The "Sin City" of the previous life can be called a cult/classic masterpiece, achieving a win-win situation at the box office and word of mouth.

The $40 million investment in exchange for $74 million at the North American box office and $150 million at the global box office is not a huge profit, but as an R-rated film noir, it has refreshed the box office history of North America and become the box office champion of neo-noir in film history, and has never been surpassed.

At the same time, the film's media comprehensive evaluation reached 74 points, and the IMDB score reached 8.1 points under the scoring of more than 600,000 netizens, ranking among the top 200 of IMDB's 250 masterpieces. What's more, the creation of a new stylized approach to filming, which sparked numerous discussions, made films not only popular in the videotape rental market, forming a special culture of popularity, but also influencing the creation of many films, the most famous of which is "The Three Hundred Warriors of Sparta".

It's like countless cult/classic movies in history, which are worshiped and rejected by those who like it, but no one can deny that these cult/classic works have formed a powerful cultural phenomenon that affects the progress of society and life from all aspects.

For example, "Blade Runner", this work failed miserably at the box office when it was released, and the word-of-mouth fell to the bottom, which can be described as a complete rout, almost making Harrison Ford at his peak abandoned by the film company, and Ridley-Scott (Ridley-Scott) was directly silent for ten years. But time has justified the name of this movie, this "bad movie" of the year has been more and more praised by science fiction fans and the industry, and by around 2000, the status of this work in film history has been comparable to "2001: A Space Odyssey".

The sci-fi world and futuristic images built by "Blade Runner", including decadent beauty, melancholy love, psychedelic music and other elements, have influenced countless sci-fi films.

Sin City is also one of many cult masterpieces. However, compared to "Blade Runner". The contribution of "Sin City" to film history and culture is much weaker.

In "Blade Runner", the film boldly discusses the philosophical question of "what is a human being", a proposition that in the distant year of 1982 was almost a mysterious territory that no one touched; But now, this has become an important issue that generations of filmmakers and science fiction films have difficult to bypass.

Yet, in the midst of the "sin city." Stylized images and cinematic techniques are astonishing and eye-catching, almost shocking the hearts of every viewer with the attitude of subversives, and the powerful visual shock has pushed the artistic technique of "film" to the peak. However, the emotional support core of the film is too weak, and the work lacks a value that supports the entire story.

In the case of the famous "Batman Prequel: The Dark Knight", this dark-style work sets an almost unsurpassed benchmark, combining commercial elements with a cult core. In the movie, the clown's harassment and evil are not simply for revenge, but a ritual that involves violence and gore to awaken the public; There is no direct connection between the Joker's violence and his past vendettas. Rather, it has to do with some kind of redemption and revelation. This gives the negative character a speculative and philosophical color, and makes the positive character also fall into a dilemma, this kind of oscillation of values and thinking about justice and evil has achieved the status of this film in film history.

The lack of this philosophical support in the works of "Sin City" also makes the film unable to reach the heights of "Blade Runner" or "The Dark Knight".

In the story of "Sin City", the emotional support is almost stripped away, and it is completely reduced to a bloody and violent visual feast. It is undeniable that this simple and crude way of expressing Xiàn also pushes the spiritual shock brought by the stylized influence of the film to the extreme. It makes people feel the hearty pleasure/feeling; But regrettably, the work missed the opportunity for further sublimation. It is not a "classic" that stops at "masterpieces".

When Lance conceived the conceptual framework of Sin City, his first reaction was the creative process of "killing people with a knife" - because the original script of the latter also lacked a philosophical ascent and thinking, wasting a huge ideological core. Since Lance wanted to make "Sin City" the finale of the Sin trilogy, Lance not only needed to discuss the dark evil and social indifference of the first two works, but also to put an end to the whole thinking proposition - not necessarily to arrive at an answer. But a result must be given.

This is not an easy task.

Lance clearly knew that if too much attention was paid to philosophical thinking, the proportion of the film would inevitably be unbalanced, but it would cut the highlights of "Sin City" to impress countless fans, and make it a terrible work with a big end, nondescript, and unintelligible; But if you don't change it for the theme and soul. So he is just copying the versions of Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, and what capital does he rely on to compete with these two original opponents?

How to grasp the balance between business and art is also an eternal theme of film art.

What's more, Lance currently does not have a clear idea of the outcome of the trilogy, whether it is to let the darkness completely swallow up, and the whole society will be dark; is still a continuation of the vein of the previous two works, leaving a faint ray of hope; Or let the world fall apart, with good and evil going to the end together, and society going to nothingness, starting from scratch......

Without a clear idea, there is no way to inject a philosophical core into the script, and naturally it is impossible to build the structure of the entire script, let alone conceive the framework of the comic adaptation. So, after spending most of his time reading the manga today, Lance fell into a quagmire and felt like he was tied down and couldn't get to work at all.

However, Kayla's words just now reminded him that creativity is the most important thing at the moment compared to the context, framework, or core.

Because Lance knows better than anyone that if Frank Miller sees Robert and Quentin's stylized adaptation of "Sin City", then this work is tantamount to completely missing Lance. If Lance wants to take the rights to the adaptation, if Lance wants to complete his trilogy plan, if Lance wants to get ahead of Robert and Quentin to achieve this goal, he will have to race against time.

Lance had to execute, produce, present, and put the idea in front of Frank before Robert and Quentin came up with the idea of caricaturing the movie. After Shun won the adaptation rights, Lance slowly began to discuss with Frank, deepening and refining the script, and truly creating a complete trilogy of sins belonging to Lance.

In other words, Lance needs to show not only Frank his sincerity, but also his ability to act, and he and Cole must go hand in hand.

The most perfect solution is naturally to shoot a dailies, presenting the visual effects and shooting techniques in front of Frank completely, if Lance remembers correctly, in the last life, Robert did just that, playing the dailies directly to Frank, which is more impactful and convincing than any fanciful explanation; But the problem is that Lance doesn't have enough time now, he only has less than twelve hours, and it is almost impossible to complete the work of contacting the actors, the crew, the studio, and the post-production in such a short time.

So, Lance decided to draw a set of storyboards to realistically show the effect of the film, and then handed it to Cole, so that he could present it to Frank in the first time, along with the scripts of "City of God" and "Murder by Knife". In between Frank's review of the material, Lance sought time to shoot a three-minute dailis based on the storyboard, hoping to win the adaptation rights in one fell swoop when the two of them met!

Although it was past midnight at this time, Lance's thoughts were clearer than ever, and his whole body began to boil. Thinking of this, Lance immediately dialed Percy Brandley's phone, and then Edgar Snow's phone, and after hanging up the phone, Lance did not immediately go to work, but changed his clothes, made a gesture of preparing to leave, and went downstairs directly.

Dylan, who was waiting downstairs, quickly captured the scene of Lance leaving, and he saw Lance call a taxi, and the shutter in his hand quickly recorded all the scenes, and his heart was full of joy. However, before the joy could bloom, Dylan couldn't help but be stunned when he saw the taxi leave straight away, and Lance was still in place.

Then, Dylan's jaw began to dislocate, because Lance actually walked straight towards his position, and he stared at Lance with round eyes in disbelief, obviously not understanding what was going on.

Lance stood next to Dylan's cockpit, looked at the inconspicuous pickup truck, and a smile appeared on the corner of his mouth, which made Dylan look frightened, and then Lance patted his car door, "You can get off work, I will rest here tonight." ”

Dylan was stunned, then reacted. Because Kayla left in the middle of the night, if Lance waited until the morning to leave, it would be a little far-fetched to make news, so Lance came out and concocted the scene just now.

After finishing speaking, Lance didn't stop, just turned around and returned to the hotel again. Dylan sat in place, always feeling that something was wrong, but he couldn't think of a reason for it, he was unwilling to wait in the same place for about thirty minutes, but he didn't find anything abnormal, and he had to drive home.

In fact, after Lance hung up the phone, less than twenty minutes later, Edgar rushed to the Montage Hotel in a hurry, but Dylan, who witnessed Edgar walking into the hotel lobby, did not notice anything unusual, so he could only leave in a strange mood.

Naturally, this couldn't be better, because Lance didn't want the plans for Sin City to leak out in advance, which was the real reason why he went downstairs to show the scene to Dylan. (To be continued.) )

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