Who are you calling "little fresh meat"? I'm the king.

Chapter 759 Daily Filming Experience (13)

Big Fish & Begonia...

Films invested in by Enlight Media.

Last year, "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" was a huge hit, and Enlight Media immediately started investing in domestic animation, producing "Big Fish & Begonia"...

Actually, before *Monkey King: Hero Is Back*, there was the *Throne of Elves* trilogy—*Dragon Nest: Dawn Warriors*, *Throne of Elves*, and the planned *Throne of Elves 2*…

Dragon Nest: Dawn Warriors was pretty good, but the sequel... the production company broke down in negotiations with Dragon Nest and Shanda Games, so they had to modify many settings and character designs to make it a standalone film before it could be released, which led to a major change in the plot...

The first Dragon Nest game fully integrated the game's world structure and settings. However, when it came to making Throne of Elves, the collaboration between the two sides broke down, resulting in a hybrid that felt neither fish nor fowl, because the copyrights to the original settings and characters were no longer available…

By the way, Enlight Media has also invested in more than a dozen animation companies and established Coloroom Pictures!
However, Yi Qiao and Wang Jing were recruited by Shen Yan to form Xinghuo Animation Company, which currently has three planned works: "White Snake: Origin", "Chang'an 30,000 Miles", and "Ne Zha".

Shen Yan owns one of the top special effects companies in China, so it's perfectly normal for him to make a few animated films!

Let's get back to "Big Fish & Begonia"...

This work is actually a short film—a 7-minute short film. The story begins with rain, an old man setting up a fish stall, and a little girl choosing a fish that looks like a dolphin.

Then, no other characters appear in the story. Ancient building, girl, rain, fish, water. The fish grows bigger and bigger, the girl fetches water for the fish, the girl holds the fish and sprinkles water on it, the girl releases the big fish back into the sea.

The whole story is both poignant and lonely, with the visuals mostly in dark tones. But when the big fish is released back into the sea at the end, the colors suddenly brighten, the plot reaches its climax, and then the voiceover and subtitles appear.

The thought of the girl raising the fish, releasing them, and then being left alone in the empty old building is truly heartbreaking and desolate.

This short video has been hailed as a masterpiece by many netizens!
Then several years passed...

Finally, with the addition of Light, money was no longer an issue!

Thus, the film version of "Big Fish & Begonia" was born, with the main slogan being "Save Chinese Animation"...

This is very strange, because anyone familiar with animation can tell that the art style of "Big Fish & Begonia" was copied and pasted from Hayao Miyazaki...

Copy and paste Miyazaki Hayao... and then save Chinese animation?
Learn from the barbarians' superior techniques to subdue them?
That's not important. What's important is that the plot of "Big Fish & Begonia" is terrible!

You've donned the skin of the Classic of Mountains and Seas and the Wandering Swordsman, using a bunch of archaic and obscure characters to name your characters, only to end up saying lines like, "The thing I fear most in this world is making you suffer."

This is actually a bit awkward.

Love triangles also come in different levels.

This "childhood friend loses to a new love interest" trope is just a tired old cliché in a love triangle and doesn't fit the grand fantasy world setting at all!

The plot is empty and devoid of substance.

It's not that there's a fish in the Northern Sea named Kun, so how did it become a dolphin?
Okay, using the dolphin image is obviously to please Westerners and make another quick buck internationally—in Western mythology, the dolphin is Poseidon's mount and the incarnation of Venus, a mythical creature with its own halo, and a classic Disney animated character.

In China, however, the original meaning of "dolphin" is "pig in the sea"!
A pig flying in the sky—the scene is too beautiful to imagine…

I don't care about dolphins or anything like that, but this movie made me very angry.

It has top-notch visuals, music, marketing, and even creativity, yet it's still so incredibly stupid!
A magical film.

The three main characters are a manipulative woman, a naive backup boyfriend, and a fish who only acts cute throughout the entire story.

In a setup with one woman and two men, the female character can easily come across as manipulative and the backup boyfriend can easily come across as foolish.

This is determined by the relationships between the characters. But precisely because of this, in a well-developed love triangle script, the female lead must not appear too manipulative, and the backup boyfriend must not appear too stupid, so that the characters don't become annoying.

The most common solution is to give them sufficient motivation!
The most typical formula is that the naivety and selfishness of the "green tea" character have a reason, and the infatuation of the "backup lover" character also has a reason, thus making the audience hate and pity the characters, and pity and love them.

In this respect, "Big Fish & Begonia" did almost nothing.

Despite having such a great background, they still managed to produce something utterly ridiculous.

Wang Changtian also said, "If 'Big Fish & Begonia' had been released last year, its box office would definitely have exceeded one billion!"

No, do you really think the audience has never eaten good food?
However, "Big Fish" was lucky; at least it recouped its costs.

The worst off is... "Rock Dog," which was released on the same day!
"Rock Dog," reportedly costing $60 million to produce, was funded entirely by Zheng Jun himself... and then attracted investment from Huayi Brothers, ManDong Space, Times Genius, and Dream Factory...

When it was released... Huayi didn't put in any effort!
They might be busy negotiating screening schedules with Wanda, but out of 6000 cinemas nationwide, Wanda only has fewer than 600…

After the release of "Rock Dog", apart from a few Weibo posts by Zheng Jun himself, the film's online reputation and discussion volume were not high. Apart from appreciating its inspirational elements, netizens who participated in the discussion generally felt that it was "mediocre".

The main problem is that this movie is awkward—it's in the same genre as Zootopia, and then it gets completely crushed by the latter!
However, it is also a fact that Wanda is suppressing Huayi Brothers' films – Wanda only scheduled 7 screenings for "Rock Dog", accounting for 0.3% of the total screenings, ranking last.

It's said that Ye Ning left Wanda to join Huayi Brothers...

On the day Ye Ning joined Huayi Brothers, Wanda Group held an emergency meeting overnight and decided to "blacklist" Ye Ning, Huayi Brothers, and the films they produced.

All I can say is that Wanda is indeed domineering!
Old Wang is now full of pride and makes all sorts of boastful remarks. Last year, during a speech at Harvard, a Harvard student asked, "Mr. Wang, you're so rich that you're buying things all over the world. Isn't that asset transfer?" Old Wang bluntly replied, "Yes, that's asset transfer, and it's a legal asset transfer. It's my own money, and I can spend it however I want."

Is that your money, you idiot?

Their assets are entirely financed by bank loans, yet they've turned around and embarrassed the nation with their Bandar Malaysia project.

As an important part of the Belt and Road Initiative, the international friends were very considerate and did not cause trouble, so he came out to slap them in the face.

Then, they got dealt with!
……

The crew of the TV series "The Rebel" is currently filming a story about Chen Moqun colluding with Chongqing, and Chongqing issuing an order to halt the Fengye plan to eliminate Chen Moqun...

Lin Nansheng: Lao Gu, I don't understand, I really don't understand why headquarters suddenly and inexplicably terminated the Fengye Plan.

Gu Shenyan: First of all, you need to understand what a traitor really is. In my opinion, so-called traitors are all unscrupulous and self-serving people. They will maximize their own interests based on their current actions. Therefore, a traitor like Chen Moqun will definitely find a new patron, and Chongqing will also need to use him to obtain more information.

Lin Nansheng: If that's really the case, isn't this just a blatant transaction?
Gu Shenyan: Therefore, what I'm more worried about now is that this order to stop sanctions could very well become a signal, or even a future standard. Because in their view, betraying the country and surrendering to the enemy is not a dead end; everything is negotiable, and the higher the position, the more conditions can be negotiated. This is more terrifying to the genuine anti-Japanese forces than the enemy's brutality.

"Click... Passed!"

Director Kong Sheng nodded in satisfaction. Shen Yan then got up, and the costume designer came over to help him change his clothes and redo his makeup.

"Director, I'm leaving now!"

"Um…"

Oh, Shen Yan is taking a week off…

Specializing in publicity!
The movie "Zhou Chu Eliminates Three Evils" has been released.

(End of this chapter)