The content of Watergate Bridge in Changjin Lake is ＂hard＂ to win the Spring Festival stalls and the popularity of the super-long line.

There was only fourteen days between the release of The Battle at Lake Changjin and the release of Watergate Bridge.It may be difficult to reproduce the popularity and box office miracle of The Battle at Lake Changjin series, but it still tells a hard truth by its own testimony: the text planning that meets the audience’s expectations, the excellent cast and performance, the production level and scale of hardcore can go out of a stable and long line, and good content has no winter at all.

Author: Liang Xiang

Editor: Lan Er

Layout: Wang Wei

Watergate Bridge of Changjin Lake (hereinafter referred to as Watergate Bridge) won.

Under the excellent performance of the previous The Battle at Lake Changjin, Watergate Bridge, an airborne Spring Festival file, has been released for 19 days, with a box office of more than 3.6 billion; And with the entry of new films, "Watergate Bridge" still occupies the first place in all daily movie-watching indicators, continuing the long-term popularity.

In the traditional Spring Festival with family comedy as the just-needed file, Watergate Bridge, as a war film, has sprung up suddenly in subject matter, but its excellent color bears the bursting scene and emotional resonance of the previous work, which has lived up to the audience’s expectations and sustained its reputation. Counting the first box office of 5.775 billion, the total box office of The Battle at Lake Changjin series movies will break through 10 billion just around the corner.

Under the "film and television winter", such a box office miracle may be difficult to reproduce, but it is still a hard truth in its own words. "Watergate Bridge" is like a night fighter who rushes into the heavy snow on its screen, aiming at the hard road without shortcuts: a solid enough cast and a hard enough production level are to grab the stable output of the box office.

From Big to Small: Focus on the Bridge of Destiny Intersection

According to Huang Jianxin, the chief producer of Watergate Bridge, there was only 14 days between the screening in The Battle at Lake Changjin and the release of Watergate Bridge. It was not until the early morning of January 22, 2022 that the production team finished and handed the film over to Huaxia Copy Factory.

Any excellent film and television work will be under pressure to shoot a sequel. In particular, The Battle at Lake Changjin’s great influence has brought the audience’s sympathetic public opinion expectation and new market feedback, which is bound to influence the planning decision of the creative team. What the audience cares about most and wants to see most is what the second Watergate Bridge needs to present most.

The first film, The Battle at Lake Changjin, has a huge and cultural group image. The soldiers who came from all over the world and finally fought on the battlefield out of common belief, the more tragic their battles were, the more their experiences involved people’s hearts. So from the planning, "Watergate Bridge" has set the core of the literary drama: describing the fate of the seven soldiers.

The fate of the soldiers, all meet on the battlefield. There needs to be a battle to deliver all the answers.

This has the core plot of the second Watergate Bridge: After World War I in Changjin Lake, the United States began to retreat to the east coast of the Korean Peninsula, and Watergate Bridge was their only passage; Only half of the soldiers left in the seventh company will raid with the soldiers of the ninth company and destroy the Watergate Bridge to cut off this passage.

Thanks to The Battle at Lake Changjin’s completion of the necessary background preparation, Watergate Bridge saves a lot of pen and ink, directly spreads the battlefield to the audience, fills the extreme tension of the task, and allows the immersive atmosphere to enter quickly. What’s more, the clear and focused goal setting makes this sequel friendly to all audiences, and even if you don’t know the background, you can quickly enter because of the familiar mode of war movies.

The visual base of heavy snow all over the sky, the competitive pattern of limited space, and the war confrontation of burning adrenal glands. Night, snow, golden gunfire and deep red blood together constitute a tragic battlefield picture. The U.S. military, which has the air superiority, put incendiary bombs on its fighter planes while cruising, and the enemies on the ground held flame throwers, which formed a cruel three-dimensional fire oppression with strong hard power. China soldiers who can’t fight hard must stage a series of intelligent guerrilla warfare and skillfully use a pistol and a Grenade to be small and broad. China soldiers broke the bridge again and again, while the US troops stopped and repaired it again and again, which made the battle narrative compact.

Compared with The Battle at Lake Changjin’s "big", in Watergate Bridge, the creative team pays more attention to "small": from the battle of big scenes to the accurate presentation of a bridge, from the focus on the righteousness of home and country to the personal choice of sadness and joy. The lens not only shows the huge battlefield, but also focuses on the volunteers who are holding explosive charges and flying, ready to die. The audience looked at the body that was constantly penetrated by enemy bullets in the dark, and looked at the blood spattering, and then the whole body was swallowed up by the burst fire. From a small perspective, generate had greater resonance. The sacrifice that runs through the whole film’s artillery fire not only mobilizes the audience’s tears, but also is the emotional landing point that keeps overlapping, which tests the director’s control.

It is this change of perspective from big to small that makes the placement of Watergate Bridge more accurate, and those guns and fires hit the hearts of the audience more easily.

Combining civil and military skills: emotional resonance under artillery fire

Martial arts plays are in the Ming Dynasty, while literary plays are in the dark.

Although the two-and-a-half-hour Watergate Bridge is a battle scene after another, the underlying logic of martial arts drama is supported by strict literary drama. There is the art of war: in order to be small and broad, the volunteers are divided into four teams, making a diversion from the East to the West, and using interspersed tactics to find the weak points of the enemy and win with one blow. There are wits: the route, the time, the reasonable choice of weapons, judging the advance and retreat of preparation, catching the thief first and catching the king first … There are teams, individuals, and even the key fate choices that group soldiers will face along the way from The Battle at Lake Changjin.

The role of Wu Wan Li (Jackson Yee) is the final destination of all literary plays in Watergate Bridge. He is a growing character. After The Battle at Lake Changjin’s rebellion, in Watergate Bridge, when he asked Yu Congrong "How many enemies he killed" at the beginning, the answer "It doesn’t matter, I want you all to go home safely" clearly set the tone for the transformation of a teenager. It is this hidden tone of literary drama that guides the boy to slowly move forward and cover him with a warm quilt when he finally faces the young wounded American soldiers captured in the military camp. This point-to-point mood is self-evident.

Except Jackson Yee, all the actors in Watergate Bridge are also connected with Qi to form a coexistence of fate. To some extent, Qi Lian has become the collectivization concept of the actors, supporting their subconscious performances. It is this natural interpretation that gives Watergate Bridge a more authentic flavor when it ends with The Battle at Lake Changjin’s group portrait.

Tan Ziwei (played by Duan Long) is called "the hero who can’t be killed", but he doesn’t like this title. He warns Wu Wan Li that there are no heroes who can’t be killed or frozen on the battlefield, but only the glory of soldiers. Unlike the traditional hero’s gaze before his sacrifice, Tan Zi was such a hero that he fell down silently without warning when he was doing the task deployment for the soldiers, so that the audience suddenly discovered his injury. This sudden accident and silence magnified the tragic battle and the hardness of the characters.

Before the bridge bombing, Pinghe (Elvis Han) went to apologize to Wu Wan Li and told his brother that Wu Baili had died because of himself. And Wu Wan Li’s answer, "Everyone in Qilian is my brother", has unloaded the deepest burden in Pinghe’s heart. This is the most touching friendship between comrades in arms.

Mei Sheng (Zhu Yawen), whose eyes were badly injured, drove a burning crawler and stumbled down a snowy hillside and crashed into the enemy’s shelters. At this time, he is faced with the inevitability that a strong man will never return, and his heart has no worries. The only thing he wants is to think about his wife and children at the last moment and take a look at the photos.

Wu Qianli, played by Jason Wu, finally admitted to Wu Wan Li that in fact, what my brother said may not be all right. Come on, fly as you like. At the moment of sacrifice, Wu Qianli, who fell, rolled on the hillside, and was finally caught by Wu Wan Li. His eyes looked at his younger brother, although he couldn’t open his mouth any more, but what he should say had all been said.

In the battlefield of gunfire, while presenting scenes, we can also have these delicate descriptions, which also shows the hard-core skill of the film drama. The martial arts drama continues, but the bond between literature and drama has not broken. It is the fate of all the group images that supported the emotional transformation for two and a half hours. When the story ended, all the teams assembled, leaving only Wu Wan Li in the seventh company to shout out the sentence, "It should be 157 people, but it should be 1 person", and all the audience’s emotions reached a climax.

Explaining the emotional fetters of Watergate Bridge, Huang Jianxin, the chief producer, said: "The biggest challenge of the sequel is to integrate the fate, emotions and battle scenes of the characters. Wan Li’s red scarf, Wan Li’s face, Mei Sheng’s daughter’s photo and other details are all echoes and connections of the previous works, and the mood of all creators is also integrated into every detail and emotion. "

Literary drama is the foundation, martial arts is the beginning, and then high-quality production is used to prop up the flesh and blood, which has become the banner of Watergate Bridge. As a super blockbuster with great appreciation, The Battle at Lake Changjin series meets the audience’s demand for watching movies with magnificent war scenes and shocking emotional impact, and once again explains that good content is the last word.

Schedule blessing: content is the universal antidote to the Spring Festival file

"We have fought all the battles we should fight, so the next generation won’t have to fight." This is probably the most inspiring line in The Battle at Lake Changjin. But the next generation needs to know what kind of battles the previous generation fought, which is the historical mission of the film to link the past with the future.

As the main consumer army of movies, the younger generation audience is also the main body that contributes to the box office of The Battle at Lake Changjin series and sets off word-of-mouth communication. What’s even more rare is that The Battle at Lake Changjin series movies have also triggered a movie-watching craze of all ages. According to the data of Cat’s Eye Professional Edition, the proportion of users who want to watch this series is over 40 years old, and there are many older audiences in almost every screening of The Battle at Lake Changjin series movies. In fact, according to the conventional statistics, in 2021, the per capita number of movies in China is 2.4, and half of the audience only watch one movie a year. The box office miracle of The Battle at Lake Changjin series movies has something to do with attracting a wider audience to the cinema.

The attendance of the older generation brought a family-style viewing experience. In this year’s Spring Festival file, history, war, comedy, love, action and animation are diversified in general, which can basically cover all ages and provide more choices for families to watch movies. But from a rational point of view, entering the Spring Festival file does not mean absolute safety. If some filmmakers and cinemas are too eager to get blood back in the Spring Festival file, they only regard the Spring Festival file as an opportunity to make up for their blood loss in the past two years, instead of resonating in the atmosphere of celebrating the New Year and providing high-quality entertainment consumption for the audience. The works that are not up to standard can only watch the good films fall apart and become cannon fodder.

Whether it’s The Wandering Earth’s Hello Li Huanying or Ne Zha’s Wolf Warriors 2 in the summer, the core of the explosion lies in the high-quality content of the film itself, whether it has the emotional ignition point corresponding to the audience. When the audience is sitting in the cinema and facing the screen, what the film should do is to release this emotion to the extreme. In this logic, what the audience sees is not the film itself, but a certain resonance between the film and social emotions.

The creators of Watergate Bridge realized and protected this resonance and integrated it with the social emotions of the Spring Festival. The soldiers’ parting and longing for home in the movie make the reunion in reality the biggest egg. This kind of emotional resonance, in the family-style viewing, is set to the strongest sound.

According to the data of Lighthouse Professional Edition, at 22: 46 on January 22, the total box office of pre-sales of new films for the Spring Festival in 2022 exceeded 100 million. Compared with last year, the speed of pre-sale exceeded 100 million is about ten hours late. The retrogression of such data once again makes people feel the cold winter of film and television, but there has always been such a fire in winter, which can burn good content into the eyes of more viewers. As we can still see now, the popularity of Watergate Bridge is still continuing, and the momentum continues to be high. Although it is snowing heavily on the screen and outside the cinema, Watergate Bridge has walked out of a stable long line with the text planning, excellent cast and performance, and hard-core production level and scale that meet the audience’s expectations, telling all film and television practitioners that good content has no cold winter at all.

THE