CATDOLL: Experts say domestic animated films have entered a shifting period, from scale to quality

At the 25th Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival Chinese Film Forum, experts made a special interpretation of the current situation of domestic animated films. Experts said that domestic animated films are currently transforming from the young age group to the market of all ages. In the next few years, domestic animated films will enter a shift period from "scale to quality", and the transformation and upgrading will enter a period of brand building that pursues higher quality.

In 2015, the domestic animated film "Journey to the West: Hero is Back" won the Chinese animated film championship, which had long been held by Hollywood films, with a box office of more than 900 million yuan. The live-action animated film "Monster Hunt" became the first Chinese-language film to break 2 billion yuan. The peak of animated films in 2016 appeared in "Big Fish and Begonia" released in July, which won 565 million yuan in box office. All these signs show that domestic animated films are moving from scale to quality.

Professor Pan Jian, director of the Film, Television, Animation and Game Research Center of Zhejiang University, pointed out that today domestic animated films have made tremendous progress and are changing the content problems brought about by their original low-age positioning. They are moving towards blockbuster, high-quality and branded directions. However, we should also see that the uncertainty of the box office of animated films has become more prominent, and many films have suffered a Waterloo.

In July 2016, "Rock Mastiff" was released, and the industry had high expectations for it, but its box office was only over 39 million yuan, far below expectations. Pan Jian said that although the box office cannot explain everything, the film creation itself has the phenomenon of "well-received but not popular" and "popular but not well-received", but whether it is "well-received but not popular" or "popular but not well-received", it is not accidental. After crossing the stage of "low-age" and "shoddy production", domestic animated films are facing the problems of high quality but low price, high investment and low output.

"Some of our domestic animated films fail to show the true characteristics of animated films. In the worldview of animation, its artistic world is a virtual existence that can express everything and has wild imagination, but it expresses the most basic human emotions, which makes it universal. Most successful cartoons contain extremely realistic emotions or feelings in seemingly wild, magical, or even absurd narratives." Pan Jian said.

According to industry insiders, compared with imported blockbusters such as "Zootopia", "The Jungle Book" and "Angry Birds", domestic animated films lack good stories and good reputation. Many domestic animated films have suffered box office failures, which are due to commercial operation problems, but more importantly, creative problems.

From the audience's recognition of films such as "Kung Fu Panda" and "Mulan", it can be seen that the public recognizes works with unique Chinese cultural style. Li Zhenlin, professor of Shanghai Theatre Academy and vice president of the Chinese Film Literature Society, also said at the forum that Chinese films are less likely to impact their own "Oriental feelings" than to impact the Oscars. Hollywood uses China's cultural resources to develop its own films, but we have not yet found a way out. How to turn our oriental feelings and expressions into a world language, how our films can embody the Chinese aesthetic spirit and Chinese cultural spirit, this is a fundamental and directional issue.

Experts pointed out that at present, Chinese animated films are shifting from developing scale to creating high-quality products. From time to time, one or two phenomenal works will appear, but the creation and production are still in an unstable state and lack influential brand guarantees. Although the road for Chinese animated films to move from a big country to a strong country is difficult, if they can calm down and carefully cultivate domestic animated film brands and form Chinese cultural characteristics, they will surely impress the outside world.