young people are very specific and realistic: on the other side of the love balance, there are too many things - houses, registered residence, Stable job, future expectations... This does not mean that love movies can only have young people as protagonists. It is also a drama about old people falling in love, in "I Love You!" "We can clearly find that the younger generation of directors have expressions that are more realistic and closer to the survival experience of young people.
Of course, young people will also fantasize about perfect love, but its form and content must be all-round "youthful", with topics, gimmicks, and social attributes. For example, the New Year's Day movie "One" had a poor reputation but a good box office. "Twinkle Shine Star". Unfortunately, the popularity of "If You Are the One 3" on the Internet is not at the same level compared to it.
Feng Xiaogang is still the same Feng Xiaogang - even his expression in the film this time is more sincere than before, and Feng's comedy is still the same Feng's comedy, but the film market is no longer what it used to be, and the "citizens" are no longer the citizens of the past.
Once upon a time, the Lunar New Year stall dominated by Feng Xiaogang was the hottest stall of the year. Today, the concept of the Lunar New Year stall has gradually become illusory and has been gradually replaced by the more popular "New Year's Day stall" and "Spring Festival stall". The situation of the Lunar New Year stalls is also the situation of Feng's comedy.
Qin Fen and Liang Xiaoxiao reluctantly bid farewell to the audience in the Easter egg. It will indeed make people sad, but when it is time to say goodbye, they still have to say goodbye properly.
