Movie Master

Sin City in the previous life can be regarded as a masterpiece of evil/classic, achieving a win-win situation at the box office and word of mouth.

The investment of 40 million U.S. dollars resulted in a North American box office of 74 million U.S. dollars and a global box office of 150 million U.S. dollars. Although it cannot be called a huge profit, as an R-rated noir film, it is It refreshed the box office history of North America, became the box office champion of Neo-Noir in film history, and has never been surpassed.

At the same time, the film's media comprehensive evaluation reached 74 points, and the IMDB score reached 8.1 points under the ratings of more than 600,000 netizens, successfully ranking among the top 200 of the 250 excellent films on IMDB. More importantly, the movie created a brand-new stylized shooting technique, which triggered countless discussions, making the movie not only popular in the video tape rental market, forming a special cult culture, but also influencing the creation of many movies. The most famous of these is the Three Hundred Warriors of Sparta.

It’s like countless evil/classic movies in history, those who like them worship them, and those who reject them like shoes, but no one can deny that these evil/classic works have formed a powerful cultural phenomenon, from all aspects Affecting the progress of society and life.

For example, Blade Runner, this work failed disastrously at the box office when it was released, and its reputation fell to the bottom. Scott (Ridley-Scott) has been silent for ten years. But time has justified the name of this movie. This bad movie of the year has been more and more praised by science fiction fans and the industry. Around 2000, the status of this movie in film history is already comparable to 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The sci-fi world and future images constructed by Blade Runner, including decadent aesthetics, melancholy emotions, psychedelic music and other elements, have influenced countless sci-fi films.

Sin City is also one of many evil/classic masterpieces. However, compared with Blade Runner, the contribution of Sin City to film history culture is much weaker.

In Blade Runner, the film boldly discusses the philosophical question of what is a human being. In the distant 1982, this proposition was almost a mysterious field that no one touched; but now, it has already It has become an important issue that is difficult for generations of filmmakers and science fiction films to bypass.

However, in City of Sin, the stylized images and cinematic techniques are shocking and eye-catching, almost shocking the hearts of every movie viewer with a subversive attitude. The visual shock pushes the artistic technique of movie to its peak. However, the emotional support core of the film seems too weak, and the work lacks a value that supports the entire story.

Take the historic Batman Begins: The Dark Knight, for example. This dark work set a benchmark that is almost unsurpassable, combining commercial elements with classic core. In the movie, the clown's harassment and evil are not purely for revenge, but a ritual involving violence and blood to awaken the public; the violence of the clown is not directly related to personal past grievances, but to some kind of redemption and Apocalypse related. This endows the negative characters with a speculative and philosophical color, and makes the positive characters fall into a dilemma. This kind of value swing and thinking about justice and evil has achieved the status of this film in film history.

The work of Sin City lacks the support of this philosophical concept, which also makes the film unable to reach the height of Blade Runner or Dark Knight.

In the story of Sin City, the emotional support is almost stripped away, but it is completely reduced to a bloody and violent visual feast. It is undeniable that this simple and crude way of expression also pushes the soul shock brought by the film's stylized influence to the extreme, making people feel hearty pleasure/feeling; Missed the opportunity for further sublimation, just stopped at excellent work, and could not become classic.

When Lance conceived the conceptual framework of Sin City, his first reaction was the creation process of Murder with a Borrowing Knife-because the latter's original script also lacked a kind of philosophical rise and thinking, wasting a huge thought kernel. Since Lance hopes to make Sin City the finale of the crime trilogy, Lance not only needs to discuss the dark crimes and social indifference in the first two works, but also needs to paint the whole thinking proposition. A full stop - not necessarily an answer, but a result must be given.

This is not an easy task.

Lance clearly knows that if too much attention is paid to philosophical thinking, the proportion of the film will inevitably be unbalanced, which will reduce the highlights of Sin City that impress countless fans, making it a big, nondescript, Incomprehensible bad work; but if he doesn't change the theme and soul, then he is just copying Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino's version, what capital does he have to compete with these two originals What about the opponent?

How to grasp the balance between business and art is also a great eternal theme of film art.

What's more, Lance still doesn't have a clear idea about the outcome of the trilogy. Whether to let the darkness completely swallow up the whole society, or continue the context of the previous two works, leaving a sliver of hope; or Let the world fall apart, justice and evil will perish together, society will be reduced to nothing, and start from scratch...

Without a clear idea, there is no way to inject a philosophical core into the script, and naturally it is impossible to build the structure of the entire script, let alone conceive the framework for comic adaptation. So, after Lance spent most of his time reading comics today, he fell into a quagmire, feeling his whole body tied up and unable to start working at all.

However, Keira's words just now awakened him. Compared with context, framework or core, creativity is the most important thing at the moment.

Because Lance knew better than anyone that if Frank Miller saw Robert and Quentin's stylized adaptation of Sin City, then the work would be completely out of Lance's hands. If Lance wants to win the adaptation rights, if Lance wants to complete his trilogy plan, if Lance wants to achieve this goal before Robert and Quentin, he must race against time.

Lance had to execute, produce, present, and present the idea to Frank before Robert and Quentin had the idea to caricature the film. After successfully winning the adaptation rights, Lance began to discuss with Frank slowly, deepening and refining the script, and truly creating a complete trilogy of crimes belonging to Lance.

In other words, Lance not only needs to let Frank see his sincerity, but also needs to let Frank see his ability to act. He and Cole must work together.

The most perfect plan is naturally to shoot a sample, and present the visual effects and shooting techniques in front of Frank completely. If Lance remembers correctly, Robert did this in the last life, and directly played the sample to Frank. , is more impactful and convincing than any hype explanation; but the problem is that Lance doesn't have enough time now, he only has less than twelve hours, and he needs to contact actors, contact It is almost impossible to contact the crew, contact the studio, and contact the post-production work.

Therefore, Lance took the next best thing. He decided to draw a group of shots to truly present the effect of filming, and then handed it over to Cole, so that he could join City of God and City of God in the first time. The script for Borrowing a Knife was presented to Frank. While Frank was reviewing the materials, Lance looked for free time and shot a three-minute sample based on the sub-cameras, hoping to win the right to adapt it in one fell swoop when the two of them meet!

Although it was already past midnight, Lance's thoughts became clearer than ever, and his blood began to boil. Thinking of this, Lance immediately called Percy Bradley, and then called Edgar Snow. After hanging up the phone, Lance did not start working immediately, but After changing his clothes, he made a gesture of preparing to leave, and went downstairs directly.

Dylan, who was waiting downstairs, quickly captured the picture of Lance leaving. He saw Lance calling a taxi, and the shutter in his hand quickly recorded all the pictures, and his heart was full of joy. However, before the joy could bloom, he saw the taxi leaving straight away, while Lance still stayed where he was, which made Dylan stunned—what's going on?

And then Dylan's jaw started to dislocate as Lance walked right up to where he was, staring at Lance in disbelief, obviously not understanding what was going on.

Lance stood next to Dylan's cockpit, looked at this unremarkable pickup truck, and there was a faint smile on the corner of his mouth, which made Dylan feel frightened, and then Lance patted his car door , You can get off work, I will rest here tonight.

Dylan froze for a moment, and then came to his senses. Because Keira left in the middle of the night, if Lance did not leave until the morning, it would be a little far-fetched to make news, so Lance came out specifically to concoct the scene just now.

After speaking, Lance didn't stop, he turned around and returned to the hotel again. Dylan sat there, always feeling that something was wrong, but he couldn't think of a reason for it after turning over and over again. He waited for about 30 minutes unwillingly, but found nothing unusual, so he could only drive home.

In fact, less than 20 minutes after Lance hung up the phone, Edgar rushed to the Montage Hotel in a hurry, but Dylan, who witnessed Edgar walking into the hotel lobby, did not notice anything unusual and could only He left with a strange mood.

This is of course the best, because Lance doesn't want the plans for Sin City to be leaked in advance, which is the real reason why he went downstairs to perform this scene for Dylan to see.