At the beginning of the new year, many modern idol dramas such as "Hard to Woo", "Filter", and "There is a Red House Under the Tree" have brought a breath of fresh air to the domestic drama market and industry, giving new life to the modern idol dramas that were almost silent last year. I have said it before, please don't blame the theme and the genre for the poor performance of a few dramas, and cry out "ancient idol dramas are dead" and "modern idol dramas are dead" at every turn. When they "resurrect", you will only be shocked. There is a difference between good years and bad years for the appearance of a certain type of drama. Accepting some objective laws will make people calmer.
Stills from Hard to Please
As for the first drama to revitalize current idols this year, it is undoubtedly "Hard to Wake Up", which has been long awaited by the industry and the market. With a star-studded cast based on a hit novel and a senior production team, it was a hit as soon as it was aired. It not only ranked among the top three on multiple domestic data platforms, but also reached number one in Netflix Hong Kong and Taiwan.
"Hard to Woo" has achieved good broadcast results in many places
But even though director Qu Youning, the "God of Taiwanese Illusions," tried his best, using his solid skills and superb aesthetics to make an ordinary little sweet story have a beautiful atmosphere and a sense of love, he still had to face criticism from the audience: the heroine is too weak, the story is too bland, and the gender consciousness and values are outdated.
To be honest, the criticism is not wrong. Even the drama "You Are My Glory" a few years ago has already emphasized the coexistence of the male and female protagonists. The female star is pursuing her career with one hand and pursuing love with the other. She is bold, straightforward, confident and bright. In the earlier "Dear, Beloved", even though the female protagonist has a soft personality, she is also a person with all-round development in moral, intellectual, physical and aesthetic aspects. There are very few domestic idol dramas that have such a bitter female protagonist who is willing to be flattened and rounded as in the drama version of "Hard to Woo". It can only be said that it is a renaissance of bitter female protagonists in romantic novels. In terms of character growth and experience, is this kind of broken bitterness reasonable? It is reasonable, but the audience also has the right not to buy it. Therefore, it is normal for "Hard to Woo" to make the audience chase the CP while being angry at their lack of competition.
Stills from "Filter"
"Filter" is Tong Hua's entry into the idol drama market after the huge success of "Longing". The story focuses on "idol drama + science fiction + light comedy", which is somewhat novel among idol dramas, and has some positive energy in the theme: against appearance anxiety and judging people by appearance. It's a pity that the original intention was to tear off the mask of this world, but the heroine Su Chengcheng can change her appearance with a wave of her hand, which seems to have installed a human PS machine in this era of looking at appearance. It seems a bit like "join if you can't beat it" and give up. We still have to wait and see how the subsequent plot is laid out.
Stills from "A Red House Under the Tree"
"A Red House Under the Tree" is a nostalgic drama. The peeling walls of the family compound in the 1990s are carefully designed to look old, taking people back to their childhood and youth. The young actors perform naturally and cutely, and the plot is relaxed and real. This drama is full of true feelings in youth and nostalgia. In addition, the crew "invited" tapes and pagers from the millennium as extras, which really squeezed out a wave of tears of the times. This is called a small win a big, small size, but it has won the love and support of many audiences.
In fact, the above three dramas just show the major subdivision tracks of current idol drama content in recent years:
The "kingly" track represented by "Hard to Woo" (strong man and weak woman, childhood sweethearts, redemption by overbearing boss, reunion), focuses on the comfort zone of traditional Jinjiang sweet pet stories;
"A Red House Under the Tree" is a representative of the youth campus track, which has "produced talents every year" and belongs to the long-lasting red ocean of genres (the successful case is "Hello, Old Times");
"Filter" is a work that aims to "break the deadlock". It is a representative content that has integrated genres and made innovative breakthroughs in the contemporary idol track in recent years (previous successful cases in this sub-track include "Twinkle, Twinkle Star").
Stills from Hard to Please
Although the contents of the three sub-tracks are different, the creative logic is consistent, targeting the three basically constant emotional needs of audiences from generation to generation: dreaming, nostalgia, and curiosity.
"Hard to Woo" responds to women's hope for dreamy romantic love. Regardless of whether this dream is "politically correct" or "nutritious", there are always people who hope to find a touch of illusory but soothing sweetness in movies and TV shows after exhausting work and dull life.
"A Red House Under the Tree" echoes the Chinese audience's unchanging nostalgia - the lost youth and childhood are always filtered by time, which makes people always feel new and unforgettable, especially when looking back at the present time when there are old people above and young people below, it is particularly hard to let go;
"Filter" responds to the public's urgent need for freshness. "Never seen before" and "novel" are always the driving force that drives people to continue watching.
Meeting deep emotional needs rather than instant emotional needs is a major feature that distinguishes long dramas from short dramas, and it is also a major advantage. Emotional bloggers who say "three sentences to make a man spend a million for you" like to say: where the money is, there is love. Modern idol dramas prove this sentence from the opposite direction: where love is, there is money.
But to be honest, idol dramas are the most vulnerable to the impact of short video series. After all, when it comes to love, the inflation of domineering bosses and ambiguous pull in short dramas can give you five sweet shocks in two minutes. In addition, the production level of short dramas has risen in recent years. If idol dramas want to stand out in the competition, they may need to meet the basic emotional needs of the audience and seek a fixed audience group, and have a wider social resonance and theme expression. For example, the contradiction between the collective sense of honor, social contribution and personal development brought by the aerospace industry found in "You Are My Glory" is a good starting point.
Last year, ancient idol dramas followed a U-shaped curve, from the successive hits of "Traveling with the Phoenix", "Mo Yu Yun Jian" and "Flower Order" at the beginning of the year, to silence and bad reviews in the middle of the year (the failure of "Fox Spirit Matchmaker" was a representative event), to the revitalization of the market of "Nine Layers of Purple" and "Eternal Night of Stars" at the end of the year. This year, it is worth observing and looking forward to what kind of content innovation and market performance modern idol dramas will have.
