Go ＂brain burning＂ with ＂atypical spy war hero＂
The sound of sweeping the floor in the early morning swept across the streets of Shanghai in the winter of 1941. Three nervous young people came out of the all-night cinema and hurried to the joint. Unexpectedly, they were trapped in the encirclement of the Japanese, and Xiao Zhengguo, a military special agent, died. As soon as the camera turns, three Shanghai gangsters plan to do things in the ballroom, and their plans are ruined because they attack Japanese soldiers who are indecent dancers. Among them, Chen Shan, who looks like Xiao Zhengguo and has a bright brain, is targeted by Japanese spy Araki … … Around the pursuit, fighting, torture, temptation, stealing the column, and fighting with wits, a drama about faith and justice began.
After several ups and downs, it is no longer an easy task for the spy war drama to re-circle the audience. However, the spy war Deep Sea Sting, which is currently being broadcasted, has broken the shackles of people and innovated the narrative language, making the spy war drama return to the screen after several years of silence, and once again completed a gorgeous turn that is eye-catching.
People’s heroic expression with personality and blood.
The Scare of the Deep Sea tells a story of growth and transformation: during the fall of Shanghai in 1941, Chen Shan, a street punk, was accidentally forced to get involved in the whirlpool of spy war in blood shed, and went to Chongqing to sneak into the military system under the guise of Xiao Zhengguo, ready to steal important information. However, as a native of China, Chen Shan didn’t want to betray his country. Under the influence of the underground party of the Chinese Communist Party, Chen Shan stood in the anti-Japanese camp again and again in the battle of wits with the enemy, and finally established his faith and grew into a real soldier. It is the most grounded and humanized expression of this drama to combine the growth of small people with the history of spy sea confrontation and show the inner struggle and awakening of small people on their growth path.
No one is born a hero, they just completed their mission at a critical moment. Chen Shan’s transformation is not only a kind of unconventional characterization, but also highlights the fireworks of the hero, and the tear in the process of growing up is more infectious.
Small bludger, Japanese spy, Kuomintang military intelligence personnel and underground workers of the Communist Party of China. In the play, Chen Shan struggles among four identities, and the "atypical" of this role has more room for development. In order to rescue the kidnapped sister from the Japanese spy, he had to accept the task assigned by the Japanese spy department, but he didn’t want to hurt his country and people for it. In the words of Zhang Li, the heroine in the film and an underground member of the Communist Party of China, Chen Shan’s every action is like gambling. In order to prevent Japanese agents from switching penicillin to kill the Flying Tigers, Chen Shan was once caught in a dilemma: to keep the pilot, but not to let Araki doubt himself. So while dealing with Japanese agents, he cooperated with Zhang Li to take rescue action. Even though he risked his life and entered the bomb shelter where Japanese agents placed time bombs with the pilots, his life was hanging by a thread … …
The treacherous background of the times, the thrilling intelligence struggle, the suspense of challenging IQ, the troubled times love of interrogating faith, and the fusion and collision of various dramatic elements in spy war dramas constantly stimulate the audience’s perception and refresh the ratings of TV stations. From Latent to Before Dawn, from Cliff to Pretender, and from Decryption to Kite, the continuous "spy war fever" on the screen has led to the proliferation of the spy war drama market and the serious homogenization of the subject matter and content in the past decade. How to break through the existing routines and get out of the creative bottleneck of the "chattering" spy war drama has always been a difficult problem for the creators.
"The Scare of the Deep Sea" adds another possibility to the characterization of the spy war theme.
As a mature type of drama, spy war drama has been constantly broken in the aspects of subject matter, characters, plot structure and narrative techniques, and deliberately creating a great heroic aura is no longer the goal pursued by the creators, adding an alternative image to the screen spy sea group, which is becoming a new way to innovate the narrative of characters in spy war drama.
Chen Shan in The Deep Sea of Spy Warfare is a magical existence, both in the eyes of Japanese agent Araki and the audience. He has the IQ of logical reasoning, the ability to escape from the secret room, the ability to remember everything, and the talent to improvise. He even has a face that looks like a military agent Xiao Zhengguo. Because of these "living values", he became Araki’s "wonderful work" and pretended to be Xiao to steal from Chongqing. Then there was a series of special training for the devil, who was forced to remember everything about Xiao, from memorizing various character relationships to practicing writing with his left hand and holding a gun, learning Morse code, fighting and dancing, until in a fighting training, Chen Shan, who was exhausted, desperately grabbed a pistol and killed a Japanese soldier. Under the stress of life and death, he was forced to learn to "kill", and Chen Shan finally became Xiao Zhengguo. Araki was very excited, but for Chen Shan, great psychological pressure and inner entanglements followed him from now on.
A good characterization must be as deep as peeling an onion, and under the gradual progress of the main plot, the versatility of the character is also spread out layer by layer. From hating evil and saving dancers from the Japanese, to repeatedly asking the purpose behind Araki’s bait-and-switch plan, although Chen Shan had no firm belief and no ideal of pursuing progress at that time, his outlook on life was "as long as he can live, it is more important than anything else", but his blood is still there, and his conscience is still alive. Chen Shan loves his blind sister deeply, which is why he was threatened by Japanese agents. He hopes that the war will be extinguished as soon as possible, and he hopes to stand up straight and be an upright China person.
When he first joined the military system, Chen Shan watched patriotic dramas with his colleagues and shouted the generous slogan "May our blood today be exchanged for peace and prosperity tomorrow", but at the same time he was ashamed of his identity. When he began to wake up, he saved Zhang Li, Ma Xiangshan and allied pilots. In his heart, he always had a simple cognition: "China’s guns are used to deal with the enemy, not with their own people." This kind of setting, on the one hand, promotes the development of the plot through the contradiction between home and country, on the other hand, it also completes the discussion of family and humanity more thoroughly.
Looking back on Chen Shan’s mental journey as an "atypical spy war hero", we can find that a belief must conform to human nature and common sense, so that it will not be biased, radical and distorted. Belief is not a rigid dogma, nor an abstract idea or an empty slogan, but a person’s true perception of the world from ignorance to awareness.
The reason why there is no shortage of audiences for spy drama is that its brain-burning intellectual confrontation and tense game between good and evil are the key points. The surging tide in calm, the imminent Jedi counterattack and the quiet psychological contest are all factors to consider the quality of a spy drama. From the very beginning, The Scare of the Spy War in the Deep Sea is full of intellectual games from various forces, and it also integrates the reasoning elements that young audiences are keen on into the strong plot of burning their brains and abusing their hearts, creating a spy sea, a belief game, and a confusing viewing effect.
For the first time, pretending to be Xiao Zhengguo’s joint, Chen Shan was asked by the "lion" to get rid of it, and the monster was upgraded to pass the customs and treading on thin ice. In Chongqing, waiting for Xiao Zhengguo, who has been missing for three months, is even more difficult and dangerous. Every wrong step will be an abyss.
The layman looks at the excitement, and the expert looks at the doorway. After watching spy war dramas for so many years, most of the spy fans are not satisfied with watching killing and cheating to catch spies. Instead, they will use logical reasoning to analyze the plot and even examine each character with emotion. Chen Shan is not the first "atypical spy war hero" on the screen, and certainly won’t be the last. Behind the changeable identity and career of the spy war protagonist, we can see the difficulty of innovation in spy war drama. Should the spy war hero with fireworks and the plot of brain-burning reversal be the standard of spy war drama, or just a stage in the development of spy war drama? Various screen explorations and water tests continue. In any case, The Scare of the Deep Sea shows that there are more possibilities for spy drama. (Wu Xiaodong)