魔兽电影在中国历史性的成功有黑暗的一面 [美国媒体]

There’s a Dark Side to the Warcraft Movie’s Epic Success in China

魔兽电影在中国历史性的成功有黑暗的一面

TIME June 20, 2016

《时代》


 
影片的成功归功于中国死忠粉，他们想逃离那个缺乏有意义选择的世界

With its fantastical realms and motley cast of supernatural miscreants, World of Warcraft broke new ground in multiplayer online role-playing computer games, and has now spawned the most successful computer game movie adaptation of all time.

凭借神奇的地域和多样的超自然怪物，《魔兽世界》为多用户在线角色扮演游戏立下了新标杆，如今又衍生出了有史以来最成功的游戏改编电影。

After its second weekend at the box office, Warcraft: The Beginning has recouped $377.6 million globally, despite bombing in the U.S. The movie received a meager 32% on metacritic.com and took just $24.4 million in its first five days in American cinemas, and dropped a whopping 73% on its second weekend, bringing in a paltry $6.5 million. Yet the movie remains a financial triumph almost entirely owed to its showing in China, where cinema-goers have so far shelled out more than $200 million on it, even eclipsing Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which took $125.4 million in its entire run in China.

到第二个周末为止，尽管在美国遭遇惨败，电影《魔兽》依然获得了3.776亿美元全球票房。影片在metacritic网站只被打了可怜的32分，在美国院线五天入账2440万美元，并在第二个周末骤跌73%，只有微不足道的650万美元。然而，影片依然获得了经济上的巨大成功，这主要归功于其在中国的表现，那里的观众为此花了超过2亿美元，甚至盖过了在中国共入账1.254亿美元的《星球大战：原力觉醒》。

Movie experts hail Warcraft’s success as demonstrating the power of China’s booming cinema. Box office revenues grew by almost 50% in China last year and may even surpass the U.S. by as early as next year. There are plans afoot to double the nation’s 35,000 cinema screens before long. (The U.S. currently has just over 40,000.)

电影专家将《魔兽》的成功誉为中国急速成长的电影市场力量的证明。其票房收入去年增长了50%，甚至可能在明年就超过美国。该国有计划将其目前3.5万块银幕在短期内翻倍（美国目前仅将将超过4万块）。

This trend has the potential to radically reshape how Hollywood operates. But while there is no denying the burgeoning power of Chinese film fans, assessing Warcraft’s success requires more nuance. Just like in the U.S., the movie dropped off massively after its opening — netting $156 million over its first five days and the next $40 million-odd over spread over more than a week. That suggests that the Warcraft movie may not have broad appeal among Chinese; instead, its success appears to be largely owed to the nation’s sizeable and dedicated gamer following.

这个趋势有可能会彻底重塑好莱坞的运作。但是，尽管不能否认中国急速增长的影迷力量，评价《魔兽》的成功仍然需要考虑更多细节。和美国一样，影片在首映后票房骤跌----最初5天入账1.56亿，在随后一周多时间里以每天数百万的速度积累了4000万。这说明电影《魔兽》没有在中国获得广泛的吸引力，实际上，它的成功主要归功于这个国家数量庞大、死忠的游戏迷。

“I have watch the Warcraft movie five times, and I will never forget my obsession and my friends who fought by my side in Warcraft,” posted one user of China’s Twitter-like microblog Weibo. “I had fun, also lost myself in World of Warcraft. I have lived in one more world than most people.”

“我已经看了魔兽电影5次，我永远忘不了那种沉迷和在魔兽里与我并肩作战的朋友，”一位中国的类推特服务微博的用户说，“我有乐子，也迷失在了魔兽世界中。我比其他人多一个世界。”

Since its launch in 2004, WoW, as it’s better known to fans, has drawn over 100 million players — a record for a role-playing computer game. Half of the current five-million-strong playing roster resides in China, where the game is aptly know as “World of Magic Beasts.” They are typically young men aged 15-25.

这个游戏更为人熟知的名字是WOW，自2004年发行后，已经拥有了超过1亿用户——创造了角色扮演游戏的纪录。其500万活跃用户中有一半生活在中国，在那里这个游戏被恰当地称为“魔法野兽的世界”。他们是典型的青年，在15-25岁之间。

“I can still remember me and my roommates in college staying up late and playing Warcraft together,” posted another fan. “We were really bonding through this game. The success of Warcraft is not because how good the movie is, but it represents the years of our burning passions, and the unforgettable brotherhood.”

“我依然记得我和室友一起玩魔兽世界到深夜，”另一位用户说，“我们就是靠这个游戏混熟的。魔兽的成功不在于电影多好，而是它体现了我们那些年燃烧的激情和难忘的友谊。”

Chinese kids regularly get so hooked on WoW that they forget to eat, drink or sleep — one player even died after a marathon, 19-hour session. WoW is so popular that there are professional players who are treated like movie stars, complete with sponsorship deals with fawning groupies. There are Chinese boot camps set up especially for kids who suffer from role-player game addiction.

中国孩子经常因为过于沉迷魔兽世界而忘记吃喝睡觉——一位玩家甚至在19个小时的马拉松游戏后死去。魔兽在中国太流行了，甚至有专业玩家，由支持的团体赞助，像电影明星一样。中国还有专门为沉迷角色扮演游戏而开设的夏令营。

This obsession with role-playing escapism could have much to do with the highly regimented lives led by middle-class Chinese kids, who cope with enormous pressure. Due to China’s only recently rescinded One-Child Policy, many are only children, and are solely relied upon to support their aging parents and grandparents.

这种对角色扮演、逃避现实的沉迷应该是和中国中产阶级孩子被严格管制的生活有关，用以抵抗这种巨大的压力。由于最近才取消的独生子女政策，他们许多人是独子，是他们年长的父母、祖父母的唯一依靠。

This month, 9.4 million Chinese kids took the gaokao — China’s university entrance exam equivalent to America’s SAT — yet there were only 3 million college places up for grabs, and only a small fraction of those were at “top-tier” institutions. Exam-related suicide is so common that one school even installed special barriers to prevent students flinging themselves to their deaths.

本月，940万中国孩子参加了“高考”——中国大学的入学考试，相当于美国的SAT——而只有300万个大学名额可用，其中只有很少一部分属于“顶级”学府。考试引发的自杀太普遍了，有一所学校甚至安装了护栏防止学生跳楼自杀。

Adulthood doesn’t bring respite. Deviant behavior massively jeopardizes career advancement in a one-party state where every citizen has a dangan, or personal file, that lists their misdeeds from their entry into public life — typically enrollment at elementary school — until their death.

成年后也好不到哪里去。在一个一党国家，每个公民都有一份“档案”，即个人档案，列出了他们的违法行为，从踏进社会的时候起——即在初级学校注册时——至到他们的死亡。因此，离经叛道的行为会极大损害人们的职业发展。

In this suffocating world, WoW’s appeal is in having complete, uncompromising control over a fantasy, where a player can be as brazen, shocking and nonconformist as their imaginations can stretch.

在这个令人窒息的世界里，魔兽世界提供了对一个魔幻世界的完全控制权，在那里玩家可以随着想象的延伸，展示出勇敢、震撼和不循规蹈矩的一面。

“Even though young [Chinese] people would like to care about political and historical issues, their choices are limited,” Zhou Xiaozheng, a retired professor of sociology at Beijing’s Renmin University, tells TIME. “So they indulge themselves in entertainment.”

“即便（中国的）青年乐意关注政治和历史问题，他们的选择也很有限，”北京的人民大学退休社会学教授周孝正对《时代》说，“所以他们就沉溺于娱乐。”

According to an Economist special report on the Chinese Internet, the CCP is happy to encourage role-player games like WoW as an unthreatening outlet for what’s essentially a “caged” populace. “[The government] has allowed a distinctly Chinese Internet to flourish, with more people getting online — and more of them shopping, watching videos, gaming and chatting with each other, all on trusted Chinese platforms — than in any other country. This customization of the Internet is an important part of building a better cage.”

根据中国互联网上《经济学人》的一份特别报道，中共很乐意鼓励如魔兽世界这样的角色扮演游戏，以作为本质上被“圈养”的民众的一种无害发泄。“（政府）明显在支持中国互联网的蓬勃发展，有比别的国家更多的人上线----就有更多人在可信的中国平台上购物、看视频、游戏或聊天。这种定制的互联网就是更好‘圈养’的一个重要部分。”

Zhou agrees: “The government doesn’t like the idea of young people getting involved in sensitive issues,” he adds. “Comments concerning such sensitive issues are quickly removed, but entertainment content is free of control.”

周孝正同意。“政府不喜欢青年介入到敏感事件中，”他补充道，“涉及敏感事件的评论会很快被删除，但娱乐内容就较为自由。”

—With reporting by Zhang Chi / Beijing



Dr Mantis Toboggan
"Chinese kids regularly get so hooked on WoW that they forget to eat, drink or sleep — one player even died after a marathon, 19-hour session"
Son, that's not a marathon session; you just stayed up late playing video games after a day of playing video games.
Our crew of gamers would often stay up 2 days or longer in a "Marathon session" when we were teens. Delirious? yes. But not eating or drinking is just stupidity. No offense but Darwin's theory at work...

“中国孩子经常因为过于沉迷魔兽世界而忘记吃喝睡觉——一位玩家甚至在19个小时的马拉松游戏后死去。”
孩子，那不是马拉松游戏；你只是在白天玩了一天游戏后继续玩到很晚而已。
我们十几岁的时候，游戏队友经常连续两天甚至更长事件进行“马拉松游戏”。神志混乱？是的，但不吃不喝就很蠢了。无意冒犯，达尔文的理论还是有用的……

SuperDave
Back in my military days I was in a unit where almost universally everyone played Warcraft. It got to a point that we kept an old laptop at work so the technician on duty could use AOL and play in the game using the phone line and avoid violating policy about using the base's network. (Local phone calls weren't considered a violation at the time.)
It also served a secondary roll. Communication with staff members. After working hours everybody would be in game. You had an issue or needed a question answered you simply fired up the laptop, went in guild chat and asked away.
Doing this was more reliable than trying to reach people on cell phones. And not only did you know who was online and who wasn't but more importantly so did your whole chain of command. Somebody could avoid your phone call, but they couldn't avoid responding to your in game when the whole command knew you were actively playing.
It was a mucked up way to do business but it worked. Response time on trouble calls dropped considerably after taking this approach. We just didn't advertise that we were doing it.
That however was back in the hey day of the game. These days, we all probably know more people who played it than actually still play the game. The MMORPG market was a radically different creature a dozen years ago than it is today.

在我服役的时候，我们部队里几乎全都玩魔兽。诀窍是我们坚持要用一台老实笔记本工作，技术人员就能用美国在线拨号上网玩游戏，而不会违反条例。（那个时候本地拨号不违例）
它还有额外功能，和其它员工沟通。在工作了数个小时后，大家都在游戏里了。你如果工作上有什么事或有问题要解决，就打开笔记本，进入公会频道问就是了。
这比用手机找人更可靠。不仅是因为你可以清楚看到谁在线谁不在，更重要的是指令链。人们可能会不理你的手机呼叫，但他们没法不在游戏里回应你，因为大家都能看到。
这个干活的方法很搞笑，但管用。处理麻烦问题的响应时间在采用了这种方法后有明显缩短。我们只是不四处宣扬而已。
不过这是游戏全盛期的事了。如今，说自己玩这游戏的比真在玩的多。MMORPG游戏市场和十几年前比，已经完全不同了。

A. Sintjago
Spending time in video games as entertainment is the same as spending time in any other form of entertainment including watching sports on TV or even playing sports. Some people just don't get video game culture. You could argue the same as people watching Game of Thrones or any other fiction show including Star Wars and Lord of The Rings, or any TV show. We can choose whatever from of entertainment we like whether it is playing chess or dancing. There is no dark side to it unless taken to an extreme like anything else. 5 million players out of a billion and a half people is not that much or proportionally greater than the US. Video game culture, and revenue (professional gaming) is increasing and will likely continue to increase. They aren't better or worse than other forms of entertainment, just different.

在视频游戏上花时间娱乐，和在其它娱乐形式上花时间没什么区别，比如看电视体育节目或自己参加体育运动。有人就是不理解视频游戏文化。你可以和任何看《权力的游戏》或什么幻想片子比如《星球大战》、《指环王》或什么电视片的人争论。我们可以选择任何我们乐意的娱乐形式，无论是下棋还是跳舞。只要不极端到超越其它所有事，就没有“黑暗面”的问题。15亿人中有500万玩家，按人口比例并不比美国更多。视频游戏文化、专业游戏收益正在增长，并会继续增长。他们并不比其它娱乐形式更好或更坏，只是不同。

Todd
If you go in without high expectations, there are some pretty cool aspects to the movie. The magic depictions are among the best I've seen; key orcs are pretty compelling even if most are pretty monocromatic; and yes the CGI is very well done. As far as China, there are over 1.3M people, 5 million playing WOW doesn't seem very significant. There have been more in the US with a much smaller population. Kind of a made up story line as I see it....

只要你不抱过高的期待，影片还是有不少不错的地方。魔法的表现是我见过最好的；尽管大部分兽人看起来很单调，但主要兽人角色都很精彩；还有非常棒的电脑特技。至于中国，130万人，有500万玩魔兽世界也不是什么大事。美国人口少，玩的人更多。在我看来这就是扯淡故事……

Nathanie
Despite its monetary success in the US, it actually was a fairly good movie. It had characters and character development, plot and plot development, a decent twist tossed in the mix, and was a good start explaining the world to those that don't play the games and to future movies. I don't think that it "failed" because it was bad. It likely "failed" because it's a movie adaptation of a video game, which has historically done bad in the past (Mario Brothers just about killed them). That, and we've already had a summer full of superhero movies. So your competing for limited money (since movies are expensive and people will pick and choose which they see) after 3-4 of the BIG blockbusters this half of the year alone.

不管它在美国的收入成功，它其实是部相当不错的电影。它有人物和人物发展，有情节和情节发展，有多因素混杂的大反转，很好地向那些不玩游戏的人介绍了这个世界，为未来的续集打下基础。我认为它的失败不是因为它是糟糕的影片，而是因为它是部游戏改编电影，历来就是出烂片的领域（超级玛丽是代表）。还有，我们已经迎来了一个充斥着超级英雄的夏天，你必须要这半年中，在有限的预算（电影票太贵了，人们不得不选真正想看的）中挑出3-4部真正的大片看。

Simo
spending time watching Reality shows like the Kardashian is much more educated, I am pretty sure.
Video game is an entertainment no different from watching sports or TV shows, different culture, different country, different preference.
Also, the US critics pretty much killed this movie b4 it even came out. most general audience watched the movie themselves really have no problem with this movie.

我敢肯定，花时间看卡戴珊之类的真人秀更有教育意义。
视频游戏是种和看比赛或电视节目一样的娱乐，不同的文化，不同的国家，偏好也不同。
此外，美国评论家在这部电影出来前就喷死了它。大部分真正看过影片的观众都没什么意见。

Ihategolf
The fact that this movie has done so well in China just confirms my belief that 90% of the WoW community is comprised of Chinese credit farmers.

这部电影在中国这么成功，证明了我的判断：90%的魔兽世界社团是由中国金币农夫组成的。

vorn
If anyone played WoW then they'd see the Chinese gold farmers running around back in the day. Those people were not paid very well according to western standards but their farming areas were areas that average WoW players didn't expect people to farm at.
I always sent one a friendly "Ni Hao" when I saw one churning away at Hearthglen (pre-elite nerf) and wondered how anyone could spend 16 hours a day alone in that area.

如果有人玩魔兽世界的话，就能遇到中国金币农夫成天四处跑。依据西方标准，这些人的收入并不高，但他们在普通玩家不想有人打钱的地方到处打钱。
每当看到有人在壁炉谷四处搅和的时候（在精英怪削弱前），我总是友好地说一句“Ni Hao”。很奇怪，谁会没事每天在那里花16个小时。

C.P.S
I fail to see exactly how the article's title relates to it's content.

我完全看不出这文章的标题和内容有什么关系。

phil
stupid critics are just realizing they are meaningless when it comes to overseas. So this is what they do to back track. Movie was great here in america just as it was world wide. Reason for ticket sales not doing well in america is because there isnt that many fans living here. Not in the numbers of europe and asia.

混蛋评论家正意识到在海外，他们一文不值。这就是他们找回场子的办法。电影在美国和在世界其它地方一样好。票房不好的原因是没有太多粉丝住在这里。和欧洲、亚洲没法比。

Sherman
This type of article is pathetic. Somehow because a movie is successful in China it must be the government that is bad. Now how stupid of a logic is that?

这种文章真可悲。仅仅因为电影在中国很成功，就说明政府一定是坏的。这是什么混蛋逻辑？

gary
WoW is so popular that there are professional players who are treated like movie stars, complete with sponsorship deals with fawning groupies...... Yep and there are also hacker farms there who spend all there time hacking American accounts.And when blizzard tracks it to china they say they cant do anything about it.

魔兽在中国太流行了，甚至有专业玩家，由支持的团体赞助，像电影明星一样……
没错，还有黑账号的人，成天黑美国账号。暴雪查到他们来自中国，但表示什么也做不了。

Ben
who on earth is shocked that the movie didn't have mass market appeal and only really appealed to fans of the game?

电影没有在大众市场取得成功，而在粉丝中很成功，这到底有什么可震惊的？

Biff
I don't understand all these sites talking about the drop in viewers. It launched over a 5 day holiday the first week, The second week only had a 2 day weekend. Of course there will be a massive drop in viewers.

我不明白为何这些网站都在谈观众流失。首映的第一周有5天假期，第二周只有两天周末，当然观众数会大大减少。

Bill
Where is the hate coming from? Why are the critics so far off on this one? This movie was beautiful. CGI was very convincing and the story was pretty good. I'm looking forward to the sequel. Fingers crossed for Lich King origin.

这仇恨是怎么来的？为何评论家们总是这么对待这部影片？这片子很好看。电脑特技令人信服，故事也不错。我会去看续集。期待巫妖王的崛起。