Every film of Xu Jinyang's company, as well as the projects he started himself, have to go through the review of the investment model. The projects started by the following directors, because they need money, have to go through the approval of the big boss Xu Jinyang, and whether they are shot or not, they have to go through his investment model evaluation. Obviously, that sci-fi movie was a huge loss. "Investment project: the movie "Invincible Maria" Investment period: 6 months Investment amount: 20 million Hong Kong dollars ROI: -80%!" Those who are on horseback almost lose their money. It can be seen that the plot and special effects are all rotten, which will lead to such an end! The general plot of this bad movie is that the Sun Party is a terrorist organization, and its leader, the savior, is good at developing war robots. destroy. Due to the powerful "Pioneer One", the police are often helpless. Xiao Xu (Tsui Hark) was originally a member of the Hero Party. Later, he was deeply dissatisfied with the actions of his gang and left the organization under the guarantee of his master. Once Xiao Xu ran into Amao, an expert in developing war robots for the police, in a bar. The two hit it off and became good friends. Unexpectedly, the Sun Party suspected that Xiao Xu had betrayed him, so they sent a newly developed robot—"Pioneer No. 2" which looks exactly like Mary, to chase and kill Xiao Xu. What's worse, the police also suspected that A Mao had betrayed him. The government, so they sent people to arrest them at the same time. Can a pair of good brothers escape from birth? It turned out that in that time and space, "A Chinese Ghost Story" in 1987 was a great success in Hong Kong and Taiwan, which made Tsui Hark more confident.
At that time, the Xiangjiang film circle was affected by the upsurge of Hollywood science fiction, and many Xiangjiang directors began to test the waters of shooting Hong Kong films with sci-fi themes. Against this background, Tsui Hark combined the "love between humans and ghosts" in "A Chinese Ghost Story" with the sci-fi theme. elements, transformed it into a "human-machine romance" movie, and invited the screenwriter of "A Chinese Ghost Story" to write the script together. Tsui Hark personally supervised the production, wrote the screenplay, and acted as one of the leading actors of the film. Because of lack of skills, the position of director can only be handed over to Zhong Zhiwen, who was born as a photographer, and Cheng Xiaodong, who has worked with Tsui Hark many times, is the action director. . This "Invincible Maria" is Tsui Hark's technological exploration in the 1980s. As we all know, Tsui Hark, as a ghost master in the Xiangjiang film industry, is not only famous for his martial arts themes, but also has another big label as "special effects madman". Since the New Wave period, Tsui Hark has been a pioneer in the special effects technology of Xiangjiang movies since he entered the industry. In his debut film "Butterfly Change", he tried to "scientize" the idea of martial arts films. Later, "The Legend of Shushan Swordsman" invited Hollywood The special effects team joined. The filming of "Invincible Maria" was caused by a failed cooperation with Tsui Hark and Hollywood. In 1986, Xiangjiang director Wang Zhengfang became famous with a film "Northern View Story", which was shot in the mainland. After the film was released in the United States at that time, it became the top five non-English-speaking films. For this reason, Wang Zhengfang won the Shang Fai, intends to shoot a sci-fi thriller "Laser Man", co-starred by Liang Jiahui and Ye Qianwen, with Tsui Hark as the producer. However, during the shooting of this film, Tsui Hark and director Wang Zhengfang had disagreements, and the two parties broke up unhappy. This "Laser Man" was later lost in film history. The failure of this cooperation made Tsui Hark determined to make a sci-fi film by himself, so he created "Invincible Maria" for Ye Qianwen. Tsui Hark designed the female robot Maria in the shape of the famous robot beauty in the famous sci-fi film "Metropolis". The giant robot "Pioneer One" that appeared in the film It is obviously a reference to the shape of the "tie back" in "Mobile Suit Gundam". As a sci-fi film, the sci-fi elements of this film are not much in focus. Although according to media reports at the time, the film cost 100 million Taiwan dollars, there are not many big scenes in the film, and the action scenes of robots are relatively stretched. The creation is also very weak, and the unconstrained visual spectacle and imaginative setting in Tsui Hark's works have not been fully utilized. Another big problem with the movie is that the script is too rough and the plot is too patchwork. The role of reporter played by Liang Chaowei is basically dispensable. Although the plot of the whole movie is lively, the theme is not clear enough. The discussion between them is completely superficial, which makes the film look a bit superficial... After the film was released in Hong Kong, it was released only 7 days after its release, and the final box office was 5 million Hong Kong dollars. This achievement was almost Tsui Hark's biggest fiasco in the 1980s. When the film was released in Taiwan, it was regarded as a Lunar New Year film for the Spring Festival, but it hit Hollywood's "Robocop", which led to a disastrous box office failure. Xu Jinyang bluntly raised the issue of Tsui Hark's film project. But Xu Jinyang discovered that Tsui Hark has a very strong stubbornness, and he can't pull back eight cows for what he is sure about. Fortunately, Xu Jinyang's mental strength is many times stronger than Tsui Hark's. After some persuasion, Tsui Hark still agreed to give up the shooting of this sci-fi movie. Xu Jinyang didn't want Tsui Hark to waste time and money, he would rather let Tsui Hark be the producer, shoot Ye Qianwen and Wang Zuxian to co-star in a funny movie "The Diary of a Man". This "Diary of a Man", starring Zhou Runfa, is a comedy, and the box office is not bad. The point is that it is very enviable, who wouldn't want to have a wife like Wang Zuxian and a wife like Ye Qianwen at the same time? But Xu Jinyang is not going to launch such a comedy immediately, because there are about a dozen of those Jianghu hero films that Zhou Guifa has squeezed out, and they haven't finished filming yet. What I hope is that Zhou Guifa can finish filming those hero movies first, and find that the audience They have a boredom, and then let Zhou Guifa make a comedy film, and then come a "God of Gamblers" that combines comedy and gambling movies.
It's all done step by step. If the rush is too tight, it will be difficult to achieve the desired box office results. Then let's talk about the filming of "Swordsman". While chatting, Xu Jinyang discovered that there was a problem with the rhythm of filming "Swordsman". You can't just shoot "Swordsman: The Undefeated East" out of thin air, you have to shoot "Swordsman One". But "Swordsman I" doesn't have Dongfang Bubai at all, so we can add a little part of Dongfang Bubai to it. But in this way, when it came to "Swordsman: Undefeated in the East", the sense of surprise that was originally given to the audience was gone all of a sudden! what should I do?.