The home-made animation Monkey King Hero is Back got a great victory of 791 million Yuan in box office since being on screen on July 10th, making a new record. As an animation film not being looked upon favorably at first, Monkey King Hero is Back now becomes a highlight as the benchmarking of Chinese animation industry. How could it make it?
"The key to success of the film is the well-known of the traditional story. Plus, the film combines American humor with Japanese animation features together, making the film more international." According to Chen Xuguang, Director of Movie and Television Center of Peking University, it was a successful change of the characteristic of Monkey King. "A Chinese Odyssey was the first film remodeling Monkey King with creation, and Monkey King Hero is Back made another successful change to make Monkey King a tragic hero, catering to audiences' mentality of hero's back." Chen believes that, the Monkey King in Monkey King Hero is Back has more humanization to attract audiences' sympathy.
"The relationship between Monkey King and Tang Monk has an interesting change. A child Tang Monk saved the great hero Monkey King, bringing the story more enjoyment." According to Song, the film rewrote the traditional hero story Journey to the West to be a warm dream like the Iron Giant and Big Hero 6, which lead to the miraculous box-office.
Besides, the film performs excellent animation technology in scenarios background image such as forest, grass land and valley. "The visual effect of Hollywood level is another important reason for the film being a phenomenon," says Chen, "hope there will be a triumphant return of Chinese film industry more than just one film."
At the same time, facing the success, the producers of Monkey King Hero is Back show their calm. Zhou Xun, the executive director, expresses, "It is just a passable film, and compared with the Hollywood film, we still have a long way to go." Experts believe that lacking of innovation is still the weaknesses of Chinese animation films.
"Currently, including animated films, it's no longer the competition between a single unit of domestic films, but the urgent need to enhance the domestic film production standards to meet showdown after the market is completely opened. We need more works like Monkey King Hero is Back." the founder of Family of Film Zhu Yuqing indicates.
Experts believe that, as an important part of animation film, technical innovation is the life of the animation film. And it is a big problem for animation film to vividly shape a role, particularly in shaping the body fur effect. Both professional technology and large funding is needed to solve the problem. As regards to the funding, Kongfu Panda spent 130 million dollars and Monsters, Inc. spent 150 million dollars, compared with 10 million dollars of Monkey King Hero is Back. At the same time, compared with tangible capital investment, lack of technology is still the shortcoming for Chinese animation. For example, for animation character modeling, the ideal effect of hair treating is to render each hair individually when modeling. Due to technical and financial limitations, Monkey King Hero is Back only established a single model to the adjacent areas of hair and reduced the complexity of the modeling and computing model, which resulted in image distortion and could not show real feeling of the fluffy fur.
Therefore, compared with Sony, DreamWorks, Pixar and other foreign companies, the Chinese market keep relatively less attention and sensitivity to the animation technique, Chinese animation companies' awareness of technological innovation need to be strengthened. In fact, both producers of Monkey King Hero is Back and Aofei Animation, Huaqiang Figure which launched Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, Bears, and other popular animation companies, failed to launch more research achievements in this area.
It is also known that, starting in 2006, many animation companies including Pixar, DreamWorks, Disney Animation, are increasing patent portfolio year by year in China, which means that the world-class animation companies have begun to attach importance to China's animation production market, and intensify the Chinese patent layout. Experts believe that, it is undeniable that the future competition of animation production industry will be more intense, if Chinese animation companies don't step up research and development to narrow the gap, the future will be probably more difficult.
"The key to success of the film is the well-known of the traditional story. Plus, the film combines American humor with Japanese animation features together, making the film more international." According to Chen Xuguang, Director of Movie and Television Center of Peking University, it was a successful change of the characteristic of Monkey King. "A Chinese Odyssey was the first film remodeling Monkey King with creation, and Monkey King Hero is Back made another successful change to make Monkey King a tragic hero, catering to audiences' mentality of hero's back." Chen believes that, the Monkey King in Monkey King Hero is Back has more humanization to attract audiences' sympathy.
"The relationship between Monkey King and Tang Monk has an interesting change. A child Tang Monk saved the great hero Monkey King, bringing the story more enjoyment." According to Song, the film rewrote the traditional hero story Journey to the West to be a warm dream like the Iron Giant and Big Hero 6, which lead to the miraculous box-office.
Besides, the film performs excellent animation technology in scenarios background image such as forest, grass land and valley. "The visual effect of Hollywood level is another important reason for the film being a phenomenon," says Chen, "hope there will be a triumphant return of Chinese film industry more than just one film."
At the same time, facing the success, the producers of Monkey King Hero is Back show their calm. Zhou Xun, the executive director, expresses, "It is just a passable film, and compared with the Hollywood film, we still have a long way to go." Experts believe that lacking of innovation is still the weaknesses of Chinese animation films.
"Currently, including animated films, it's no longer the competition between a single unit of domestic films, but the urgent need to enhance the domestic film production standards to meet showdown after the market is completely opened. We need more works like Monkey King Hero is Back." the founder of Family of Film Zhu Yuqing indicates.
Experts believe that, as an important part of animation film, technical innovation is the life of the animation film. And it is a big problem for animation film to vividly shape a role, particularly in shaping the body fur effect. Both professional technology and large funding is needed to solve the problem. As regards to the funding, Kongfu Panda spent 130 million dollars and Monsters, Inc. spent 150 million dollars, compared with 10 million dollars of Monkey King Hero is Back. At the same time, compared with tangible capital investment, lack of technology is still the shortcoming for Chinese animation. For example, for animation character modeling, the ideal effect of hair treating is to render each hair individually when modeling. Due to technical and financial limitations, Monkey King Hero is Back only established a single model to the adjacent areas of hair and reduced the complexity of the modeling and computing model, which resulted in image distortion and could not show real feeling of the fluffy fur.
Therefore, compared with Sony, DreamWorks, Pixar and other foreign companies, the Chinese market keep relatively less attention and sensitivity to the animation technique, Chinese animation companies' awareness of technological innovation need to be strengthened. In fact, both producers of Monkey King Hero is Back and Aofei Animation, Huaqiang Figure which launched Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, Bears, and other popular animation companies, failed to launch more research achievements in this area.
It is also known that, starting in 2006, many animation companies including Pixar, DreamWorks, Disney Animation, are increasing patent portfolio year by year in China, which means that the world-class animation companies have begun to attach importance to China's animation production market, and intensify the Chinese patent layout. Experts believe that, it is undeniable that the future competition of animation production industry will be more intense, if Chinese animation companies don't step up research and development to narrow the gap, the future will be probably more difficult.
Additionally, China's animation film industry also needs to develop post-derived products as the key point for further development. According to Liu Zhijiang, Chinese animation industry needs more efforts on authorized copyright exploitation of film animation, online games, mobile games, network broadcast copyrights, television broadcast copyrights, stamp production, doll products, image authorization is an equally huge market. To make a promising future for Chinese film animation, Chinese filmmakers still need to make unremitting efforts.
