The Best Director

Chapter 495: Chapter 495: The Magic with a Unique Flavor

“You’ll never understand why we perform magic. The audience knows the truth. The world is simple and sad, always real from start to finish. But if you can deceive them, even for just a second, then you can make them wonder. And then you can see something very special. Don’t you know? It’s the look on their faces.”

“Never reveal the secret, they will beg you, flatter you, once you tell, you are of no value. Understand? Worthless. The secret of a magic trick isn’t impressive, it’s the skill in performing it that’s important.” @@novelbin@@

Under the night sky, the cinema was brightly lit. The auditorium for “The Prestige” was packed with people all watching the story on the big screen; most of them were engrossed, but a few yawned openly. Clearly, the Nolan brothers’ magic act couldn’t fool everyone—not every viewer was amazed.

As time passed, the film was shown again and again. If observed in fast forward, the theater seats were empty one moment, sparsely filled the next, and then quite full again…

“How’s it going? What are the critics saying?” “How much? Is the box office still okay?!”…

Warner Brothers was even more concerned about the reception and box office performance of “The Prestige” than Flame Film. Alan F. Horn and others had good reasons for this. Maybe Flame could afford a first-time failure, ending an unprecedented miracle, tumbling down to earth; but Warner Brothers couldn’t afford it! That damned Darren Aronofsky left a mess. Could “The Dark Knight” magnify that mess?

If not for Wang Yang’s involvement, Warner Brothers’ subsequent strategy for “The Moment of Warfare” would have been: no sequel. Find a new crew a few years later to produce a brand new series, much like “Superman Returns”. But now they were in a difficult position. Although they had already resolved to trust Wang Yang and trust Nolan, the performance of “The Prestige” was critical; it was like Midway.

Looking at the freshly printed performance data, Horn’s face clouded over, and no other Warner executives wore smiles either. On the contrary, many frowned slightly. Why did they have to choose Nolan? Goddamn Yang was simply unsettling!

A 76% fresh rating from general critics on Rotten Tomatoes! Seemingly good, yet the fresh rating from well-known critics was only 59%, which remained an omnipresent worry in their minds. Despite Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times giving it 3/4 stars and praising, “This is a quite atmospheric, fascinating, almost diabolical movie,” and Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times giving it 4/5, saying, “An exuberant, atmospheric entertainment.”

But what Warner wanted was the mainstream, not uniqueness, the more the audience the better, the mainstream!

However, including the Hollywood Reporter, New York Observer, Associated Press, and other mainstream media criticized it harshly. Rex Reed said, “The suspense and cleverness of this movie only serve to incite anger and feel contrived.” Stephen Whitty remarked, “Unfortunately, the script is overly self-indulgent.” Stephen Hunter commented, “The Nolan brothers’ pretentiousness creates an exasperating mess.” Mick LaSalle noted, “Director Nolan has no trouble captivating the public with the charm of magic tricks, but when he takes on a mainstream topic, it can become quite terrifying.”…

Infuriating, Contrived, Exasperating… These reviews left no doubt that they disdained “The Prestige.” If the so-called mystery relies on deliberately confusing the timeline, intentionally baffling the viewer and making the whole movie a contrived mess, what’s so great about that magic trick? To them, the Nolan brothers were performing a poor magic act.

Mainstream topics! This was precisely what the Warner executives feared. If the brothers applied the structural techniques of “Memento” and “The Prestige” with the art-house style of “Mr. Hughes” to “The Dark Knight,” the outcome would be unbearable!

Perhaps somewhat reassuringly, at least the movie buffs and fans had been “deceived.” They were very pleased with the Nolan brothers’ performance this time, with a Rotten Tomatoes liking rate of 90% and an IMDb score of 8.4!

“It’s a masterpiece, full of emotion, twists and intrigue.” RipV gave it five stars; “Just a little better than ‘The Illusionist’, I didn’t understand it, I had to ask someone else.” Caitlin G gave it four and a half stars; “Despite some unnecessary confusion, it might be Christopher Nolan’s most astonishing film to date, which doesn’t stop it from being excitingly great.” Ethan K rated it four stars; Andrew R gave five stars: “Impeccable! This movie is awe-inspiring. However, it’s like a detective novel, you have to pay attention to all clues, you might need to watch it twice like I did.”…

From the first day the film was released, the Nolan brothers were in a state of great excitement and tension. Every movie was crafted with care, and “The Prestige” was their full narrative skill in action, with flawless operations from Flame Film, so there was no excuse for the movie’s performance.

The praise from audiences and critics thrilled them, while the criticisms wounded them, especially in an era when the Rotten Tomatoes score had become a key metric, reputable critics didn’t make the grade! No one dislikes being recognized, and the authority of the mainstream media made their opinions weigh heavily. The scales of judgment quietly tilted towards “somewhat bad,” anyway, it was far from ideal. After all, it’s hard to completely maintain “With so many fans who loved it, who cares about those few hundred critics,” especially since the Nolan brothers were quite proud.

In response, Wang Yang had a video conference with the Nolan brothers. If it weren’t for the magic and tricks, it wouldn’t be “The Prestige.” This couldn’t be considered a failure, it’s just that you can never satisfy everyone.

“You don’t need to worry about anything, just make ‘The Dark Knight’ well! There’s no pressure from Warner Brothers, you get it? Of course, you should put the jumbled narrative structure on hold for now. Don’t you want to perform a magic act that will drive the whole world crazy?”

Wang Yang soothed the wounded hearts of the two but did not blindly side with them. Compared to “Memento,” “The Prestige” did seem contrived and chaotic, showing signs of an artist consumed by his obsession. Just as the magician in the film risks everything in pursuit of the perfect illusion, he told them that they could seek mystery, suspense, and uniqueness from other aspects, such as the structure of the story itself, and not just the chronological structure of its narration. Many stories are fascinating in and of themselves, like “Sleep Science.”

After hearing Wang Yang’s words and reflecting on the insights brought by “The Prestige,” Nolan fell into deep thought again: the balance between art and commerce wasn’t enough, personal preferences against popular tastes, the story itself against the narrative sequence…

“By the way, Yang, I know that Flame has recently acquired the adaptation rights to a Japanese animated film ‘Paprika’.” Nolan brought up the topic during their conversation.

“Paprika” (translated as Dream Detective) is a 2D science fiction mystery animated film, adapted from the 1993 novel of the same name by renowned Japanese science fiction writer Yasutaka Tsutsui. It tells the story of a psychotherapist, Atsuko Chiba, and a genius scientist, who together develop a device called “DC-MINI,” which allows psychotherapists to enter patients’ dream worlds. By constructing and altering patients’ dreams, they change the thoughts in their subconscious minds, which proves to be quite effective in psychotherapy.

Unexpectedly, one day, the DC-MINI is stolen. Fearing that the thief might use it to commit crimes, Atsuko Chiba begins an investigation. Meanwhile, those involved in the research start to have their real-life actions disrupted by dream interference, and Chiba is also ambushed. Yet she is not an ordinary person; thus, “Dream Detective Paprika” engages in a fierce battle with the dream terrorist who seeks to wreak havoc using the “DC-MINI”…

“Dream Detective” is directed by renowned animation director Satoshi Kon, funded by the production company Madhouse. It just premiered in Japan last month, but prior to that, it had participated in numerous film festivals around the world and received widespread acclaim. It was one of the best film nominees at this year’s Venice Film Festival.

Flame Films has always shown a keen interest in Japanese anime. Last year, when Wang Yang was in Japan for publicity, he made it clear that if there was an opportunity, he would adapt outstanding anime for the big screen. Ever since the opening of the Venice Film Festival, “Dream Detective” caught the attention of Flame, and Wang Yang gave clear orders to secure its adaptation rights—SSS class! If it weren’t for Sony which held the North American distribution rights and posed some difficulties during the purchase of the adaptation rights, Flame would naturally not have let it go.

Fortunately, the rights belonged to Madhouse, and the elusive Yang did not show up in Venice; at the same time, situations where 2D animations are adapted into Hollywood blockbusters are rare, even for epoch-making manga projects like “Dragon Ball” which are quite uncertain. How much potential does a live-action movie of “Dream Detective,” an animation that even struggled to sell well in Japan, truly have? No one knew. Nonetheless, FF still made an effort and reached some distribution cooperation agreements with Sony before finalizing the impending contract.

Recently, the media and fans got wind of the news, and because the elusive Yang made no statement, the matter was quite low-key in North America, but some hardcore Flame fans were quite excited and looking forward to it, considering the subject matter very interesting.

“Yes, are you interested in directing it?” Wang Yang asked. In the beginning of the year, after watching “Sleep Science” at Sundance, he recommended it to the Nolan brothers. At that time, Nolan had mentioned being very interested in dreams and wanted to make a movie about them, but some ideas were still vague. Nolan said, “I like mysterious and suspenseful things like dreams, but it seems they aren’t part of your plans?” Wang Yang shrugged and replied, “I have other plans.”

He had many subject matters in mind for shooting; his next 3D film was related to “mysterious things,” yet it was not about dreams.

In fact, dream-themed works were nothing new in novels, comic books, and other media. Films like “Total Recall,” “The Cell” (in which a pediatrician heals childhood trauma through dream manipulation to help police solve cases), and “Sleep Science” had plenty too; and the relationship between “The Cell,” “Inception,” and “Dream Detective” was like that of “The Matrix” and “Ghost in the Shell.”

Now that Flame Film had acquired the adaptation rights for “Dream Detective,” they could proceed to produce a detective series featuring action/thriller/mystery/science fiction elements. There were no restrictions as to when Nolan might be inspired and then talk about collaboration, but Nolan was undeniably the most suitable person to bring it to live-action.

But it was too early to talk about these things at the moment. Wang Yang revealed to the Nolan brothers that Flame wouldn’t start this project soon because the timing wasn’t right, and FF’s production schedule was full for the next few years. So for now, they would focus on making “The Dark Knight” and let the dream project brew a bit longer, as other ideas might emerge.

“‘Fame’ tops the chart, ‘The Nativity Story’ performs mildly” — Box Office Mojo. As December 1-7th passed, the Warner Bros. executives finally breathed a sigh of relief. Although “The Prestige” received a fair number of rotten tomatoes from mainstream media, at the box office, Flame Film had stubbornly avoided the fate of a blockbuster bomb!

“The Prestige” grossed $35.76 million at 2,879 North American Cinemas, with an average of $12,422 per theater. Its opening week was close to “The Illusionist’s” $32.36 million, comfortably earning the North American weekly box office championship. It seemed that it would not become a box office bomb, and reaching about $80 million in North America and $150 million globally wasn’t too difficult. Coupled with substantial post-sale revenue and considering its $40 million production cost, Flame Film was set to profit, which is why Box Office Mojo’s Brandon Gray described it as “the perfect illusion of Flame.”

New Line Cinema wasn’t so fortunate and had made a mess again! Even bringing out the Virgin Mary didn’t help. The heavily promoted “The Nativity Story” earned only $10.19 million in its first week at 3,083 theaters, with rotten tomato scores of 38%/53%/74%. There was no point in dreaming of becoming “The Passion of the Christ,” as a significant loss was guaranteed!

But because it involved the Virgin Mary, Brandon Gray was careful with his wording when reporting, even using “meek” to describe its average per theater performance of $3,306 (meek and mild), not even resorting to “weak”; while average per theater performances of $2,892 and $1,497 for “Jungle Nightmare” and “The King of Flunkers 2” were described as “negligible.”

As the 64th Golden Globe Awards nominations day on the 14th and the Christmas prime time on the 22nd approached, under the busy and tense footsteps, “The Deceased” had been completed on schedule in early December, with a production budget fixed at $70 million, a significant portion of which was due to the rush job resulting in increased staff and higher wages. (