How to make Wandering Earth 2, the first comprehensive word-of-mouth at the box office？

Special feature of 1905 film network "MOSS, can humans survive?"

Liu Peiqiang, who plays the role, asks questions about his soul and pulls the audience back to the vast universe of "wandering earth" in one second.

After a lapse of four years, I returned to the Spring Festival again. As the most anticipated film before screening, I did not live up to expectations. On the first day, I won the championship with 474 million yuan. At present, the cumulative box office has exceeded 1.012 billion yuan (including pre-sales), and the comprehensive word-of-mouth also ranks first in the same period.

Although Wandering Earth 2 tells a prequel story, it has completed a comprehensive upgrade from technology to story, which not only shows the appearance of human beings before the end of the world, but also makes the audience amazed by sci-fi fantasies such as space elevators, the fall of space stations and the nuclear explosion of the moon.

This wandering "little broken ball" is still the light of China’s science fiction!

In an exclusive interview with 1905 Film Network, the director also bluntly said that the sequel has made visible progress in visual effects, art and props, and 90% of them are China’s team behind the scenes, which makes him feel proud.

How to establish the world outlook of 200,000 words in the film, what unforgettable moments are there in cooperation with Jason Wu and other big coffee houses, and what about by going up one flight of stairs in production? Listen to director Frant Gwo’s all-round interpretation of the Spring Festival explosion "Wandering Earth 2".

Talk about the world outlook

Continue Chinese romantic science fiction

In the Spring Festival of 2019, the film started an adventure journey, and with a saturated rescue that touched the world, the audience felt the energy and vision of China’s science fiction, and won 4.68 billion box office, ranking second in the box office of film history.

Zhu Yu came first. In the creation of the sequel, Frant Gwo chose another way to tell the previous story, focusing on the survival choices faced by mankind before the doomsday disaster first came and the earth began to "wander".

The reason for this is that on the one hand, the "Guo Jing Qian Fan" group hopes to cooperate again and continue Liu Peiqiang’s life in another form.

"In the first part, Teacher Jason Wu gave us a lot of selfless help. I am full of gratitude to him and hope to add the ins and outs of Liu Peiqiang’s role."

On the other hand, The Wandering Earth’s first film shows only the tip of the iceberg of a huge world outlook, and there is still a lot of room to be explored, such as the differences and oppositions in human society before the formal implementation of the plan, which have become the driving force for the team to create a prequel.

In Frant Gwo’s view, the most important thing in science fiction films is the establishment of world outlook. In order to make the settings, props and details in Wandering Earth 2 more authentic, he and his team built a world view of up to 200,000 words.

"According to the library taxonomy, including social sciences, natural sciences, etc., under the guidance of experts from different departments and disciplines of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, all aspects of the world will be presented."

When describing the current crisis of human beings, Wandering Earth 2 boldly introduced the concepts of meta-universe, digital life, artificial intelligence and so on.

In what form should we continue human civilization in the countdown to the end? Become the suspense and thinking left by the film to the audience.

Guo Fanru explained: "In the whole development process of science fiction films, the relationship between people and technology is the biggest motif. Since technology is invented by us, it will bring us a lot of convenience, but at the same time, it is also very likely to bite us and even redefine what human beings are. With the development of technology, these topics are not only science fiction topics, but also more and more realistic topics. "

In The Wandering Earth, the core setting of "Wandering with Home" is full of the unique homeland complex of Chinese civilization, and it is known as Chinese romantic science fiction. In the sequel, Frant Gwo also continued and expanded this Chinese expression.

Not only does it have the feelings of home and country and the idea of community of human destiny from a macro perspective, but it also tries to dig deep into the "heart" to make the Chinese concept of family and affection become the emotional driving force of the film.

"At the beginning, Liu Peiqiang is paying homage to his parents. The image of burning paper is very traditional and China. We mourn in this way, and often say that we will meet again in the sky one day. At the end of the film, through technology, we really return to the place where we miss each other and meet the people we miss, which forms a correspondence," Frant Gwo explained.

For this reason, when the actors talk about Wandering Earth 2, they always describe it as a "warm" science fiction movie. This is also Frant Gwo’s creative pursuit. "Science fiction is just a coat, and the core is always emotion. The ideal movie in my mind should be warm. I hope everyone can get encouragement and warmth in the imaginary world created by movies. "

Talk about actors

Different Jason Wu and Andy Lau

Four years ago, Lieutenant Colonel Liu Peiqiang, played by Jason Wu, sacrificed himself and lit Jupiter, which left a deep impression on the audience. In the sequel, we see more about Liu Peiqiang’s emotional side as a husband and father besides the hero’s design.

Guo Fanru explained: "He is especially like a fireman who goes to the fire. If he doesn’t wear that outfit, he is an ordinary person, but when the crisis comes, he chooses to stand up to protect his family and retrograde in the stream of people, he is a hero."

Different from the action star image in previous impressions, Jason Wu’s performance this time is also more delicate and tender. Even Guo Fan frequently praised Jason Wu’s "Literary Drama", which left him many touching moments on the set.

"What impressed me the most was a scene in which Jing Ge peeled an apple. After he gave the apple to the child, he would put the apple skin in his mouth and eat it, and he had to block it from his family with his hand. This action came from Jing Ge’s own life experience, which suddenly showed his father’s love for his son in an era when fruits were scarce."

If Jason Wu’s sense of contrast comes from literary drama, Andy Lau, another leading actor, subverts Frant Gwo’s perception of his "superstar". "He is completely different from the superstar state you imagined in your mind before. He is a very kind person. Everyone is in the state of’ big family’ at the scene, eating together and creating together."

Especially in that difficult water play, Andy Lau had to wear a diving suit of several tens of pounds and sink into the water 8 meters deep over and over again. Because there was an accident underwater, Andy Lau had an instinctive fear of water, but he insisted on not using body double, and went into battle in person, and he was more considerate of the staff everywhere.

"If you are uncomfortable, people around you will be very stressed, so he just endured and kept saying that there is no problem, but it is actually very problematic."

When it comes to dedication, I have to mention another starring role in Wandering Earth 2 — — .

He plays Zhou Zhezhi, the Chinese representative of the coalition government. This role may not have many scenes, but he made sufficient preparations for it, watched a lot of documentaries, and referred to the speeches of China’s representatives to the United Nations, which led to hit the floor’s "China Declaration" in the film.

"Zhou Zhezhi represents national power, which is very abstract. But teacher Xue Jian’s performance really put this belief in front of you. "

Talk about production

20,000 people build the "ceiling" of China film industry.

The space elevator across Wan Li, the giant space station falling from the sky, and the raging waves ……

Behind every visual spectacle in Wandering Earth 2 is the result of the cooperation of the behind-the-scenes team of 20,000 people, fighting day and night.

Frant Gwo also admitted that compared with the first film, the progress of Wandering Earth 2 in visual effects, art and props is visible to the naked eye, and he is even more proud that 90% of the special effects team is from China!

"Reality" has always been a major feature of The Wandering Earth series, and it was also upgraded in the second part. It is reported that the real-life studio area of Wandering Earth 2 is 10 times larger than that of the first film, reaching 1 million square meters, equivalent to 126 football fields.

Frant Gwo said that sticking to the "real scene" as much as possible is to provide the actors with an immersive feeling, which can’t be replaced by any advanced special effects. "An actor’s performance can come from his real perception, which is naturally the best."

Another set of figures shows that Wandering Earth 2 has a total of 5,310 conceptual design drawings, 95,000 costumes and props, more than 3,000 visual effects shots, and nearly 1,000 facial visual effects shots. How to plan such a huge asset as a whole is behind the great strides in the industrialization of domestic films.

In the production of props, the team used a lot of cutting-edge technologies such as 3D printing, digital lathes and laser engraving, so that props such as spacesuits and precision instruments can be mass-produced.

At the level of special effects production, Wandering Earth 2 not only sorts out a set of production management processes involving thousands of shots, but also pushes up the ceiling of biological special effects of domestic films. "The most difficult visual effect is not the visual spectacle that breaks the earth, but actually making a person."

The time span of Wandering Earth 2 has reached several decades. How to show the appearance changes of characters in different periods requires a complex model system, which combines the learning content of artificial intelligence with the actors’ actual performances to ensure the authenticity of each micro-expression. This has made Jason Wu and Andy Lau, which are talked about by many audiences.

In the cast of Wandering Earth 2, there is also a group of special staff, who are interns from Beijing Film Academy. Their main task is to record the mistakes and problems in the work of various departments, and finally organize them into a thick "wrong collection".

Frant Gwo said that the four years of Wandering Earth 2 is a process of trial and error, and they also hope to become "pathfinders" in the industry, and sort out a set of effective industrial production processes and methods with "mistakes" to promote the industrialization level of the whole industry.

"I believe that I will see the blue sky again, and flowers are covered with branches." This is a touching line in Wandering Earth 2. In Frant Gwo’s view, there will be blue sky and flowers on the road ahead of China’s sci-fi.

"The establishment of domestic sci-fi film types requires the accumulation of one film after another, so I am very pleased to see that not only The Wandering Earth, but also such films appear, and they all have their own breakthroughs. Only when such sci-fi films appear one by one can China sci-fi films be established!"

On the eve of the release of Wandering Earth 2, Frant Gwo continued the tradition of the first film and also wrote a letter to his beloved "Little Broken Ball":"Let’s go, son, rush out and go to the world! You are our pride! "