It has not fallen into the same strange circle as today's TV circle, and the plot is bizarre and sensational, and the quality is not enough to rely on the ideal plot and violent pornography and incest gimmicks; It didn't have an original fan base at first, but now its huge audience is built from scratch by its own efforts. Do not create a high-end illusion of false seriousness and emptiness; There are no deadpan politicians known for their exaggerated and illogical behavior; Journalists who don't live in Taohuayuan but want to educate everyone; Out-of-control group fighting dramas and their symbolic medieval warriors are not covered by big scenes and backgrounds, and are not supported by unnecessary violence and palace fights.
Contradiction is not a murder by convention, but an irreconcilable opposition of each character's distinctive personality, values and hobbies; The progress of the story does not depend on the sudden reconciliation of the characters given by the writers for the direction of the big story, but on the "cooperative relationship" temporarily constructed because of the simplest profit-seeking mentality; The design of suspense depends not on digging deep, but on the logical unexpected and reasonable trend, as well as the confrontation between roles with opposite values. To put it simply, it is not the unrestrained shaking of baggage, but the fate of the characters. At the same time, flashback and other structural designs have also buried a lot of suspense.
As far as the script is concerned, the core of the story of Breaking Bad is a life full of pressure and change, the diametrically opposite characters, irreconcilable contradictions, the fragile and uncertain relationship between the characters and the collapse they will inevitably cause. This is based on a simple truth: regardless of motivation, behavior determines attributes and results. It starts from a small environment and nobody: you and I have a slightly stronger mother, a weak middle-aged person who has been eroded by life again and again, a depressed life, the undercurrent of ordinary middle-class families, family chores, changes in people under the dual effects of internal personality motivation and external environment, and finally a very sad family and human nature storm. The patient and logical narrative wrapped in the black humor of Breaking Bad creates a vivid community environment and three-dimensional multi-faceted characters, and sets up many intriguing details, such as everyone killed by Laobai inherited this person's iconic behavior, Walter's appearance and clothing changes, oranges, imitating the godfather and Pulp Fiction's scenes, flies appearing twice, and so on, plus interlaced clues. The conflict of values buried in careful narration, the confrontation of role interests, and the sudden collapse and intersection of two parallel worlds-family and crime world-carefully constructed by Lao Bai have jointly contributed to the increasingly tense horror plot in the last eight episodes, which can give the audience a strong sense of substitution.
Walter white, the hero of Breaking Bad, is not a hero who is active and tall in traditional drama and embodies the highest wisdom, courage and advantages of human beings, but an "anti-hero" who is very close to ordinary people in reality. He has been hit hard by the highly privatized medical insurance system and can't hold his head in front of his brother-in-law Hank. At the same time, the drug-related plot of Breaking Bad itself is a marginal story, far from the audience. However, the economic logic of "for family" and "for dignity", which is constantly strengthened by the producers and conforms to contemporary values, has become the mainstream expression, winning the understanding, sympathy and resonance of the ordinary audience in front of the TV. In this way, whether walter white deviates from the mainstream social values or the mainstream social values represented by his wife skyler and brother-in-law Hank, the audience can feel the same. The result of the hedge between the two values is also an important part of the suspense of this play. The tone of realism makes the audience unconsciously substitute into the plot, watch and guess the direction of the story, and think about the humanity, morality and life dilemma hidden behind the story. It is worth mentioning that Breaking Bad is not the first anti-hero role in TV industry. This route was first initiated by david chase in sopranos, which successfully found a breakthrough for realistic TV series. Sopranos, Mad Men and Breaking Bad, the three most successful TV series in the 20th century, all contain anti-hero characters and are full of moral disputes.
Breaking Bad also carefully constructed a family environment full of reasonable contradictions. Many successful thrillers and suspense works are based on the influence of family, such as The Sixth Sense, The Omen, The Hanjiang Monster. Because any work needs to respond to the psychological demands of the audience and the family is shared by everyone, the family background of Breaking Bad has narrowed the distance between it and the audience.
The performances of the outstanding actors of Breaking Bad must also be affirmed. This excellent story is perfectly presented by the solid performances of Bryan Cranston, aaron paul, anna gunn, Norris Dean, giancarlo esposito, jonathan banks, Betsy Brandt, RJ Mitt and many other actors with profound knowledge. Breaking Bad has been nominated for 29 Emmy Awards in the past six years, and the winning projects are mainly in the performance category, including Bryan Cranston, aaron paul and anna gunn. Most of these actors ran around in their early years, playing nobody. After Breaking Bad, she became famous, began to play the leading role in TV series and even entered the big screen. I especially want to mention anna gunn, who was born in a play. She put a lot of effort into playing the controversial role of skyler, which made fans love and hate. The thinness in the last episode is admirable.
The commercial success of Breaking Bad is also attributed to AMC's unique program route and the interaction between traditional TV and Internet.
AMC's program concept can be summarized as slow fever, deep excavation of complex human nature (especially the accurate capture of the selfish side of people and the fragile relationship between people in the current commodity economy society), role-driven, minority and gray serious tone full of moral and ethical disputes (slow fever, deep, character-driven, minority listening, moral ambiguity). Through the combination of extraordinary art and excellent stories, we hope that
In 2007-2008, when AMC first entered the self-made album, Mad Men and Breaking Bad only got 900,000 and 6,543,800+2,000 viewers respectively, which didn't emphasize the qualification of the basic cable station with a narrow audience, so AMC directly renewed it. According to CharlieCollier, president of AMC, AMC is a TV channel that does not expect its dramas to have instant ratings and word-of-mouth influence. AMC's six-year waiting has not only given these two works great patience and room to hone, but more importantly, in today's information explosion era, it has provided the ordinary audience with sufficient time to discover these two good works, spread word of mouth and accumulate a huge fixed audience. AMC is the most story-telling TV channel in America. After Mad Men and Breaking Bad, AMC combined the realistic narrative style full of moral controversy with popular culture and successfully launched the series The Walking Dead, which is the most watched TV series in cable TV. Killing and Hell on Wheels are also worthy of praise for their breakthroughs in the series of cops and robbers and the western region. Although the third season of Murder failed in the end, since then, cable stations have begun to pay attention to this slow European cop and robber movie route, which is based on role-building, deeply excavating human nature and describing the impact of criminal events on life and community in detail. For example, Top of the Lake released by Sundance Channel this year, Bridge produced by FX, and Detective released by HBO20 14 1 month and written by Murder.
AMC also made full use of online word-of-mouth, Netflix-on-demand, and annual marathon arrangements to attract countless viewers who have never seen Breaking Bad to be driven by word-of-mouth effect, and catch up with the broadcast progress through Netflix-on-demand in the finale, which made a great contribution to the record-breaking viewing of Breaking Bad on September 29th.
Life begins with black humor and ends with tragedy that we can all foresee. When almost all TV dramas are trying to create a background far away from the audience, fearing that the audience will not be curious, Breaking Bad is close to the lives of ordinary people, which proves that short stories can also do a lot.
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Happy hour, friends who haven't seen Breaking Bad, don't interpret it as an ethical film from beginning to end. In fact, Vince Gilligan designed many black humor points for Breaking Bad:
1. Language and behavior that are extremely incompatible with the tense atmosphere
For example, in the third episode of the first season, Lao Bai coughed violently and fell down the stairs while delivering bread to Krazy-8 in the cellar. When he woke up, Krazy-8 teased him and said, "The first time I saw someone coughing, I could faint myself."
In order to prevent her brother-in-law Hank from going to Gus's laundry to investigate, Laobai deliberately caused a car accident. As a result, the next second, the camera immediately cut to Hank lying in bed with bandages on, laughing and eating ice cream with his family.
2. People with great contrast
The contrast here not only refers to the great difference between the characters' internal and external, but also refers to the subversion of similar characters in traditional criminal works by the characterization in the play.
There are many examples For example, the drug Lord Laobai, who is the cleverest and tenacious in the whole drama and enjoys the reputation of mysterious king in the drug circle, is actually a middle-aged man with a disheveled appearance, a scholarly face and a bloated figure. When my brother-in-law Hank arranged to investigate Heisenberg's plan and informed the police officers in the office that "there is a new heavyweight drug maker in our community who can make drugs with a purity of 99%", the camera suddenly aimed at this paunchy old man.
In addition, the subversive image of Hank, the old white brother-in-law with strong appearance and fragile heart, also creates a sense of humor and comedy. Vince Gilligan said that the original intention of Hank's design was to arrange a "noisy and energetic man" beside Laobai.
Breaking Bad has also designed many criminal images that subvert our cognition, such as neurotic butcher, naughty pink, affectionate killer Mike, and so on.