In 2022, the Jiangnan Group's version of The Wandering Earth was released.
Due to the presence of transmigrators, the Jiangnan Group had advanced many things and events. The only thing that was not advanced, and thus lagged behind, was The Wandering Earth.
At this time, the entire Chinese sci-fi industry, with the capital intervention of the Jiangnan Group, had entered an extremely prosperous state. Every year, a large number of sci-fi works were adapted into TV series and movies. Sci-fi writers had become the most exorbitantly earning writers in the traditional literary field, only slightly behind Xianxia writers.
After all, Xianxia had now become a global phenomenon. Even many foreign domestic film and television companies had begun to invest heavily in producing Xianxia works. Chinese Xianxia writers had long been overwhelmed by the film and television adaptation fees.
If not for the strong rise of sci-fi writers, the names of Xianxia writers would still have dominated the top ten on the writers' income rankings.
As for a certain racing writer and a certain luxury goods writer, they had long since disappeared. In fact, in the previous life, these two, after graduating from school, never seriously wrote novels. Instead, they dabbled in directing and still managed to stay on the writers' income rankings, which was truly baffling.
Precisely because of the large influx of capital into the sci-fi industry, and as the undisputed overlord among sci-fi writers, Liu Cixin's works had basically all been adapted into film and television.
It is worth mentioning that although it held the film and television adaptation rights to all of Liu Cixin's works, Jiangnan Entertainment, besides adapting "The Three-Body Problem," directly sold the adaptation rights of all other works to third-party film and television companies. The only ones it kept were "The Three-Body Problem" and "The Wandering Earth."
However, "The Three-Body Problem" had already completed its film and television adaptation in 2012. The first "Three-Body Problem" TV series was broadcast at that time, and then it was released at a rate of one per year, completing the "Three-Body Problem" trilogy in 2016.
By 2022, the third remake of "The Three-Body Problem" had just begun. Additionally, the film and animated versions had also been broadcast for several rounds, with various film and television works emerging in endless streams. This led many to question why the Jiangnan Group had held onto "The Wandering Earth" so tightly.
If the Jiangnan Group didn't plan to film it, countless film and television companies wanted to purchase the rights to "The Wandering Earth" from the Jiangnan Group, but all were rejected.
If one were to say that the Jiangnan Group wanted to film it themselves, they had been delaying its release. It wasn't until the end of 2022 that the Jiangnan Group suddenly announced that the first installment of "The Wandering Earth" would be released during the Spring Festival of 2023.
Only at this point did various promotional articles related to "The Wandering Earth" flood the internet.
It was also at this time that everyone learned that "The Wandering Earth" had been greenlit as a film project as early as 2010, with a plan for a nine-part series. The film team that had just completed the nine-part "Piaomiao Zhi Lu" took over. The Jiangnan Group intended to complete the filming of "The Wandering Earth" to the highest standards.
In the words of Boss Huang himself, it was his favorite work, and he wouldn't tolerate any flaws.
However, the biggest problem with "The Wandering Earth" was its short length. The mere 25,000 characters could not support the scope of a nine-part series. According to Boss Huang's plan, corresponding plots would be designed for each of the five eras mentioned in the original work.
But can the plots conceived by even the most brilliant screenwriters be more ingenious than those conceived by the original author?
Thus, Liu Cixin spent the most miserable year of his life. He was confined to a hotel room until he completed the outline for the nine scripts, after which he returned home with a sum of 2 billion yuan in cash.
Later, Liu Cixin told everyone that he never wanted to write novels again in his life, as 2 billion yuan was enough for him to live on.
Afterward, professional scriptwriters began to flesh out the script outline, writing detailed scripts along the established framework, which were then submitted to Boss Huang for review. By the end of 2014, the preparatory work for the nine-part "The Wandering Earth" was finally completed, and then it entered the complex filming process.
To save costs as much as possible, these nine parts were inevitably to be filmed together. At the same time, the most advanced computer special effects technology would be used throughout the filming process.
According to the promotional materials released by the Jiangnan Group, the film's special effects utilized a computing power equivalent to over 300,000 personal computers working together for rendering various effects, resulting in the final film appearing as if it were real footage.
Furthermore, the nine-part series involved over 390,000 actors. Although 38,000 of these actors played soldiers, extras, civilians, and other minor roles, it also meant that a full thousand people played named characters with lines.
And within these, there were as many as six main male protagonists.
Don't misunderstand; it's not that one movie had six male protagonists, but that the nine movies required six male protagonists.
The male protagonist of the first film was an engineer, the founder of the entire Wandering Earth project. When the Earth government discovered that the sun was about to be destroyed, he completed the design of the Wandering Earth project and fought desperately against the "ship faction," eventually leading humanity in the construction of those massive planetary engines.
The male protagonist of the second film was a different person. This part described the era of braking, detailing how the male protagonist, as a fighter pilot, overcame the crisis of the moon's fall, defeated the conspiracy of the ship faction, and finally witnessed the scene of Earth braking. His true identity was actually the protagonist's father in the original "The Wandering Earth."
The male protagonist of the third film was still the male protagonist from the second film. This part depicted the story of The Wandering Earth passing Jupiter, with the male protagonist sacrificing himself to successfully help the entire Earth break free from Jupiter's orbit.
The third part was actually the plot of "The Wandering Earth 1" in another world, but by this time, the timeline had progressed directly to the third installment.
The male protagonist of the fourth film changed again, this time to the male protagonist's son. His identity in this part was a second lieutenant in the Earth's military. It described how he fought against the rebel army and thwarted their terrorist plan, but ultimately saw the sun data collected in the rebels' secret laboratory, proving that the sun's data had remained almost unchanged for 400 years and that the imminent destruction of the sun was a complete lie.
The male protagonist of the fifth film continued from the fourth film, although this former government second lieutenant had now become the leader of the rebel army. He firmly believed that the United Earth Government was a massive hoax. Although he didn't know the purpose of this hoax, it was still a deception. They hoped to return the Earth to its original orbit and end the 400-year wandering journey.
After numerous battles with the government army, the male protagonist became the first soldier to enter the United Government Headquarters, finally witnessing firsthand how the hastily formed court of the rebel army tried those government officials, turning them into ice sculptures on the frozen sea, and at the final moment, witnessing the sun's explosion.
The plot of the sixth film was a rare dual-protagonist story. The male protagonist from the fifth film was still alive, but due to deep-seated shame, he had become a reclusive old man in the most hidden part of an underground city. The actual protagonist was a repairman.
Due to the war, humanity had lost a large number of outstanding scientists and engineers, rendering many engines inoperable and beyond repair. They could only find the method to repair the engines by locating the relevant technical data and notes left by past scientists.
However, due to humanity's own sins, the scientists who possessed this precious data committed suicide and hid the data in a place that could only be found by future generations who learned how to atone.
Ultimately, this mission fell upon the old man and this repairman. The old man was the last surviving person who knew the secrets of the previous government era and the precise government agencies, while the repairman was the only human capable of understanding the blueprints.
The plots of the subsequent three films would return to the era of homecoming, detailing how humanity successfully settled the Earth, which had traveled for a full 2,500 years, into a new stellar orbit.
The time span of the nine-part series reached 2,500 years. Almost every film required a complete change of actors. Therefore, despite being called a nine-part series, the actors who could appear in both the first and second installments were extremely rare, which was why over a thousand named actors were needed.
And this filming took a full six years.
Boss Huang's great emphasis on this film was not only because he had always been a die-hard fan of "The Wandering Earth" but also for a very important reason: he deeply appreciated the concept within "The Wandering Earth."
This concept was that, while all other films liked to emphasize individual heroism or at most the strength of a team composed of a few heroes, almost no film showcased the power of the masses.
Upon closer inspection, in American blockbusters, the masses were often portrayed as foolish, manipulated by politicians and villains, merely causing trouble for the heroes.
These plots might not seem problematic when watching the movies, because when thinking about reality, most people are indeed a mob.
Aside from causing trouble and following the trend, they had no other function.
But this revealed a very terrifying idea: ordinary humans were merely a burden on history, and great history was entirely created by elites.
Therefore, if humanity and society were to continue to progress, ordinary people must obediently listen to the elites and follow their decisions, rather than questioning them, because you would only cause them trouble.
However, "The Wandering Earth" was the opposite. Although ordinary humans eventually became the biggest trouble, it was the combined strength of all ordinary humans that made the impossible plan of The Wandering Earth a reality.
After all, no matter how intelligent the elites were, could they build tens of thousands of planetary engines on their own?
No, these planetary engines were ultimately built with the tears and sweat of ordinary people. The masses were the heroes of this era, and the power of the masses was invincible.
As for why the officials in the United Earth Government of "The Wandering Earth" met such tragic ends, the most crucial reason was not the stupidity of the masses, but their failure to mobilize the masses, understand the masses, and communicate with the masses. They believed themselves to be elites, only knowing how to suppress, but never how to truly communicate with the masses, which ultimately led to their downfall at the hands of the masses.
These were the concepts that Huang He wanted to express through this film.