Chapter 135 Big Explosion
Xu Mao is a veteran movie fan and a budding film critic.

He has watched some classic movies both from the mainland and Hong Kong.

In the past, his pleasure was to eat instant noodles while watching movies and reading the reviews from professional film critics. He felt it was a real enjoyment.

But in recent years he has found that the reviews of those film critics seem to be getting more and more outrageous, and they no longer touch his heart as before.

He even felt that these so-called film critics were not as good as himself.

It was this idea that made him want to become a film critic.

Xu Mao is a man who dares to think and act, and he feels that he has an obligation not to let the audience be misled by those rubbish film critics.

Since newspaper media would not accept submissions from an unknown person like him, Xu Mao posted his comments online.

After more than two years of persistently writing movie reviews online, Xu Mao found that his professional ability had improved and he had also accumulated a number of fans.

Although he is a self-taught person who is not accepted by the film critic circle, it does not mean that Xu Mao has little influence.

Through the movie "Hero", Xu Mao became famous overnight.

After the release of "Hero", there was a wave of criticism against Zhang Yimou and the film.

But Xu Mao thinks that this movie is well made. Although the story is a bit empty, its merits outweigh its flaws.

So I started a debate with those trolls.

Xu Mao used the professional knowledge he had accumulated over the past few years to debate with those opponents in a logical and well-founded manner. He was not afraid of the influx of trolls and fought against the crowd of scholars alone.

In fact, everyone knows why there are so many trolls on the Internet, and ordinary people rarely speak out at this time.

Really speaking, is "Hero" that bad?

The majority of people think this movie is good, they just didn't say anything, otherwise it wouldn't have had such a high box office.

However, even though they don't speak out, it doesn't mean they are dead.

Xu Mao, who had a passionate debate with those black fans, became the focus of their attention.

Therefore, the battle of "Hero" made Xu Mao a little famous, and his fans also increased a lot. Together with Tianya, Tieba and other communities, he has nearly 200,000 fans.

Xu Mao certainly would not miss the second mainland martial arts blockbuster brought by the famous director Liu Zhou, and he bought tickets to watch it as soon as possible.

Xu Mao did not have the opportunity to attend the premiere of "The Swordsman", so he could only go to the cinema to watch it and then write a film review.

Liu Zhou is the fastest-rising director in mainland China recently, and Xu Mao has no special preference for him.

But Xu Mao feels that, apart from "The Piano Tuner" which is excellent, Liu Zhou's other two love movies are also pretty good, at least they are very touching.

Fortunately, Xu Mao arrived early and bought a ticket for the back row.

Looking at the long queues outside, Xu Mao couldn't help but sigh that the popularity of "The Swordsman" seemed to be no less than that of "Hero".

But no matter whether "The Blade of the Assassin" is a bad movie or a good one, he will give the most honest evaluation based on his own ideas or interviews with other people.

After a while, the movie officially started playing, and Xu Mao put aside all distracting thoughts and started watching the full film of "The Blade of the Assassin" seriously.

The beginning is a monologue by Andy Lau, introducing the background of the story——

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Tianqi passed away and Emperor Chongzhen had just ascended to the throne. He immediately began to take action against the eunuch party headed by Wei Zhongxian.

Wei Zhongxian was demoted to Fengyang, and Emperor Chongzhen immediately issued an order, ordering all parties to clear out and capture members of the eunuch party.

As the emperor's personal army, the Jinyiwei naturally became the sharpest butcher knife in the emperor's hand...

This beginning is actually not a secret. The background of the late Ming Dynasty was released in the trailer of "The Blade of the Assassin".

Thanks to film and television dramas and various magazines and unofficial publications, Wei Zhongxian has become the most well-known powerful eunuch besides Zheng He, who made seven voyages to the West.

It also made Emperor Chongzhen the most famous emperor of the Ming Dynasty besides the founding emperor Zhu Yuanzhang.

That’s why “The Blade of the Assassin” released Wei Zhongxian and Chongzhen in the trailer to attract some interested viewers.

This is also the reason why "The Sword of the Assassin" is set in the late Ming Dynasty.

If the story is replaced with a famous emperor and a powerful eunuch from the Ming Dynasty, and if it is not made clear directly, many people may not know that the story is set in the Ming Dynasty.

This is not an exaggeration. In 2024, there are still many people who do not understand a lot of historical common sense, let alone in 2003 when the Internet had just emerged.

Back to the movie, it opens with two clean and neat fights. As for Xu Mao personally, he has no interest in action scenes, but he still likes it when he sees this.

The fighting scenes in "Blade of the Immortal" are completely different from those in "Hero" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". They are crisp, sharp, decisive and very realistic.

This is a refreshing change for many audiences who are used to the current martial arts movies where the protagonists fly around.

As the plot unfolds, Xu Mao also discovers that "The Sword of Embroidery" is not just a martial arts story, but also has a bit of the flavor of historical intrigue.

When seeing the three Shen Lian brothers being beaten up in Yan's house, Liu Zhou brought the audience a passionate and exciting fight.

But Xu Mao's focus was not on the fight, but on the helplessness and sadness of the young master of the Yan family and the three brothers who were at the bottom of the society and had no choice but to resist but might not get any results.

The Yan family had done nothing wrong, but just because they were as useful as the three brothers, they were used as a weapon by Eunuch Zhao.

It seems that this helplessness and sadness runs through the entire movie.

So Ding Xiu's famous scene of adding money made some audiences in the cinema laugh, but he couldn't laugh. At the end of the movie, the backs of the three galloping horses gradually faded away, as if they had merged into one person, carrying infinite loneliness and solitude.

Xu Mao couldn't help but breathe a long sigh of relief. He felt that this was a mature commercial martial arts film with no obvious shortcomings. It was worth the price of the ticket and was no worse than "Hero".

After returning home, Xu Mao turned on his computer and spent more than two hours writing a two to three thousand word long film review, which he then posted to various online community platforms where he was active.

In fact, in the first few days after the movie was released, some professional reviews from film critics did not have much impact.

Most of the people who go to the cinema at this time are fans of the leading actors or directors of the movies, or passers-by who are attracted by some point of the movie promotion.

A few days after its release, the word-of-mouth of a movie will affect the subsequent box office.

Liu Zhou, Andy Lau and Xie Tingfeng all have a large number of fans in mainland China. Together with Hu Jun and Sun Honglei who have just become famous because of their TV series, coupled with this pervasive publicity, a large number of people were attracted to the cinema.

Tickets were hard to get in almost all cinemas that had copies of "The Blade of the Dragon King".

The cinema manager decisively cut the screening schedule of other films and only showed "The Blade of the Sword" all day long.

As night fell, people who were related to the film or not were anxiously awaiting the first day box office of "The Blade of the Dragon".

This time, Liu Zhou and Han Shanping spent a rare evening together. Although they were chatting, they were both a little absent-minded.

It was not until after three in the morning that the head of the China Film Distribution Department rushed into Han Shanping's office. The two of them stared at him, and he said excitedly:

"Han Factory, Mr. Liu, it's a hit, the box office is a hit!"

"Stop talking about explosions, how much is it?"

"Eleven thousand and three hundred thousand! It has broken through ten million again!"

"Haha, good!" Han Shanping laughed.

Liu Zhou's clenched fists couldn't help but relax.

"Liu Zhou, I should be able to sleep now, haha!"

"Of course I can sleep. I don't know why, but I feel a little sleepy now."

"Then go back to bed early. You still have to lead a roadshow tomorrow."

"Well, Mr. Han, I'll be leaving first."

"Go."

On the way back, Liu Zhou was still in high spirits and didn't look sleepy at all.

Liu Zhou originally thought that his mentality should be very good, but he did not expect that when "The Blade of the Sword" was released, he became as anxious and worried as when his first movie "My Sassy Girl" was released.

Eleven million, three hundred thousand!

Although the first-day box office was less than the 13 million of "Hero", it is also one of the only two movies with a first-day box office of over 10 million.

If there is no big drop in box office later, it is a foregone conclusion that "The Blade of Spring" will break 100 million yuan at the box office.

Liu Zhou can also breathe a sigh of relief, as his goal is to achieve a box office revenue of over 100 million yuan in the mainland.

The next day, when Liu Zhou went south to Shanghai for a roadshow with dark circles under his eyes, the news that "The Blade of Embroidery" had grossed over 10 million yuan at the box office had already been widely reported.

Even with the success of "Hero", most people were still very surprised.

Not only that, the first-day box office data of "The Swordsman" also lay quietly in front of the bosses of Huayi, New Picture, Pony.com and various film and television companies.

Some were surprised, some frowned, some were happy, some regretted, and some were eager to try.

The next two days happened to be the weekend, and "The Blade of Spring" once again grossed 13.5 million and 13.8 million respectively.

In the first three days of the weekend, the film grossed a total of 38.6 million, nearly 40 million yuan.

This has led to even more silence in the industry.

This opening result is not inferior to that of "Hero".

Will the box office of "The Blade of Red Mansions" also exceed 200 million like "Hero"?
That's so scary!
At this time, the box office results of the other three places were also summarized.

"The Blade of Eternal Youth" earned HK$12 million in Hong Kong in its first three days of weekend, and the total box office is sure to reach HK$30 million.

This result also silenced Hong Kong filmmakers for a time.

He just showed off in front of them not long ago, and now his movies are conquering the Hong Kong market.

Some more conservative Hong Kong filmmakers feel both frustrated and helpless.

Some active filmmakers have already begun preparing to move north next year.

As for Du Wenzhe, perhaps Emperor Entertainment Group had warned him, and he has remained silent during this period.

In Taiwan, it earned NT$18 million, which is equivalent to more than RMB 4 million. The film market here is real.

In South Korea, the movie received 200,000 viewers in the first three days of its release, which is a pretty good result. It should be no problem for the movie to receive over a million viewers before it is closed.

Although Liu Zhou was very happy with this result, in order to get more box office revenue, he did not care about being happy and rushed to the next city without stopping.

(End of this chapter)