Chapter 487: Always Cheating, Always Fun

At the harbor terminal in the dead of night, van after van lined up in a long queue, slowly driving onto the cargo ship docked there.

Dayo Wong sat in a Nissan car with its lights off on the roadside in the distance, smoking silently.

The scarlet tip of his cigarette flickered in the darkness.

As a second or third-tier actor in the Hong Kong entertainment industry who had once been labeled "box office poison," he cherished this important role at the age of 50 more than anyone else.

From the moment this drama was in its early planning stages, the entire Hong Kong entertainment industry had been rife with undercurrents, with all sorts of true and false rumors flying everywhere. He had originally just listened to them. But who would have thought that those rumors, which sounded like fairy tales, would one after another become reality.

It really was Milkyway Image co-managing with Chen Nuo.

It really was 100% Hollywood funding entering the fray.

It really was a production budget exceeding one million USD per episode.

It really wasn't airing in China, but going straight to European and American streaming platforms for international audiences.

It really was a ten-million-dollar investment to build a brand-new studio in San Po Kong specifically for this drama.

It really was the case that, besides Johnnie To at the helm, they had invited Zhang Yimou, Xu Xu Anhua, and others to serve as episode directors.

And it was also true...

That during auditions, they didn't look at fame, status, or past box office performance; they only looked at acting and strength.

Based on this, he got the role.

You have to know, hundreds of actors participated in the auditions, many of them big stars who had never filmed a TV series and worked exclusively in movies. He, a "deadbeat" actor who had only played small supporting roles on TVB in recent years, originally didn't even have the heart to go in and try. But who would have thought that after gathering the courage to go, after three rounds of auditions, this heavy-weight role would end up in his hands?

If he couldn't act well this time, he'd really be a deadbeat for the rest of his life.

Thinking of this, Dayo Wong's eyes became even more solemn, looking more like a policeman investigating a missing person case involving a relative, the deep worry in his eyes becoming more apparent.

After a while, Dayo Wong saw that no new vans were arriving, so he checked the gun under his arm, got out of the car, and cautiously hunched over as he crept through the night.

Under the illumination of the lights, the ground he passed at this moment appeared a vibrant red.

The ground at a dark pier is red?

Does that mean it's lit by the ship's lights?

A criminal smuggling ship, in a secret pier, shining bright red lights, as if afraid the Hong Kong maritime police wouldn't notice. This was definitely a genius design; an ordinary person certainly wouldn't have thought of it.

Dayo Wong originally really didn't understand, didn't know why the art director would arrange it this way.

However, later he suddenly remembered who was sitting in front of the monitor, and suddenly he felt relieved.

Zhang Yimou, breaking common sense, making the dark ground appear the color of fresh blood, using it as a metaphor for the fate of this drama, and the policeman "Huang Ziren" played by him, Dayo Wong... then all the film critics in China, no matter how harsh they were originally, would probably understand and smile, turning a blind eye to the rationality of it.

A play filmed by Zhang Yimou is definitely much more realistic than TVB. Using thirty people to act as an army of three hundred thousand, one against ten thousand, thinking the audience's eyes are compound eyes—that kind of thing couldn't possibly appear in his movies.

The fifty-plus vans transporting the game participants, one after another, formed a long dragon in front of the camera, stretching from the cargo ship deep into the darkness, looking magnificent. It guaranteed that Reed Hastings would know exactly where his dollars were being burned the moment he saw it.

Just like that, against the scarlet background, Dayo Wong slowly approached the last van and silently slid under the vehicle.

Van after van drove onto the cargo ship rented from the Hong Kong branch of COSCO Group. Until the last vehicle drove on, the stern ramp of the cargo ship slowly rose, and like a giant beast, it slowly left the pier and disappeared into the darkness.

The third episode of "Eagle Catching Chickens" thus raised its curtain.

The cargo ship on the ocean continued to sail, the cargo hold filled with vans.

Following the order of the triangle-masked leader, the van doors opened in response.

Dayo Wong took the opportunity to slip from under the van into the vehicle.

Luck was good, there was actually an empty seat in the carriage; he stepped on a dark shadow on the floor and immediately sat down.

However, when the masked NPC began to check the identity of everyone in the car, he still couldn't hide it. Thus, a silent struggle between the policeman and the gangster in the darkness quickly unfolded.

Here, it was still a tangle of various lights and colors. Red clothes, black metal masks, yellow deck lights; no matter if the fighting movements were professional or not, the visuals were exceptionally good.

After quite a struggle, Dayo Wong finally knocked down this masked minion and stripped off his clothes to wear on his own body.

After the other vehicles finished checking the passengers' identities and the NPCs left the cargo hold to go up to the deck, Dayo Wong, now wearing the masked man's clothes, opened the van door, preparing to throw the previous NPC into the sea to destroy the evidence.

But this person's body was stuck in the gap of the van seat, and he couldn't drag him out no matter how hard he tried.

Just as Dayo Wong was extremely anxious, a voice came from the floor inside the car, it was the person he had stepped on earlier—

"Officer, need some help?"

"Little Madman, why do I feel like you're different from before?" Qin Pei looked him up and down.

"No, old gentleman."

"Yes, you are." Qin Pei said affirmatively, "Something must have happened to you. Forget it, it's none of my business. I say, Little Madman, how about we form an alliance?"

Chen Nuo froze. "Huh?"

Qin Pei said irritably: "Huh what? Look at how many people are here, everyone wants to win, how can we survive without banding together? Look at that boss of the Tung Sing, he's taken in so many underlings, what will you do if they bully you later?"

The jib camera lifted.

If Xu Xu Anhua is good at delicate emotions and character portrayal, then Zhang Yimou's directorial style has always been grand and sweeping.

The camera pulled back, and what came into view was a vast and high-tech enclosed space.

The bright light gave the entire space a pale color.

Bunk beds stacked layer upon layer were piled up all around.

More than 100 extras were in this studio, like chess pieces arranged in an orderly fashion, moving or standing still according to the predetermined choreography.

Some were lying on the beds, fast asleep. Some sat alone in the corner, looking dazed and muttering to themselves. Others paced back and forth nervously, as if anxiously waiting for something. More people were in small groups, whispering, their expressions either worried or excited.

The circle with the largest number of people gathered was undoubtedly the group centered around Francis Ng; many people wanted to join this powerful team, lining up in long queues in front of him.

Francis Ng looked coldly at the people in front of him, nodding or shaking his head.

Laughing Gor, Michael Tse, who was beside him, spoke for him:

"Get lost, Grandpa, coming to play games at such an old age, are you in a hurry to die?"

"You look like a ghost, why don't you go pee and look in the mirror, ugly ghost, get lost."

"You... Brother Kwan says you can, go on over."

"Bitch, you still want to follow Brother Kwan? Get lost."

"Pretty girl, not bad, go on over, thank Brother Kwan well tonight, you hear?"

The camera returned here.

Qin Pei said: "See that? They only want strong men and pretty women. Someone like you, a weakling, they don't look at. Look, as long as you team up with me, if they bully you later, I can be your backer and stand up for you."

Chen Nuo turned his head and looked at Qin Pei with a complex expression.

Qin Pei immediately became angry from embarrassment: "What are you looking at me for? Do you look down on me? Come, come, do you want to fight me?"

"It's not that, old gentleman." Chen Nuo blinked, his cheeks twitching. "I'm just wondering, is reality really that cruel? That so many people actually returned here."

He looked up at the display screen hanging on the wall, which showed: Number of participants: 187.

Qin Pei froze for a moment, then curled the corner of his mouth, revealing a half-smiling expression.

But it was fleeting, and he returned to his original rude self, saying: "What do you know? Hong Kong is like this, many people live worse than in the eighteenth level of hell. Do you want to team up with me or not? If you don't, I'm going to find that pretty girl over there..."

After finishing, he called out loudly: "Hey, pretty girl, come over here for a second. Yes, that's you, come here, I have something to ask you."

Subsequently, Guli Nazha walked over from outside the camera frame with a blank expression and said in Mandarin: "What is it?"

Qin Pei switched to Hong Kong-accented Mandarin: "Pretty girl, you're from the mainland?"

"Yes." Guli Nazha nodded, looking Qin Pei up and down.

Then her eyes rolled, and she looked at Chen Nuo beside her, saying expressionlessly: "Hooligan, I met you again."

When Chen Nuo was filming this scene, he had a rare moment of breaking character and laughing.

There was no help for it; Guli Nazha's acting could only be described as "hard to put into words."

This couldn't be blamed on Nazha; she had indeed only taken acting classes for a few days. To be able to truly listen, watch, and feel within such a short time was a pipe dream.

But the female lead in the original version of "Squid Game" was also just an amateur player with a poker face.

And when replaced by the supporting characters in "Eagle Catching Chickens,"

Acting skills and such were even less important.

The plot develops to this point—

The male lead, an elderly man with a terminal illness who seems to be hiding a secret, and a sweet, innocent young lady with outstanding looks, thus formed a "trio" that is quite classic in dramatic structure.

The original "Squid Game" also had a multi-person group, consisting of the honest protagonist Seong Gi-hun, the mysterious and taciturn North Korean defector Kang Sae-byeok, the scheming old man No. 001, the high-IQ childhood friend of Seong Gi-hun, Cho Sang-woo, and an Indian fool.

The comparison between the two is very interesting.

The original combination belongs to the classic "foolish male lead + high-combat supporting character" structure found in many American, Japanese, and Korean dramas.

Just like Sasuke and Naruto, Ikki and Seiya, Emma Watson and Harry Potter, as well as Edward Cullen and the female lead Bella Swan in "Twilight."

The protagonist is a foolish, weak, and emotional person, while the one who truly pushes the plot, responsible for emotional balance and key reversals, is the supporting character beside him.

Because of the influence of Western traditional classical drama, in the creations of many Western screenwriters, the protagonist is often set as an "empty cup," responsible for bearing the audience's emotional projection, while the true drivers of conflict and narrative momentum are hidden in the supporting characters.

However, in the Hong Kong version of "Eagle Catching Chickens," the screenwriting trio of Yau Nai-hoi, Wai Ka-fai, and Pang Ho-cheung, for some obvious reasons, never intended to follow this path from the beginning.

Therefore, what is presented is a structure where the protagonist is extremely strong, and the supporting characters serve the protagonist's growth.

The protagonist, Xie Jiajun, is actually a typical "cool text" male lead.

Although he is foolish and impulsive at first, as the plot develops, his hidden intelligence, great initiative, and even extraordinary character are all manifested in him.

In the plot, this person transforms step by step from a madman into a big boss, more like a Chinese-style "reversal and face-slapping" cool text, following the path of "don't bully the young for being poor."

It even made Chen Nuo, who doesn't like reading much and has a low cultural level, feel unable to stop when he read the script, finishing it in one breath.

Under this setting, the charm of the protagonist is naturally higher than all supporting characters. Just like Wei Xiaobao in "The Deer and the Cauldron," it was the result of Jin Yong writing books for a lifetime, finally reaching enlightenment in his last work, and starting to write a cool text.

Precisely because of this, a powerful protagonist is the core and key to all plots, so theoretically speaking, even if all the supporting characters of this season died, the next season could continue to be filmed, and the ratings wouldn't be much affected.

And this is actually the important reason why Netflix accepted it while holding their noses.

"Luo Rui, tell you some bad news, Ted Sarandos... that idiot is active in the company again, spreading rumors everywhere."

"Oh? What did he say?"

"Said our script is very thin, like a children's book. The male lead is too detached from reality, like a protagonist in a fairy tale, smooth sailing, without depth. And the supporting characters are all fresh faces... He actually dared to say we could only attract Chen's fans to watch, unable to attract adult audiences, it's impossible to succeed!"

"That idiot."

"Yes, he really is. It's a pity I used to think he was handsome; I see his true face clearly now. He is just a petty person who only whispers behind others' backs. I want to vomit when I see him now. Shit!"

"Does Reed know? What did he say?"

"Reed must know, because that idiot Ted tells everyone he meets, but Reed didn't say anything, um, I think Reed should still trust you."

"..."

"Luo Rui." ===== CHAPTER 488 =====