Word of mouth but diving: box office curse or platform unfairness?, "The Disappearing She" grossed over 3.1 billion at the box office | Movie | Dive
According to the data from Cat's Eye Professional Edition, the box office of the 19 day old film "Disappeared She" exceeded 3.1 billion yuan yesterday, ranking the third in this year's box office list, second only to "Man Jianghong" and "Wandering Earth 2". However, the rating of the film on Douban has been decreasing repeatedly, from 7.5 at the opening to 6.4. At present, the Douban rating for summer films is leading by 8.0 for the animated film "Chang'an 30000 Li". The film has been released for three days and grossed 223 million yuan, while "The Disappearing She" has exceeded 500 million yuan in box office in three days.
Why is there such a fragmentation as box office increases and reputation decreases?
On June 22nd, during the Dragon Boat Festival, "The Disappearing She" premiered and the production team conducted a roadshow in Shanghai. Many fans rushed to the scene, shooting non-stop with long guns and short cannons. In the opinion of Sun Mengjin, a film critic and visiting professor of Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts, the publicity of "The Lost She" is quite good. "Many influential film official account, stations B and Tiktok bloggers with a certain number of fans have made publicity, which has caused the first wave of public praise." According to the data from Cat's Eye Professional Edition, up to now, the film has accumulated 1474 hot topics on the microblog. In addition to the film content and actor related topics, the reality of the film content has also become a hot topic for discussion. Social topics such as "Thai pregnant women who fell off the cliff talk about her who disappeared from the film", "" her deformity show disappeared "and other social topics have also been widely discussed, further improving the film degree of discussion.
However, a movie's box office rise often comes with a decline in reviews, which some people call the "box office curse.". Some industry insiders believe that the initial audience for a movie is usually fans and enthusiasts of that genre, so they naturally give it a high rating; But as the box office rises, ordinary viewers will evaluate the movie from their own perspective, and on Douban, some even deliberately give it a low score, "This movie has a false high rating, strike a one star balance."
"Disappeared She was opened at the premiere, and many comments came from fans. Compared with those films and TV dramas that opened late and had public praise after discussion, there is room for decline." Mr. Wu, who is engaged in production, said that the Douban rating of this year's box office champion Man Jianghong also dropped from 8.0 to 7.0. After the hot lap, it dropped to the current 9.4 due to different perceptions.
Even with the current leading reputation of "Chang'an 30000 Miles", there is still controversy surrounding its evaluation. The anime style of this movie eliminates the fan filter for the audience, and the visual experience is mostly focused on the movie itself. People who praise appreciate the concept, "Poetry exists, books exist, and Chang'an exists. As long as we keep reading and spreading, the cultural context will always exist." Some also appreciate the breakthrough in style, "not only in the traditional Chinese aesthetics, but also in the script style, which has opened up a different Chinese narrative.". Critics, on the other hand, are fiercely opposed, for example, in the eyes of some viewers, the narrative style is "only a rough outline without specific plot records.".
Director Zou Jing of "Three Thousand Miles in Chang'an" expressed the hope that different people will have different feelings when watching this film. "Children can see the poems they have memorized and the poets who have come to life, while adult audiences can see the spirit behind the poets' life choices. The history passed down by these poems is meaningful for today's people."
In the view of IMAX China CEO Meng Danqing, the impact of word-of-mouth on movie box office is very obvious. In the past, a movie's pre-sale box office could predict its final box office, but he found that this year's Spring Festival pre-sale box office was not high, and the actual box office was the second highest in Chinese film history of the same period. "This indicates that our audience is still there, but they are becoming more and more picky. They care more about the story and experience, and they need to first observe the reputation of a movie. Word of mouth is too important." He believes that such a change is a "healthy pressure" on the industry to make better stories, control costs, and provide richer experiences. ".
As a scoring platform for quantifying word-of-mouth, it has also been controversial in recent years. Not long ago, Douban drew attention due to the malicious low rating of the TV drama "Family with Children" from many years ago.
"We do refer to ratings from platforms like Douban, and director Xin Shuang cried for half an hour when he saw the opening score of 9.0 for" The Long Season ". In Mr. Wu's view, although there are various interfering factors, we should believe in the power of the audience and the power of the work.". "For example, even if" Family with Children "is maliciously rated on Douban, it still maintains a 9.0 rating because the background color is still a large number of ordinary viewers." He bluntly stated that many fans claim that their idol's works are "maliciously rated low" on Douban. "If so-called" family "and" fans "have the ability to lower the rating of a work, how can these people not give their idol's works a high score?" He suggested that audiences can choose film and television products from multiple perspectives such as creative lineup, personal interests, etc. "Scoring is a reference item rather than a determining factor.".
