以外国原作为基础的中国翻拍电影研究

Abstract

Chinese film industry has recently grown rapidly. In the process, lots of foreign films have been reproduced in China as remake films which usually are localized for Chinese audiences. These remake films can be preferred because they have been proved to be popular in foreign countries where original films were released. Then the issue is how to customize original films to Chinese version. In this paper, foreign originals and Chinese remake films by genre (romantic, criminal suspense, family and fantasy) were compared along with narrative structure (character, plot, and lines) and the shooting technique (color and lighting, scenes and props, shooting skills). We collected 21 sets of original-remake couples of films (11 romantic, 6 criminal suspense, 2 family, and 2 fantasy films) released between 2013 and 2017 in China. As a result, we found that Chineseremake films tend to have more indirect description on love, show crime background, prefer happy ending, and describe main title more intelligent compared to foreign originals for narrative structure components. Also, we found that Chinese remake films tend to use red color for romantic mood, chilly grey for crime scene, red-and-yellow contrast for family gathering, and blue color for fantasy mood compared to their foreign originals. The findings of this study would contribute to the literature in the film industry, especially in remake films production field, by showing how cultural differences between foreign countries and China can be applied in remaking foreign-original films, and eventually benefit to practitioners who are working in Chinese films industry. Specifically, in terms of color usages, Chinese remake films have more ethinically distinguished characteristics from foreign original films which should be considered by Chinese films business people. Narrative structure components are not relatively mush different between the compared sets of films.