The Rebel is a rebel in the new spy war drama.

　　"Seeking a fair and just life value in turbulent times and a dark world full of guilt. Among the rebels, there is a complete growth story line of Lin Nansheng, and together they feel the light of faith that will never go out. "

　　"The recent drama shortage, occasionally see. I actually started watching my aunt’s spy war drama … …”

　　"I haven’t seen such a wonderful spy war drama for a long time. I hope to maintain the level in the later period and catch up."

　　… …

　　The hot comments of netizens reflect the popularity of the TV series "Rebel": it won the ratings championship eight times nine days before the broadcast. I don’t know why, it wasn’t until 12 episodes that Douban opened the "Rebel" score. The result is not surprisingly 8.4 points. Considering that the spy war drama "The Chance of Winning", which was quite optimistic last year and played by many veteran actors, scored only 7.0 points, the performance of "The Rebel" was a surprise.

　　Among genre dramas, spy war drama is the most routine one, but "Rebel" dances out new ideas, among which it is worth pondering.

　　It goes beyond the stereotype of genre drama.

　　The story of "Rebel" is not complicated. It tells the story of a young man, Lin Nansheng (Zhu Yilong), who was born in poverty, self-motivated and simple feelings. Under the background of the Anti-Japanese War, in order to serve the country, he mistakenly entered the Kuomintang Fuxing Society and became a spy. He thought that through training, he would be sent to the front line to fight the invaders, but he was unexpectedly chosen to deal with the underground party of the Communist Party of China.

　　At first, Lin Nansheng regarded this as a normal work arrangement and devoted himself wholeheartedly. But with the deepening of his understanding of reality, he found that the so-called Fuxing Society was just a spy organization established on the principle of personality cult, with corruption from top to bottom. Senior officials, regardless of the national crisis, are bent on seeking personal gain; There are many middle-level factions, fighting against each other, being incompetent and working hard; At the bottom, they are muddleheaded, abusing violence and lacking ideals and ethics.

　　Lin Nansheng was deeply puzzled. With the increasing contact with the underground party, the idealism and patriotism hidden in his heart were awakened, which made him fall into a mental dilemma — — On the one hand, Lin Nansheng is grateful to his boss Chen Moqun (Wang Yang) for his kindness, especially Chen Moqun’s strictness and seriousness, which greatly improved his business ability; On the other hand, Lin Nansheng is suspicious of Chen Moqun’s overly utilitarian and callous behavior.

　　In Lin Nansheng’s mind, there is a tear between specialty and ideal, emotion and reason, reality and morality, which forces him to grow up. The Rebel describes Lin Nansheng’s mental journey accurately, and starts with this typical figure, which not only reflects the choice of a generation of young people, but also explains the profound logic of the great historical trend.

　　More importantly, every generation of young people is destined to experience the growth similar to that of Lin Nansheng, face the tears similar to his, and think about the problem he once thought about … … This makes "Rebel" go beyond the stereotype of genre drama and move towards classics.

　　On the silver screen, there was "endless espionage"

　　The charm of spy war drama stems from the fierce game between different stakeholders, which makes the life with weak causal connection become interlocking. When modern people enter a strange society, they will inevitably have a sense of rootlessness, fear and disillusionment, and they will have an imagination of the operating logic at the bottom of the world. The spy war drama just provides the corresponding consumption space.

　　The development of spy war drama in China can be roughly divided into two stages:

　　Before 2006, the aesthetic mode of "anti-special film" was formed, which was represented by the secret whistle of Yangcheng, the gunfire of the secret service bureau, the eighteen years of enemy camp and the plot against it. The enemy is completely crushed in morality, organization and ability, and only has advantages in cruelty and malice. The story is completely from "conflict — Solve "to drive. The disadvantage of this kind of "black and white" is that it compresses the performance space of characters, is basically a single-line narrative, and it is difficult to expand into a multi-line story, giving the audience a sense of slowness, similarity and unreality.

　　After 2006: Since Special Mission in 2007 (Douban score is 7.9), it began to move towards "new spy war drama". "Special Mission" adds neutral elements such as family life to the background of spy war, which not only enriches the narrative possibility, but also expands the complexity of the characters. The enemy and the enemy are no longer facetted, and at the root of human nature, the two sides are basically connected. Since "Special Mission", excellent works such as Plot Against, Hidden, changjiang no.1, Pretender and Before Dawn have emerged one after another, which have been dubbed by netizens as "endless spies".

　　The "new spy war drama" is just a new stereotyped writing.

　　However, where is the "new" spy war drama?

　　After in-depth review, it will be found that this "new" is often simply equated with "entertainment", that is, sweet pet dramas, idol dramas, palace fighting dramas, martial arts dramas, etc. are combined into a "new spy war drama". As a result, it has become a standard for spies to know martial arts, excellent marksmanship, high logical level, love and handsome appearance.

　　The corrosion of entertainment to spy war dramas is reflected in the one-sided pursuit of rhythm, suspense, strangeness, actor’s face value, etc. As long as the result is that I win the enemy and lose, a set of "new stereotyped writing" is formed.

　　In some "new spy war dramas", our personnel keep making mistakes, their words are careless, and they are often led by the nose by the enemy, and solving the case depends entirely on luck; On the contrary, the enemy is well-organized, loyal to each other, brave in dedication, honest and affectionate, and even when surrounded, he often pulls grenades to commit suicide … … In a word, as long as the negative role is changed into the positive role and the positive role is changed into the negative role, it is only a more professional move that determines the success of the spy, which is obviously contrary to historical facts.

　　Spy warfare requires professionalism, but it is only a tool, and the ultimate determinant of victory is people. It’s an eternal principle that you get more help from the Tao, but you get less help from the Tao. Too many "new spy war dramas" just deviate from this basic point, so the stories are more and more complicated, the performances are more and more vivid, and the suspense is more and more exquisite, but it’s hard to save the declining situation.

　　The plot serves the characters, not the other way around.

　　"The Rebel" is sought after because it is a rebel of the "new spy war drama", which can be proved by three points:

　　First of all, people are the core, not the plot.

　　Entertainment plays emphasize that "stories push people away", that is, they must first have bizarre plots to attract people’s attention, and show the complexity of human nature through plot changes. In a word, entertainment drama must "go from excitement to excitement, from strangeness to strangeness". The Rebel was not so bizarre from the beginning — — Chen Moqun (Wang Yang), the stationmaster of the Kuomintang Fuxing Society Secret Service in Shanghai, was annoyed by the failure of the arrest. He suspected that there was a "mole" and went to the Fuxing Society cadre training class to recruit a newcomer, Lin Nansheng (Zhu Yilong), to help him secretly investigate.

　　In the initial cooperation, Lin Nansheng once had a personal worship for Chen Moqun.

　　However, with the increase of Lin Nansheng’s contact with the underground party, especially the heroine Zhu Yizhen (Tanya), who was slightly simple, was moved by her idealism and patriotism, and began to doubt Chen Moqun’s professionalism, and eventually became a "rebel" and took the initiative to join the underground party.

　　"Rebel" describes the growth history of Lin Nansheng’s character, but the plot has become the foreshadowing of his character. In order to express Lin Nansheng’s inner conflict, hesitation and dilemma, the Rebel deliberately left a lot of space in the story design, thus reversing the logic of many "new spy war dramas": the plot serves the characters, not the characters serve the plot.

　　Enthusiasm is the fundamental force to defeat the enemy.

　　Secondly, the character logic is higher than the story logic.

　　In The Rebel, there are many seemingly unreasonable details, such as:

　　Seeing that the downline was surrounded by the enemy, Gu Shenyan (Wang Zhiwen), an experienced old underground party member, wanted to rescue the other side by himself. In order to find out the traitor’s hiding place, Gu Shenyan followed Chen Moqun and others and was almost discovered.

　　Zhu Yizhen’s slightly exaggerated words and deeds do not seem to match the complex environment of underground work.

　　Zhu Yizhen and Lin Nansheng met again, which confirmed Lin Nansheng’s guess — — Gu Shenyan is an underground party. It is too dangerous for such an important secret to be held by a marginal person.

　　Chen Moqun somehow got into the trap of Gu Shenyan, which was inconsistent with his usual shrewdness.

　　… …

　　However, it is the logical "anomalies" of these stories that focus the audience’s attention on the character setting — — In the most difficult times, revolutionaries such as Gu Shenyan still adhered to the warmth of human nature and dared to sacrifice themselves for comrades. They will also be reckless, naive and make mistakes, but they will always keep the light of their ideals and love. It is these that contributed to the transformation of Lin Nansheng.

　　From believing in coldness, to doubting coldness, and then to encountering enthusiasm, Lin Nansheng finally devoted himself to enthusiasm. This is not just a personal choice, but the common choice of countless young people in that era.

　　Good lines provide the possibility of deep reading.

　　Third, lines not only promote the plot, but also express people.

　　Once upon a time, the screenwriter became a story master, because in China, the screenwriter had a low position in the whole film and television creation team and had a low right to speak on the works. The success of Korean dramas, on the other hand, stems from "taking screenwriters as the core" to a considerable extent. Korean screenwriters have as much influence on creation as 70%, directors only 20%, and actors as low as 10%. There is even a saying that "one screenwriter is better than ten professors". But in the domestic film and television industry, the so-called "de-scriptwriting" has become popular.

　　According to 2019— According to the Report on the Ecological Investigation of Young Screenwriters in China in 2020, nearly 60% of the domestic young screenwriters go it alone, and over 70% of them earn less than 200,000 yuan a year. Only 17% of screenwriters are satisfied with their current income, and 75% of them have been cheated. The cramped living space has hindered their in-depth understanding of the whole industry, so that many directors feel that it is more "convenient" to dictate and write by themselves than to find a screenwriter to write.

　　The writer is weak, and the literariness of the lines is ignored, which can only play a role of string play. "The Rebel" made more efforts. Taking the 18th episode as an example, Gu Shenyan asked Lin Nansheng to be the contact person and contact the underground party.

　　Lin: Did you arrange for me to go?

　　Gu: I am responsible for conveying oversight’s decision.

　　Lin: Do you want me to go?

　　Gu: We all agree that only you are the most competent.

　　They spoke very fast. After a round of confrontation, Lin Nansheng confirmed that Gu Shenyan was an underground party. Gu Shenyan was reluctant to fight for Lin, but he also wanted to test Lin. More importantly, Lin could not be caught, but the quick response still showed a flaw.

　　Similar details worth chewing make the Rebel possible to read deeply.

　　China society is accelerating towards a post-modern society, and consumerism is increasingly shaping individual concepts and understandings. Today, the pursuit of entertainment is understandable. After all, there are "good-looking stories" first, and then "meaning transmission". However, it should not be overlooked that today, expression is becoming expression itself.

　　The excitement, curiosity and surprise of the "new spy war drama" are like this, and the routine is everything. Why to use the routine has become a problem. Today, professionalism has become a pioneer in denying value — — With the "entertainment for entertainment’s sake", routines are crowded with the stage, but the value cannot be settled.

　　In this atmosphere, we can’t help but be glad that there are plays like "The Rebel" that lead the audience back to common sense: spy war dramas are also serious dramas and should also bear the heavy responsibility of conveying historical wisdom.

　　So, it is worth seeing.