CNY holiday period box office

[tanithryudo]

It's not the bitter fight that was 2023, but still a spectacular fight for the box office this year. Very obviously, we have an unequivocal winner emerging in Nezha 2, which has already set world record for single day gross. My google-fu shows that it will also start showing in US theaters starting Feb 13, just in time for Valentines, lol.

The big let down appears to be Creation of the Gods 2, which is not doing so well at the box office, to put it mildly. I remember seeing the first film of this series at the request of my mom, who apparently got recced from her friends circle about it. I remember not being all that excited about it even before going, and my reception to the actual movie kinda meh too. Just searched DW and I didn't even make an entry about it, so yeah, that sounds about right.

IMO, the visuals of the first film already felt too anachronistic/dissonant to me, like it was trying too hard to be a a Hollywood-esque Conan film. Also made me think of other bad impressions like the live action Mulan and such. I mean, successful films like Crouching Tiger, or Hero, also had some westernized cinematic habits, but they also had quintessentially Chinese cores to the story and character design that made it acceptable. Creation of the Gods 1...didn't feel like it had anything that feels like China at all.

And from the reviews I've been following online about Creation 2, it gets worse rather than better. The deity characters are marginalized and/or warped, the protagonists held over from the first film get afflicted plot induced stupidity, the fights unsatisfying, a random love story tacked in... The only thing people have been praising is the new female general character.

But... this IP isn't Mulan. CotG likes to compare itself to LOTR (lol), but I remember watching LOTR Two Towers and people already dissatisfied with the addition of the weird subplot of Aragorn falling off a cliff just to have a dream about Arwen. If they actually made Two Towers centered around a love drama triangle between Aragorn/Eowyn/Arwen, and the actual Battle of Helms Deep into a few CGI army scenes ending with an ambush/duel between Eomer and the Orc boss... Eh, I am pretty sure a good amount of the audience would've rioted.

And it's not even like Feng Sheng Bang doesn't have TV/movie adaptations either! In the centuries since it was written, and all the adaptations since, it's clear who the most popular characters are: Daji (and her Shang king hubby), Jiang Ziya, Shen Gongbao, Nezha, Yang Jian, Huan Feihu, Huan Tianba, etc. Ji Fa is more like scenic wallpaper, not even half as recognizable as his father and brother. People come into this story to see gods fighting, tossing grand magical artifacts around like they're going out of style. Even if you want to bring it more "down to earth", the historical event it's based on is the classic rebellion against tyranny and the transition from a slave-based society (Shang) to the white moonlight of Confucianism (Zhou). But, apparently, this movie series isn't about any of that. So. Eh.


Anyway, so I have a set of 2 free tickets that I can redeem with AMC. I was originally thinking my mom will insist on seeing Creation 2. But now, I am wondering if might not be better to wait and try to convince her to see Nezha 2 instead. I mean, I'll have to get past her "cartoons are for kids" prejudice, but I think it might be doable...As long as her friends circle don't come back with positive reviews for Creation 2. We'll see.

Comments

[cashew]

Historical note, the other real big shift from 商 to 周 is the move from 巫 to 礼 norms transition. Aka religion fell in influence and norms (礼仪) became elevated at the guidance for political conduct.

Is kind of cool how 周礼 basically secularized religion and religion never managed to regain political foothold in Chinese politics.(I mean our gods are literally appointed!🤣)

(By secularization I meant that 商 was the last theocracy in 3000+ years of dynastic rule despite the prevalence of superstitions and local religions.)

[tanithryudo]

Yes! That is the other theme that authentic modern reinterpretations (the 荒洪 genre) tend to go, where FSB is a giant Conspiracy orchestrated by the Heavenly Court (or the Heavenly Dao), to suppress/control the various gods, putting them to work rather than letting them roam around unchecked, and raising the political position of the Heavenly Court itself. And of course we know that the idea of Heavenly Court is that it's essentially the mirror of the Imperial Court on Earth.

Of course from the POV of the gods, this is a bad thing, because they're now being forced to work and report to a boss. From the readers, this is a natural thing, which is why people will buy into this kind of interpretation of the story.

However, Creation of the Gods isn't going this route either. *shrug*

[cashew]

Yeah, I watched Creation of the Gods 1 and could feel my brain dribbling out of my ears. I'm glad to hear that at least the masses are also not liking it (despite your mom's friends giving it a good review). On the very shallow end, how they managed to cast the ugliest 二郎神 in the history of c-dramas (and we've had a few stinkers) blows my mind. Also 哪吒's frog stroke in midair was unforgivable.

So yes, Creation of the Gods was just bad.

[tanithryudo]

I found CofG's 二郎神 to be ok, kinda average, but not ugly. He looks better than the rendition from Black Myth Wukong anyway. But the latter has grown on me after watching way too many gameplay & cutscene videos, and fan works. The former, on the other hand, apparently doesn't get to do anything more than continue to play glorified bodyguard and errand boy despite being the one who canonically defeated 魔家四将. *sigh* A pity, since awesome onscreen combat powers does improve the perception and "beauty" of a fictional character. :p

[cashew]

Black Myth Wukong is an abomination. I refuse to entertain it as part of the comparisons.

But yes, onscreen prowess often does a lot to rescue plain aesthetics. Yet, as we've established earlier, CofG's aesthetics are terrible and the onscreen prowess is even worse. Stuff made in the 80s/90s were literally better because at least it stuck to the plot and focused on bringing the characters to life.

[tanithryudo]

*perks up* Oh, is there a story here regarding Black Myth? Does it have to do with the production company or with the actual work itself?

I have to admit my time spent watching videos were at first simply because youtube was pushing me a lot of overblown gamer reactions, and then reading up on the background gossip. And some of the major fight encounters were a little amusing to see some people die repeatedly. Later lost interest in the videos, but have noticed an uptick in the fanart and fanfic based on the Black Myth characters on lofter (I do occasionally browse the Erlang Shen and Yang Jian tags).

[cashew]

I wouldn't really call it a story. For a while the state media was pushing the game as some kind of super achievement because there was tons of downloads. From what I can tell it's basically a Dark Souls knockoff with deeply ugly art. Also apparently the initial domestic release was buggy AF where wukong would clip through walls and skip entire levels.

So yeah, Chinese gamers were not impressed with the project. Presumably it got polished for international release...

[tanithryudo]

Did you play the game when it was buggy? I've never played single player games before so I can't really speak much about the gameplay stuff.

As for the art, my understanding was that the scenery and architecture arts were highly hailed due to a lot of them based on real locations (and helped promote tourism after the game became popular).

If by ugly you are referring to the characters, I guess that's understandable since they're pretty much all non-human and it's not a cartoon/anime-style game. It's pretty hard to have pretty characters under those conditions, and I don't think they tried all that hard in order to emphasize the non-human-ness of the monsters/spirits. But given the genre, I can more easily buy in its art than what CotG tried to sell me... At least Black Myth's ugly monsters feel chinese, whereas CotG's feel like it's ripped out of some low budget US blockbuster...

[cashew]

I didn't play the game and mostly read the reports from the gamers and saw some clips circling around 斗音 that dad forwarded to me and asked me to explain what was happening. From what I recall the controls were mushy, making the combo executions pretty much impossible.

Art wise, yeah, I'm pretty anti-photorealism in games. Everything looks super ugly.