the Legend of Wong Kar-Wai

from box office bomb to office number-one film

Yeung Tak Sang, 53087121Final Project GE1127

Intro

• People always say that, it’s hard to understand a Wong Kar-Wai’s films. They say that it’s not a entertainment to watch his films.

• Actually, Wong Kar-Wai’s films are always some box office bombs. His films are always unprofitable in Hong Kong. A typical example is Days of Being Wild, which received HK $9,751,942 with budget $39,000,000 for filming.

• Auteur films, Wong Kar-Wai reflected his vision in his movies. He won’t put cliché element in his movies to attract audience.

• He won’t make kitsch. He is not aiming on the success at the box office.

CHART of the box officeMovies Hong Kong Box office

Days of Being Wild (1990) HK $9,751,942.00

Chungking Express (1994) HK $7,678,549.00

Ashes of Time (1994) HK $9,023,583.00

Fallen Angels (1995) HK $7,476,025.00

Happy Together (1997) * III HK $8,600,141.00

2046 (2004) HK $6,036,757.00

The Grandmaster (2013) HK $21,156,949.00

The Grandmaster ranked no.1 in Hong Kong Box office from January 10 to January 20.It’s first time to see a Wong Kar-Wai’ film that profitable.

• As you can see, the HK box office of Wong’s films were around 7 to 8 millions HK$.

• His movies were kind of box office bomb. Especially the movies with famous actors like Tony Leung, Leslie Cheung and even Andy Lau.

• They receive very high salaries.• The Grandmaster (2013), is a very special one.

The box office of this film is doubled, compared to Wong’s previous movies.

• Why?

Martial Arts

Gong Er tries to defeat Gong Yutian

SLOW MOTION

SCENES

Epic scenes in snowfield

Wong shot some beautiful landscape in far northeast of China.This kind of scenes of nature are thrilling. But this is rare to see in Wong’s previous films.These scenes are making The Grandmasterattractive

SCENES

Wong used to shot some beautiful landscape in the movie.Ashes of Time (1994)However, Ashes of Time is more disjointed than The Grandmaster. It is kind of experimental for me. The plot is not that clear.

SCENE

Wong portraits Ip Man’s life on a grand scale. The film is mixed with different historical events.

Compare to wong’s previous films, this movie is rather ‘epic’.

PO-YI

STORY

The plot of his previous films are rather ‘small scale’.

The stories happened in a short period of time.

Thus, the story of Ip Man in this film is rather astonishing and attractive. People should be curious to know how Wong portrait the epic history of this great person.

They were shot with films. Not high-tech digital cameras. Thus, the quality of the images are not that astonishing.

IMAGES QUALITY

With advanced technology in lighting and filming. The image of the motion pictures has thrilling quality.

The quality of camera is high. It can surely produce images and scenes with great details.

The budget for filming is rather high too.

LIGHTING

IP MAN

10

Conclusion

• No doubt, Wong Kar-Wai is a great director. His movies are visually astonishing.

• However, he is out of his comfort zone to produce the grandmaster. Thus, this film is not flawless. It’s rather disjointed and look unfinished.

• The new theme, new elements, new story of the grandmaster, made this film generate a high amount of profit.

• We should have more amount of people to understand how to appreciate the art of Wong’s movies.

REFERENCE

Andrew Chan(2013). The Grandmaster 一代宗師 (2013) – Hong Kong / China. Retrieved fromhttp://thehkneo.com/blog/?p=3450

Hoberman,J.(2013). Wong Kar-Wai is “The Grandmaster”. Retrieved fromhttp://blogs.artinfo.com/moviejournal/2013/08/27/wong-kar-wai-is-the-grandmaster/