Chương 188: Chapter 188: Returning to Johannesburg
In the beginning when they got the script of District 9, Lionsgate's president Gusto thought that the Ecks mail had given a mistake, and after sending a letter to inquire about it, it was only then that he was sure that what he had in his hand was indeed Lin Mingyang's newly created script.
The beginning of the script story is written in a very confusing, Lin Mingyang used a kind of faux-documentary writing techniques, but this technique is not like the "death video", "Cloverfield files" as the faux-documentary as the only type of throughout, but only as a technique and technology into the whole story of the mishmash of several types of this plot and faux-documentary style of the integration of the alternation of the beginning of the Gusto see a very "head-scratching".
Patiently, Gusta finally saw some of the way through. He realized that the content of this script had a few similarities to Children of Men. In the "Children of Men" that film, the British put all the foreign immigrants concentrated in a quarantine area, do not care, let them live and die, "District 9" is also a little bit of this meaning, but mixed with science fiction color, the foreign immigrants are also replaced by aliens.
In the self-centered human imagination, extraterrestrials are often fictionalized as a group of highly intelligent, hideous and ugly villains with ambitions to take over the planet or even exterminate the human race. This kind of imagination is not unreasonable, after all, human beings for the heroes of the myth of fantasy is often from the exorcism of these "bad comers", to exclude the alien is the natural instinct of human beings.
Lin Mingyang, however, put forward a hypothetical identity swap in the script of "District 9". Wikus is a government official in charge of alien affairs. For the aliens, he is not only full of contempt and disdain, but also sees them as synonymous with violence, chaos, filth and savagery. The dramatic reversal in the script occurs during one of his official duties - Wikus is infected by a black alien liquid and turns into a half-human, half-alien monster. This is where the real highlight and excitement of the entire movie begins.
Continuing on, Gusta again feels that the story is a mishmash of Kafka's Metamorphosis, except that the protagonist is transformed into an alien instead of a beetle, but the pain, despair, fear, and ineffable frustration conveyed by both characters are the same.
In the past, Wikus took it for granted and full of justice for humans to expel and quarantine the aliens. Because the aliens not only compete with humans for survival resources, but also frequently create conflicts and incidents. Until he was infected with the alien gene and gradually became one of the aliens. As the first point of view of the script, Gustav only felt how cruel and inhuman people treat the aliens unimaginably.
When he arrives in District 9, his status as an alien prompts him to see what he had previously ignored with open eyes: that the aliens live in deplorable conditions, scavenge for food, and are routinely abused by the military. Not only that, but even the black terrorists who live in the slums are out to get them.
Seeing Gusta suddenly has a worry that if the plot continues to develop like this, the whole script will become a completely anti-human and anti-humanity work. But in the final episode, there is a romantic, magnificent and deeply moving emotion stirring between the lines.
Wikus makes a choice after a difficult internal struggle, and as he pilots the robot against insane fire, covers the alien he once disdained and reunites with his son back home, and gets up over and over again, strong and persistent. It was as if Gustav had seen Wallace's gut-wrenching cry of "Freedom" in Braveheart. Alienation is only the appearance of Wikus, inside is still the human heart, in the last moment he burst out of the most noble and pure human emotions, his personal sadness is a kind of ode to the whole of humanity.
Lin Mingyang does not state whether Wikus is dead or alive at the end of the story, because it is no longer important. The script ends with a scene of an alien sitting on the ruins, holding a metal rose in his hand.
Lin Mingyang did not use too many words to depict that scene, but Gustav was able to clearly realize what kind of bleakness it was, when he closed the script, Gustav felt that the corners of his eyes were slightly moist, knowing that the story was fictional, but he was still deeply touched.
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"How did you come up with this idea? A story like this will definitely cause a sensation when it's filmed!" In the subsequent meeting with Lin Ming Yang, Gusto did not hide his appreciation for the plot, and there was even a strong wave of admiration in his tone.
"Ever since I was a kid, I've watched many, many movies and stories about aliens, such as 'Third Contact', 'Aliens' and 'Alien', and human beings have always had a very rich imagination about extraterrestrial beings, but I feel that in a lot of alien-related subjects, the aliens have always represented a kind of power or culture clash that Earthlings can't reach, and they've always been unable to merge into one, each going their So from that time on, I was thinking that if one day many aliens from other planets immigrated to Earth, and their technology was similar to that of human beings, and their knowledge and language did not change much, then they would just be like human beings. Knowledge and language have not changed much, but they are just far away from human beings in appearance. What kind of changes will happen to this society where human beings live at this time, and what will human beings do? This idea has been in my mind for a long time, and then this incident touched me deeply, so I want to use this movie to put forward a hypothesis!"
Lin Mingyang took out the newspaper that he had last placed in front of Ecks, pointed his finger at the report and said, "In fact, everyone can try to be like Wikus and reexamine their usual positions and ideas. When you are outraged by the high crime rate of blacks, have you ever thought that their unemployment and poverty rates are three times that of whites; when you call on the government to demolish the filthy slums, have you ever thought of providing the poor with a new living space and a way out? Why is it that for thousands of years, human beings have always treated the disadvantaged dissidents with segregation and expulsion, but seldom with acceptance and diversion?"
This kowtowing question that went straight to the soul left Gusta speechless, in the end he laughed awkwardly before changing the topic, "This script interests me, if you need to invest in it, we can..."
"The truth is that I'm not short of money in my hands right now..." shook Lin Ming Yang's head very directly, "What I need is a distribution channel for the movie."
"Then let's stick to the old rules, a 30/70 split?" Gusto was also a fastidious man, he could see that Lin Ming Yang was adamant on this issue, and he had no choice but to give up on the issue of investment.
Once the relationship between the two parties was finalized, Gusta quickly entered the role of a distributor, "How long do you expect this movie to take from the start of shooting to the completion of production?"
"Four months!"
"So short!" Gusta somewhat doubted whether his ears had heard wrong, because the time spent on post-production alone for a sci-fi movie of the same type would take half a year at the earliest, "Are you sure you can finish it?"
"Unsurprisingly, it can definitely be completed in this amount of time." Lin Mingyang realized that his "guarantee" could not make Gustav feel absolutely at ease, so he had to explain, "You've read the script, this movie is actually a pseudo-science fiction movie in essence, and the aliens are not the prominent theme of the movie. In their styling, I do not have too high requirements, as long as the audience looks know that the aliens are enough!"
"Even if the aliens aren't the theme of your movie's presentation, isn't it a bit ... rough for you to ask for such a production?" Gusta was worried that Lin Ming Yang's "lowering his requirements" like this would affect the quality of the movie.
"I don't think that exquisite special effects are the only means of expression for a sci-fi movie!" Lin Mingyang expressed a different view on this, "I'm not saying this to knock down all sci-fi films with exquisite special effects, but I hope to see a return to the concept of sci-fi movie creation - let the special effects return to the movie, let sci-fi return to the humanities, and vivid thoughts should not be enslaved by cold special effects, and wonderful emotions don't need flashy production to be expressed."
The expression on Gusto's face was noncommittal, but instead of continuing to insist, he asked one last question, "Where are you going to shoot this movie?"
In the script, Lin Mingyang didn't explicitly point out which city the aliens were quarantined in, but based on the snippets of description in the story and the information revealed in just a few words, Gustav actually had an answer in his mind, and asking this question was merely trying to corroborate his judgment.
"Johannesburg, South Africa!"
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Johannesburg, the largest city in South Africa, a city that grew wildly from the gold rush of the nineteenth century. The former South Africa was a country with serious racial discrimination, where whites, who accounted for less than 10% of the total population, controlled the power of the whole country, and the few white rulers practiced apartheid with brutal means and killed countless people.
Lin Mingyang chose Johannesburg as the location for the film "District 9". In addition to alluding to that period of history, the main reason is that Soweto is the largest slum area in South Africa, where most of the residents live in simple houses made of tin, and there is no need to build sets, as it is a ready-made location for the movie.
Lin Mingyang is no stranger to Johannesburg, he stayed here for a while during the filming of the movie "King of War". Not long after he left, South Africa was awarded the right to host the 2010 World Cup, and Johannesburg was one of the cities that hosted the tournament, but two years have passed, and the whole city has not improved particularly, and the security is as bad as ever.
Because the crew had to go deep into the slums to shoot on location, ensuring the safety of the crew during the filming process became a top priority for the crew. Lin Mingyang found Xie Qiang, the Chinese who was responsible for the security of the "King of War" crew, and he joined forces with two other local security companies to protect the film's shooting.
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