When the filming of "The Legend of the Great Sage" began to be in full swing, all kinds of doubts from the outside world never stopped, and those young fans felt that Li Xiaole played the Monkey King, but those fifty and sixty-year-old audiences wrote to the Film Bureau to express their protests, most of them were fans of the original "Journey to the West", and they thought that this time the six young children should play the Monkey King throughout the whole process, so as to maintain the original flavor of this traditional work.

And it's not just the worries of Journey to the West fans from all over the world, this time the most doubtful voices from the Chinese opera industry, in the report of "Chinese Opera Magazine", Li Zuming, the descendant of Li Wanchun, the "Northern Monkey King", criticized: "This is the first opportunity for Chinese monkey opera to step onto the world stage, and professional actors of monkey opera should be allowed to perform, how can some laymen be allowed to serve as Monkey King and those monkey monkey grandchildren?" I also heard that there is a foreigner who wants to perform the macaque king, which I really don't understand. ”

The Peking Opera industry believes that if monkey opera is to be promoted to the world stage now, Wang Huawu, known as the "Northwest Monkey King", is the most suitable candidate.

This kind of double pressure from the old "Journey to the West" fans and Peking Opera fans is something that every remake of "Journey to the West" crew will feel, on TV, the theme of Journey to the West has been remade many times, whether it is Cao Rong in "Journey to the West", or Li Lianjie in "The King of Kung Fu", and even Zhen Zhidan in the later "Havoc in the Heavenly Palace", as long as he is an actor who has played the Monkey King, he is compared with the version of Liuxiaolingtong, if you don't look like Liuxiaolingtong, everyone thinks you are a failure.

This is not to blame for everyone's judging standards, mainly almost every Chinese has repeatedly watched the six-year-old version for many years, and unconsciously has formed a fixed impression in everyone's mind, and Monkey King is an image.

"It's so infuriating, this is obviously to promote Chinese culture, why are so many people scolding us." Tom Cruise, who was conducting "monkey opera" training at the Emeishan Film and Television Base, learned of these news, and the atmosphere directly threw the water bottle on the ground, he, a Hollywood movie star, came all the way to China to spend a few months playing a small role, and he had to be scolded, which was really infuriating.

Not only Tom Cruise, but also those young actors who play monkey monkey grandson, Hu Ge, Wang Baoqiang, they are very angry, they have been leading two cows in the past three weeks, Jiang Wen has led two cows to figure out how to play the bull demon king, and these "monkey" actors are observing the various life actions of the monkeys in Mount Emei day and night, everyone is jumping on the ground on "four feet", I don't know how many falls they have fallen, and everyone is covered in bruises.

Li Xiaole chose the film and television base in Mount Emei, and part of the reason is that there are many monkeys here, basically as long as there are a few fixed haunts of the monkey group, you can see the monkeys, and it also saves Zhen Zhidan the trouble of going to the zoo to observe when filming "Havoc in the Sky".

And Li Xiaole, Tom Cruise, Hu Ge, Wang Baoqiang and several other actors with more roles also found an old farmer in Emeishan to lead a domestic monkey, kept it in his room every day, and observed and learned every move of this animal every day.

Although everyone is full of enthusiasm and wants to have a perfect performance in "The Legend of the Great Sage", after three weeks of "monkey show" training, everyone still can't hold it anymore, and gossip and emotions from the outside world are inevitable.

However, Li Xiaole is not angry about these doubts, and now the world's greatest motion capture actor is Andy Serkis, this stage actor in order to play "King Kong" well, put a lot of effort into it, not only consulted a lot of relevant information, spent a long time in the London Zoo to observe the movements of the orangutans, but also went to the orangutan habitat in the mountains of Rwanda, Africa, to study the living habits of the orangutans, which is considered to have done a lot of homework.

But look at the six-year-old...... This monkey opera master has been learning monkey opera since he was 8 years old, not to mention all kinds of basic skills training, two years of monkey boxing in the later stage, three years of monkey sticks, just Sun Wukong jumped up on the pole and appeared for three seconds, it took at least one year to practice, he filmed 25 episodes of Journey to the West for another six and a half years, and his entire career as an actor can be said to be playing a role, which is not comparable to Andy Serkis, who is known as a "master" abroad.

Li Xiaole knew very well in his heart that even though he was tired every day with a sore back and jumped up and down with a group of monkeys, this gap of decades could not be made up for by a period of intensive training.

"I really don't understand, what Director Li thinks, the training time this time is too short, it will take at least two years to look like it......" As the leading actor and director of the monkey drama this time, the six-year-old child also complained again and again in private, feeling that the preparation this time was too insufficient.

Liu Xiaolingtong, the master of monkey opera, seems to be more suitable for this Monkey King to perform by himself, but Li Xiaole has his own ideas, why he insists on using professional actors, not only because of their fame, but more importantly, because of their expressiveness, "The Legend of the Great Sage" is not only to reproduce Journey to the West, but more importantly, to surpass the original "Journey to the West".

After a month of training, Li Xiaole let everyone start the formal motion capture shooting, when watching Li Xiaole, Tom Cruise, Wang Baoqiang squeaking in front of the camera, gesturing with various sign language movements, Liu Xiaolingtong and other monkey show experts all shook their heads, and couldn't help but sigh: "Too bad, too bad...... There is no energy at all. ”

But no matter how dissatisfied they are, every time Li Xiaole watches the camera, he will give a thumbs up and feel that he has played well as these actors, which makes Liu Xiaolingtong even more incomprehensible, how can this work? From his point of view, these people are simply too "amateurish".

Finally, when the filming was going on for two weeks, Liu Xiaolingtong couldn't help it, and knocked on the door of Li Xiaole's post-production studio at night with his own monkey opera troupe, "Director Li, I really can't go on like this, it will ruin the reputation of monkey opera." As soon as the six-year-old child entered the door, he spoke earnestly and authentically.

Seeing that these Peking Opera actors all looked slightly angry, Li Xiaole also understood what they were anxious about, and asked the staff to bring chairs for them to sit down: "Come sit down and talk first." ”

A group of people from Liuxiao sat down cheering, and many people shouted: "Director Li, your actors are really not good, let's act, we can play well." "My apprentices are all better than them, and they haven't started yet." "We're either arguing, or we don't think it's okay, anyway, there are no lines in the monkey show, and it's the same for us."

The students in the monkey troupe led by Liu Xiaolingtong have at least 3 years of training, and they are indeed much better than Tom Cruise, but they are only responsible for long shots, and they don't have their share in getting a little closer, which makes them feel very disappointed, although they are hanging "action stand-ins" on the actor list, but they also hope that they can have more opportunities to perform.

Li Xiaole looked at the excited crowd, knowing that they were also out of kindness, and also smiled and said: "In this way, you come and take a look, see if they are good monkeys, if you are not satisfied, I will immediately do what you say~~"

The eyes of the monkey opera apprentices immediately lit up, and a group of people immediately surrounded Li Xiaole and came to the computer, and Li Xiaole immediately played a clip of the monkey opera in Huaguo Mountain, which was just completed today.

As soon as everyone saw the "monkey monkey grandson" flying and jumping in the woods in the picture, they couldn't help but be stunned, this was filmed today? It's like a computer effect...... It's a real scene, right? At this time, suddenly a monkey rushed over to the camera and found that it opened its big mouth and grinned at it, so frightened that everyone leaned back.

"It's ...... What did they do? The six-year-old boy was stunned, pointing to the computer screen in disbelief, he is not an old antique who doesn't understand anything, he has also seen Gollum and King Kong, which are known as the most successful CG characters in the movie, but Gollum has a limited role in "The Lord of the Rings", mainly because the later painting can most effectively make this character come to life, and although King Kong is the protagonist, the focus of making King Kong, the action is definitely greater than the expression, and there is still a relatively large gap with the truth, but the monkey in these pictures in front of him ...... But it's completely true...... No...... Unlike real animals and apes, you can still see that they are highly intelligent creatures, and the subtlety of this combination of man and monkey really makes goosebumps rise in his goosebumps......

"Of course, that's the final result of motion capture of the face, plus CG special effects." Li Xiaole said with a smile.

In fact, no matter what the theme of "Journey to the West" was, including the old version of Journey to the West, although there were many demons and monsters in it, in fact, people could see at a glance that it was dressed up by people, and it was fake, even if the makeup was fine, in the movie world, this "fake" feeling would destroy everything.

Because the audience is no stranger to the appearance of animals, so the realism of the image is very high, no matter how the monkey opera experts of the six Xiaolingtongs act, how they act superbly, they are still a "person", their bone structure, their facial muscle composition is very different from apes, no matter how hard they try, these congenital "defects" can not be made up.

And Tom Cruise and Wang Baoqiang, although they are much worse than them in monkey play, but once their expressions are transplanted to the apes made of CG, then everything will be seen real and natural, and their expressiveness as star actors will greatly improve the screen impact of CG characters, and can convey the feelings of many monkey and monkey characters to the audience in the most real way. The combination of these two goes far beyond the scope of all "monkey opera" performances......