The King of Soft Rice in Chinese Entertainment

Chapter 414 does not include "Ambush from Ten Sides".
Here's the whole story: Although "Hero" didn't win any Oscars, it was a huge success at the box office. After taking a break, Zhang Yimou started preparing for his new film with great enthusiasm.

Angela has many things to do, such as the production of "Red Cliff" and various capital operations, which are of higher priority than this, so let him find his own subject matter first.

So, after searching around, Zhang Yimou finally produced "Flying Daggers".

At this point, Angela didn't say anything, but just told him to continue to improve it, and even gave him a framework to learn how to list out the various key points.

This is somewhat difficult for Zhang Yimou. He always makes movies based on intuition. He has done things like making outlines, frameworks, and listing key points before, but he doesn't go very deep into them.

When he was filming "Red Sorghum" and "Ju Dou", he was more like an executive director. He had a lot of say in things like color and camera movement, but he still had to discuss his ideas about the plot with the screenwriter and producer.

Later, once he became famous and gained more influence, he could delegate the initial tasks to others, and he wouldn't need to put in much effort.

Of course, the screenwriters, producers, and even actors we could work with back then were all people of some standing. Plus, the capital operations weren't nearly as exaggerated as they are now, so we would still discuss any ideas we had about the plot with them.

Therefore, when Zhang Yimou is to take charge of a project himself, it is inevitable that he will be at a loss.

From this perspective, he is indeed more suited to be an executor than a decision-maker.

In short, the final script received a severe dressing-down from Angela, especially the plot twists and turns at the end.

"Have you guys even considered the length of the script? How much time has passed since the female lead suffered her fatal injury?! Even if she were a cat, she should be dead by now! What, are you trying to conduct a large-scale social experiment to see how much tolerance the audience has for this kind of idiotic plot!" Angela ranted.

Okay, it was mostly Xu Jiuyang's imagination. When Angela explained it on the phone, her tone was nonchalant.

But... how should I put it, just reading the text is a pity. When we were preparing for "Heroes", it was a lot of fun to watch Angela quote and criticize people in the meetings.

Unfortunately, when Zhang Yimou was preparing for "Flying Daggers," he was filming a movie and had other things to do, so he was unable to see those scenes in person.

Then, as is customary, Angela asked him if he had any suitable ideas, the kind that involve twists and turns.

Xu Jiuyang thought about it carefully and then presented her with the outline of "Reign of Assassins," asking her to find someone to polish it first.

The movie "Reign of Assassins" has both obvious strengths and weaknesses. Although many people have criticized it, the fact that King Yama, the leader of the largest assassin organization in the martial arts world, stole the remains of Rama not for his divine skills, but to grow a penis is just too ridiculous.

Some enthusiasts even imitated the title of the movie "The Promise" and named it "A Bloodbath Caused by a JJ".

However, in all fairness, this claim holds true after the Wheel-Turning King was made a eunuch.

After all, this is probably the life goal of a eunuch who has lost his roots but whose martial arts skills are almost top-notch.

Unfortunately, the screenwriter made a very serious mistake here. It's true that King Yama is a eunuch, but he's a very low-ranking one. Any high-ranking eunuch in the palace could order him around...

Does the person who wrote this plot not understand what it means to "have a sharp blade in your heart, and the desire to kill will arise naturally"?

But that's not the biggest mistake. The biggest and stupidest mistake was that the screenwriter set this story in the fifteenth year of the Hongwu reign. That's right, the fifteenth year of the Hongwu reign, when Zhu Yuanzhang was still alive and had just ended the Hu Weiyong case.

The screenwriter probably thought that in this kind of great battle during the Hongwu era, the death of a former prime minister wouldn't be a big deal.

Well, let's not even talk about the fact that there was no Grand Secretary during the Hongwu period. Even if there was, how could a court official whose status was almost equivalent to that of a prime minister have his entire family wiped out after retiring? Did he really think Zhu Hongwu was a fool?

It's no wonder that many netizens, when discussing this online, would associate it with Zhu Baba and think that he was the mastermind behind it all. Perhaps the screenwriter originally really wanted to make Zhu Baba the biggest boss, or perhaps Zhang Haiduan should actually be called Hu Weiyong. However, considering the mainland market, they ultimately abandoned this ridiculous idea, making the whole story even more absurd.

Yes, Taiwanese people have always been quite conflicted.

In short, the foundation of "Reign of Assassins" is flawed. No matter how elaborate the exterior is, a slight touch will reveal its unstable and unconvincing base.

As for its advantages, they mainly focus on two aspects. The first one is not worth mentioning; the action design was top-notch even by the standards of the millennium, especially compared to Zhang Yimou's "House of Flying Daggers".

The only thing worth watching in "House of Flying Daggers" is the dance, and even that wasn't performed by Zhang Ziyi herself. As for the action scenes, if someone finds the mediocre special effects of the throwing knives and bamboo sticks appealing, that's fine too; we should allow for people with peculiar tastes.

The second point is even simpler: the way they put on airs. Almost everyone in the movie is putting on airs, pretending to be weak while actually being strong. Monks put on airs, eunuchs put on airs, martial arts performers put on airs, even a killer can put on airs while eating a bean curd skin. Not to mention the most pretentious one later on, the king of pretentiousness, sharpening his sword.

So, after the advent of short videos, this movie suddenly became a hit. Editing a one- or two-minute video of someone showing off was just so damn satisfying.

Now that Zhang Yimou still wants to make a pure martial arts film, instead of getting hung up on the fact that Xiaomei didn't die, he might as well perfect "Reign of Assassins" and make it.

There's still a market for kung fu films, and Angela Leigh can hold her own against Zhang Yimou, so this is actually a pretty good fit for her.

Even if you want to play with suspense, there are ways.

"It's very simple. We'll conceal the part about Xi Yu. It starts with the Zhang family being attacked. Zhang Renfeng fights against three top masters, but after he's exhausted, he escapes and is caught by Xi Yu, who stabs him in the heart. He falls into the river, is rescued by a boatman, and is taken to Li Guishou..." Xu Jiuyang said this while discussing the plot with Li Xue face to face.

"After that, he survived because his heart was located on the left side. Then he got rid of Li Guishou, changed his appearance, and returned to the capital as Jiang Asheng to make a living as a errand boy. While gathering information, he also secretly accumulated strength to prepare for revenge..." Li Xue continued quickly without any hesitation.

"Through a series of coincidences, I developed feelings for Zeng Jing and fell in love with her. Moreover, I thought that getting married would help me better conceal my identity, so I married her."

Although he later discovered that his wife was not simple, he also had his own secrets. His wife was aware of them but never asked about them, so he didn't question her either. This continued until Lei Bin and others chased his wife to his home, so he sharpened his sword to kill the enemy..." Li Xiu continued.

"We could consider working on the relationship between husband and wife, especially when both of them know that the other has a secret, but choose to respect the other's decision and not expose it, and even help cover it up occasionally."

For example, one night Zeng Jing went out to investigate Black Stone and came back late, forgetting to change out of her night clothes. Her husband happened to be home too, so she hid behind the wardrobe to talk, worried that he would come and check on her. But when he did come, he thoughtfully handed her her underwear and didn't bother to find out anything about his wife. Xu Jiuyang continued.

Yes, this references a scene from "Mr. & Mrs. Smith".

(End of this chapter)