Author | Corner
"It’s really a big loss that iQiyi didn’t put this work in the Misty Theater" and "This is the best suspense theme this year" … Unexpectedly, this year’s suspense theme work is not a "theater" background, but a copyright drama "Opponent" produced by iQiyi, broadcast by CCTV 8 and iQiyi-a set in a modern city, telling two spies.
The resource allocation of Opponent is obviously interesting.Actors Guo Jingfei, Tan Zhuo, Yan Bingyan and Ning Li are all famous and well-known old actors in the market.Especially, Yan Bingyan, who won the Best Actress in major Chinese Film Festivals for eight times and briefly retired after the movie "An Arrow Through the Heart", was able to make a comeback this time, which surprised the market.
The market has always been harsh on Mesozoic actors, especially at the time of frequent new dramas at the end of this year, the road to popularity of "Opponent" is not easy: relevant data show that the drama has been broadcast for more than a week, and the popularity of the whole network once fell to the top10 of the major data lists, and the ratings of the third and eighth hit dramas in iQiyi Station broke 1.5%, which is already the best result of the drama. Recently, however, the popularity of this drama has picked up slightly, and topics such as # Watching TV drama opponents is better than the top # and # Opponents # have been searched in Weibo.
Compared with its slightly tortuous popularity, it is the stable reputation of this drama: the recommended value of friends is 93%, and the score of douban is 8.1, which undoubtedly highlights the dark horse potential of this drama.Will it become another Rebel in this year’s spy drama market? The answer has surfaced.
Civilian perspective, two-line parallelism,
"Opponent" is beautiful but "difficult to understand"?
When Li Tang (Guo Jingfei) performed a series of actions such as tracking, interrogation and cross-dressing on the target, the audience almost thought that this was a people’s policeman. Following the perspective of the target, the audience realized that Li Tang was not only a policeman, but also an overseas spy who had lived in the mainland for 18 years. Ding Meixi (Tan Zhuo), who plays husband and wife with him, is the same as Li Tang. They both come from a mysterious overseas organization, and their combination code is "Phoenix".
This is the opening story of "Opponent", which is also the special feature of the whole story.In the play, both Li Tang and Ding Meixi are spies and ordinary people.In addition to the task given by the organization, it is their daily "worry" to worry about living expenses, care about when they can get a large pension, and whether the activities paid in advance can be reimbursed.
The professional skills of "killer" in performing tasks and the logical thinking of online IQ all the time also make the audience gasp in admiration: this is the "poor version of Mr. and Mrs. Smith", "except for being poor, they are really good", and even the posters of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" in the "Opponents" version have begun to flow out on social platforms.
Taking undercover as the first perspective, the play also depicts the image of a people’s policeman in a parallel narrative way. Duan Yingjiu appeared in a leopard print and a cigarette perm, which made her look like a common citizen, and the truth is the same. This policeman, who is trying to trace the truth and get information about the suspect, is investigating in disguise.
It must be admitted that "Opponent" is quite wonderful.Especially after the "undercover character" takes the first perspective, sets the story background in the present society, and starts from life to create a group of real and atypical policemen and bandits, The Opponent leaves a deep impression on people.That is, in front of a number of traditional national security dramas, it depicts the truth and bitterness of "spy" characters-they are no longer villains with facial makeup, but anti-heroes who are forced to "board the ship" or even kept in the dark for some reasons.
The theme is novel enough and the perspective is special enough, but the whole drama still can’t rule out some negative voices, such as the most controversial in the market."difficult to understand"problem Why does "Opponent" make the public feel "difficult to understand"? As mentioned above, this is a two-line narrative spy war theme. During the investigation and counter-investigation of police and bandits, cats and mice, Li Tang and his wife’s "from time to time" tasks make the whole plot show a "jigsaw puzzle" shape. This is different from the narrative way commonly understood by the public.
Secondly, it is the rhythm of the whole drama. The narrative rhythm of one case and many characters in each episode of the play makes the plot develop rapidly, which is quite consistent with the current audience’s psychology of chasing drama, but it is not easy to understand. Many viewers reported that "a little distracted can’t keep up with the next moment."
Then there is the detailed description of the whole play. Many secondary props in Opponent have metaphorical functions. For example, the condom that first appeared in Li Tang’s hands was found to be missing after a circle of counting, suggesting that the spy couple with unusual relationship used "extraordinary" means in their daily driving tasks, while the husband did not discover it after meditation, which also pointed out the deeper and more complicated relationship between them.
In the second shot, condoms became their secret to protect their daughters. Similarly, there are props such as "jiaozi" that frequently appear in the play, which together contribute to the "difficulty" of "Opponent", but it is also the highlight of the play.
From the perspective of content creation, Opponent is quite interesting, but it does have something "contrary" to the current audience’s pursuit of drama. High reputation, low popularity, this is the current situation faced by "Opponent".
Head dramas get together in December,
Can "Opponent" Break the Dilemma of "Spy War Drama"?
The limitation of the content level is the first layer of the drama’s dilemma; However, from the perspective of the market, it may be the essential problem that this work is difficult to get out of the circle if many major dramas compete in the same period and the theme of spy war dramas falls into the bottleneck of development.
First of all, from the perspective of scheduling, December this year can be described as the "month of playing" in the drama market. Entertainment unicorn published an article before.<《雪中悍刀行》等12部大剧来袭，谁能搭上‘年末剧王’这趟列车？&中，曾粗略统计，今年12月市场热播大剧超过10部，且都是类似于《雪中悍刀行》、《小敏家》这样具有当红演员、或头部公司入局的头部作品。但从目前播出情况来看，市场热度虽比往月略有升温，但口碑评分，却呈现出明显的两级分化。
In contrast, Opponent, which is recommended by Zhihu with a value of 93% and received four or five-star reviews from Douban, is particularly valuable. However, there are too many dramas in the same period, which diverts the broadcast effect of the drama.
From the perspective of theme types, Opponent belongs to the spy war drama under the suspense category. This should be seen from the spy war market in recent years.Undeniably, the spy war drama market has had a glorious period, and it is also an unavoidable topic in the development of Chinese drama.However, no matter from the perspective of the number of works or the quality of creation, spy war dramas are not as good as suspense dramas from the same school, which is also a factor that the number of spy war dramas in the market is very small in the past two years.
Some media have reported that at the beginning of 2019, there were no more than 10 spy war works in the market every year, and the vast majority of spy war dramas were new spy war themes, such as Eye of the Storm starring Yang Mi and Vin, Storm Dance starring Gulnazar and William Chan, and The Age of Orange, which was broadcast in the market earlier … From these works, we can see the current spy war.One is to use idol actors, and the other is at the creative level. The theme background is no longer limited to the specific period of the Republic of China, which is the advantage of the development of this type of theme.
But problems also follow. The actor’s "exquisiteness" in the play is comparable to idol drama, and every move that the enemy doesn’t know that he is a "spy" makes the market disappointed with this kind of work. Spy war dramas no longer occupy the market position C. What needs to be particularly emphasized is that this year, a spy war theme "Rebel" with a good reputation and a good harvest was born in the market, which has the feeling of "a long drought meets the rain".
In addition, in the past two years, there have been almost no masterpieces of word of mouth in the market, and even works that attract market attention at the heat level are rare. Last year, Liu Yunlong, the godfather of spy war, scored just over 7 in Douban, which is already a leader in the spy war drama market. It can be seen that the theme of spy war is in urgent need of a number of good works with high quality and hot topics.
At present, the spy war drama has gone through a dull four or five years. After the first shot of "The Rebel" this year, the high reputation of "Opponent" has, to some extent, opened up a new future for the development of this type of work, but it may be difficult for it to really go to the mass market because of its lack of certain topics, which has become the biggest regret of this work.