Source | Film and television alone

Author | He Silu

As of the time of publication, the mainland box office of "Changjin Lake", a historical war giant focusing on resisting U.S. aggression and aid to Korea, has exceeded 5.5 billion yuan, surpassing the box office of 5.413 billion yuan in "Hello, Mom " and "Nezha: The Devil Boy Comes into the World" has a box office score of 5.035 billion yuan, ranking second in the box office list of the mainland Chinese movie market.

The secret key of "Changjin Lake" has been postponed to November 30. If nothing else, the total box office of "Changjin Lake" is likely to surpass "Wolf Warrior 2"'s 5.694 billion yuan within this month and become the box office champion of the mainland film market.

With the continuous expansion of the Chinese film market, the number of screens in the Mainland has steadily increased. Each important period has become a martial arts venue for a film to break its box office record. The high standard for measuring the commercial value of a film has also increased from the previous 100 million to 1 billion, then to the five billion yuan mark today.

Looking at the change of box office champions in the mainland Chinese film market, in addition to the commercial value and popularity of a certain film, the audience’s aesthetic interest at that time, the evolution of the status of Chinese and foreign films in the mainland market, the influence of box office champions on the production of genre films and other phenomena can also peek from it.

This article will start with data, focusing on the analysis of the deep meaning behind the change of box office champions in the mainland film market in the past 27 years.

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The box office history of Hollywood blockbusters

On January 5, 1993, the "No. 3 Document" "Several Opinions on the Current Deepening of the Reform of the Film Industry Mechanism" was announced and implemented, and the market-oriented restructuring of theaters in mainland China kicked off. From 1994 to the millennium, the box office champions of the mainland film market changed to four: "Death of the Dead", "Red Zone", "True Lies" and "Titanic".

With the blockbuster complex entrenched in the hearts of Chinese movie fans, and in 2001, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" won 4 Oscars, and the heavy historical martial arts stories have become the experimental ground for Chinese filmmakers to deploy blockbuster formulas.

In 2002, the martial arts movie "Hero" directed by Zhang Yimou and adapted from "Jing Ke Assassin" won the annual box office championship in the mainland Chinese movie market with a box office of 250 million yuan, creating a precedent for Chinese commercial blockbusters. In 2005, "Promise" directed by Chen Kaige combined history with fantasy and won the mainland box office champion for 175 million yuan that year.

In 2006, "Thunderstorm" was integrated into the film "Full City with Golden Armor" in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, and won the mainland box office champion with 291 million yuan. However, none of these works has shaken the ceiling of the mainland box office of "Titanic" of 360 million yuan. This record was not set until "Transformers 2 " was released in 2009. The disaster film "2012" released in the same year, with the gimmick of "end of the world", brought "Transformers 2" to the throne for 452 million yuan.

The works directed by James Cameron broke the mainland box office record three times and twice used technology to trigger a movie-watching frenzy. "Avatar" makes 3D movie watching become the mainstream, the number of screens in the mainland has increased significantly, and the audience's movie watching habits have also changed due to the advancement of technology. Whether it is the planet of Cybertron, the planet of Pandora, or the apocalyptic earth, the visual shock brought by science fiction films has become the reason for the audience to enter the theatre.

"Nostalgia" is the eternal box office panacea

After remembering the "old" in the history of champions in the mainland film market, it is not difficult to find that the theme characteristics of these works can also be summarized by the term "nostalgia". At the same time, this nostalgia is also reflected in the top ten works in the box office list of the Chinese mainland movie market.

Graphics: Film and television alone

"Mermaid" uses sonar technology to drive away fish

"Avatar" spreads the war to the primeval forest

"Changjin Lake" introduces cross-age brotherhood to the Korean War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, and from the inheritance of the Wu brothers, it brings out the determination of volunteer soldiers to move forward and defend their homeland. This kind of small-minded approach makes it easy to sublimate individual perspectives into collective emotions as the story progresses, resonating with the audience outside the screen.

And "Hello, Mom" focuses on the understanding of personal affection. Due to a car accident, her daughter went back to the past by mistake, trying to make her mother live a happy life by changing her mother's life. Here, the irreducible distance between the real world and the fantasy world reflects the tragic colour of reflective nostalgia: the spirit can return, but the body cannot return, the reality cannot be changed, and the mother will not come back from the dead.

Regardless of grand narratives or individual reminiscences, the history of box office champions is also a history of nostalgia for the audience. However, although nostalgia is good, it can only "repair the old as the old" after all, and it is difficult to reflect reality. I hope that the dream machine of the movie can occasionally change the focus, and give grassroots narrative and reality-caring works a chance to be the box office champion.