Movie Master

In the end, Lance still couldn't catch up on sleep. While taking a bath, his chaotic brain had a flash of inspiration. Lance remembered the movie A Clockwork Orange, which gave him some inspiration, so he flipped through it again. In the original comics of Sin City, I have a vague concept of the core of the script in my mind.

As the most important violent classic in film history, A Clockwork Orange can almost be said to be the bible of countless independent filmmakers, including Quentin Tarantino. This work transcends moral considerations and vividly shows the cruel status quo of society.

The story of A Clockwork Orange itself is not complicated. It tells the story of Alex, a young man who commits all kinds of crimes. Alex became a man who could not fight back when he was beaten or cursed, and was released from prison. But after he was released from prison, Alex was oppressed, violent, and even imprisoned by the so-called justice, becoming a tool for the realization of so-called justice.

In a long film full of violence, the whole film reveals the hypocrisy and moral annihilation of the society. People's attitudes towards violence and the code of conduct are a self-contradictory complex. On the one hand, they oppose violence but on the other On the other hand, violence is used to control violence. In the face of the so-called justice, human nature no longer exists, and all behaviors have become the carrier of justice. Morality, law, violence, and government have all become tools for the hypocrites to justify themselves, and even the so-called freedom. A powerful attack, full of deep satire on social politics.

This core idea is not consistent with the Sin City trilogy constructed by Lance. In fact, Lance did not explore the issue so deeply, and Lance's artistic accomplishment has not yet reached such a high level. However, Stanley Kubrick used violence to reprimand violence and justice to mock justice, which gave Lance inspiration.

In the City of God, everyone is righteous—at least not evil, because in this world, children can't find an exit, and the indifference and isolation of society make them lose the ability to judge right and wrong. Blindly using their incomplete knowledge to explore the world, the so-called violence is just a basic means of survival for them, so in the story, no one feels that this is evil, but takes it for granted. The outlook on life, world outlook, and values ​​that regard evil as justice is precisely the most thought-provoking thought in the movie.

In Murder with a Borrowing Knife, justice and evil correspond, but the evil side represented by professional killers is the common thinking in society-insensitive, self-interested, and selfish. As long as it is for your own benefit, unscrupulous means can be forgiven , This is a dark world constructed by Rashomon. In the end, evil swallowed justice, leaving only a shattered hope.

In Lance's conception, the hope of City of God is positive. A Pao left the City of God and became a photographer; She was born, but her five tainted witnesses had already been killed. Whether she could trip Felix as planned was already unknown.

What about the extension to Sin City?

Lance can fight justice with justice like A Clockwork Orange, or mock darkness with darkness like Rashomon. Put it in Sin City, then it is to fight evil with evil.

All righteous characters can be eliminated in the story, each character has black and white sides, they are all evil, there is no difference between the police/thugs, the law and evil help each other, justice and evil are mixed together. Therefore, the characters appearing in the story are very interesting. The police/police representing the righteous side are dirty, the congressman is greedy, while the gangster representing the evil side is sincere, and the prostitute/girl is brave. On the contrary, the villains represent the righteous side. They bravely stand up against the violence of the state apparatus, but they are not simple positive characters themselves, and the methods they use are also bloody and brutal.

Fighting evil against evil doesn't make the world a better place because they celebrate violence, lawlessness, and lawlessness. But at least it won't be too dirty, disgusting, and completely inhumane.

In other words, the hope of Sin City is dark, no longer the bright golden sun, no longer the bright future after the sun rises, even if the evil defeats the evil, the world is still evil and dark Yes, horror. The only difference is whether this world is dominated by bad guys, or by more evil bad guys. Even if the order is re-established, it is still an iron-blooded, chaotic, cold, and cruel order.

This is the most ironic part - this society is so bad and hopeless, the so-called justice can no longer protect the society, and it can only rely on evil to achieve this goal, which is the most sad. Just like those indifferent and alienated people, the only way to protect themselves is to learn to refuse to care, learn to refuse sympathy, and learn to refuse to give. Only by being cold-blooded and ruthless can they survive.

What a ridiculous and sad fact this is, and what is the root cause of all this? It's just indifference, it's just selfishness, it's just insensitivity. It's like a Möbius loop, humans keep repeating their mistakes, things loop endlessly, and there's no way out of this loop.

If such a profound and complex connotation can be expressed, not only Sin City will become a classic, but the sin trilogy constructed by Lance will also win its own place. But the problem is that this is not an easy task—to be more precise, it is an extremely difficult, extremely difficult, and extremely complicated matter.

In the Sin City of the previous life, we can get a glimpse of some connotations, such as using violence to control violence and black to control black, but the visual impact and violent images of the movie are too shocking, distracting all attention, and Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, and Frank Miller also failed to dig further into the core of the theme - which is true for their version of Sin City, because according to their The idea of ​​​​turning Sin City into a carnival visual feast has brought the film's charm to the extreme.

However, Lance did not intend to do so.

If Lance wants to make Sin City the final chapter of his own trilogy, the first thing he has to do is to reshape the character, more precisely, to inject soul into the character, and then rely on the character to complete The construction of Sin City further promotes the criticism and reflection on society.

The script of Sin City in the previous life is composed of three independent stories. In order to create that kind of strong violence, the movie deliberately cut off the timeline of the characters, and put each character independently in the story. , making them part of the story rather than exploring the past, present, and future of the characters.

This is the correct approach, because too many character introductions will weaken the integrity of the story and the rhythm of the narrative; but Lance believes that this film means that the characters should be completely separated. Inject a more complete soul, make the characters come alive, and echo the story. Just like what Lance did in Borrowing Knife.

In the story of Murder with a Borrowed Knife, there is almost no explanation of Vincent's ins and outs, but in the confrontation between Vincent and Max, Vincent's past has become his conception, and he collided with Max. , thus completing the complex construction of the story.

For example, in the story of Sin City, the policeman played by Bruce Willis/Police Hardigan, why does he admire the eleven-year-old girl Nancy, and why is he desperate to save Nancy? Not because his past hurts; what happened to Mickey-Rourke's muffle, why he became so ugly, and why he hangs out in bars all the time; Jessica Alba After being kidnapped, what did Nancy face, and how she fell into a bar and became a dancer...

None of these contents will appear directly in the movie, but the background stories of these characters are the composition of the entire Sin City. They can not only construct the background of the story, but even the entire world. Just like City of God, the protagonist of the movie is the entire slum, but the personalities, lives, and images of those characters are born out of this land, and their every move gives vitality to the entire City of God.

However, this is a very large project.

It took Paul Lyns ten years to write the original novel, and it took Lance almost three years to adapt the screenplay. Now, Lance needs to build the structure of the entire Sin City, and the project is so huge that it is unimaginable; however, Lance does not feel a headache, on the contrary, he also feels joy, because he has finally found a starting point, and he is finally on the Sin City has further ideas, and he finally has a complete idea for the sin trilogy.

Therefore, Lance didn't catch up on sleep. After taking a bath, he began to enter the state of thinking. When Percy called, he only had time to perfect a basic idea, and he didn't have time to start thinking about the specific details. Then he had to Go to the crew to start today's shooting.

After exhaustion reached the extreme, Lance became energetic instead, but his brain was running at high speed all night, which made Lance feel a little groggy, and then he needed to re-enter the shooting of Murder with a Borrowing Knife. So Lance needs to be sober and sober.

After driving to the shooting site, Lance first drank a cup of espresso at a coffee shop in a nearby block, and then bought a cup of black coffee before walking to the shooting site.

From afar, Tom Cruise came up to him, with a serious expression on his face. Although there was a smile on the corner of his mouth, it couldn't be wiped away. The worry between his brows seemed to be asking: Are you okay?