Chapter 121: The First Wave of Reviews

As it turned out, Hu Yan and Guo Yingyu weren’t wrong at all.

Before and after the release of Song of Tears, the production team had indeed been subtly trying to undermine Feather of Youth. However, the targets of their criticism weren’t Lu Xu, but rather Hu Yan and Guo Yingyu.

Some marketing accounts confidently declared that casting two newcomers in Feather of Youth was “a mistake” and emphasized that the two were “incapable of handling important roles,” inevitably dragging the film down.

Hu Yan & Guo Yingyu: “How about trying us out first instead of just spouting nonsense?”

Despite their combative response to the marketing accounts, both couldn’t help but feel a bit worried deep down.

What if Feather of Youth really flopped? What if the movie didn’t resonate with the audience? And what if…? The negativity from the marketing accounts was indeed annoying, but they were genuinely afraid—afraid that they might end up being the sole weak link in Feather of Youth.

Ultimately, it was all Song of Tears’ fault.

As the saying goes, “Know yourself and know your enemy, and you will never be defeated.” Taking advantage of the holiday break, Lu Xu was dragged along by Hu Yan and Guo Yingyu to watch Song of Tears together.

The three of them collectively spent a total of one hundred yuan on tickets. Regardless of what they thought of Song of Tears, they felt no shame about their critique.

After all, they had paid for it!

However, halfway through the movie, Guo Yingyu began to regret spending her money.

The theater they had chosen was spacious enough, and the air circulation wasn’t bad, yet as she watched the scenes in Song of Tears, Guo Yingyu felt increasingly stifled.

The film had plenty of tearful moments, but no matter how many tears the characters shed, Guo Yingyu couldn’t relate to them at all.

She only felt suffocated—but not the kind of suffocation that comes naturally through storytelling. Instead, it was a manufactured one.

In the film, the protagonist’s family was suffocating to the point of making one feel stifled. There was no physical abuse or harsh scolding; on the outside, the parents appeared gentle and honest. However, at home, their strictness bordered on cruelty. The rigid schedules, health-focused meals, and an environment sanitized of any “contamination” for studying—all of it was paired with the stark contrast of the parents’ demeanor toward outsiders versus their own child.

At school, the protagonist’s deeply ingrained personality left him friendless, making the thought of forming friendships an impossible dream. He existed in the world but experienced none of the joys of being alive. His daily life was so suffocating it could drive anyone mad.

The protagonist longed to escape and was constantly struggling. A home should have been a warm and comforting haven, but for him, it was a vortex threatening to consume him entirely.

His friend’s life was no better. She was a sister who had never known a shred of warmth but was expected to care for her younger brother. One moment, she believed her parents finally recognized her worth and wanted to comfort her. The next moment, reality slapped her awake.

Her parents’ so-called kindness was nothing more than a ploy to make her give more to her brother.

Her parents were not incapable of acting; they simply didn’t even bother pretending to love her. Yet they were willing to sacrifice all their dignity for the son they cherished.

At this point, Guo Yingyu still felt inclined to continue watching.

Song of Tears piled on one tragic character’s story after another. Guo Yingyu had never encountered people like this in real life, but she understood that screenwriting sometimes needed to present characters with diverse, often extreme experiences. A story that was too bland could fail to hold the audience’s interest.

However, what followed in Song of Tears left her at a loss for words.

What she wanted to see was the protagonist breaking free from his suffocating family. But for some reason, despite the movie portraying the protagonist’s life as utterly miserable, he remained trapped in his suffering, unable to escape.

To keep him confined, the father pretended to be ill, while the mother spiraled into hysterical accusations. The protagonist grew thinner and increasingly tormented, yet his circumstances showed no sign of improving.

The girl who sacrificed so much for her younger brother faced a similar fate.

Her brother bought an apartment in the city using their parents’ lifelong savings and her first three years of wages from part-time jobs. Yet, she said, “He’s my brother. I can live in this apartment for now, save on rent, and move out when he gets married.”

However, not long after the apartment was secured, her parents began planning to marry her off to a stranger.

“Is this what I wanted to see?” Guo Yingyu couldn’t stop complaining. “Shouldn’t she have run away? Far, far away? Why does the plot feel so disjointed?”

Hu Yan rubbed his nose and said, “Maybe Song of Tears is aiming for international awards?”

“When you show how happy and good your life is, no one cares. But if you reveal the painful side, the chances of winning awards skyrocket. Add some eye-catching phrases to the marketing, and the movie is bound to grab attention.”

Guo Yingyu couldn’t help but shake her head. “Honestly, I just don’t get it.”

“I gave up the luxury of lounging at home to watch this movie, and in two hours, this is all I got?”

Still, out of sheer guilt over spending more than 30 yuan on the ticket, Guo Yingyu forced herself to watch Song of Tears from start to finish.

Her takeaway? She blamed the film’s crew for exacerbating her breast fibroid growth, the migraines that followed, and her violent urge to punch something.

‘What kind of karma did I bring on myself for this?’

Sure enough, one should never casually criticize others; such mockery comes with a price.

For Guo Yingyu, the most infuriating part was the ending of Song of Tears.

The father, who had been faking illness daily, eventually fell genuinely ill. The mother, who spent all her time cursing, panicked at the sight of the father’s declining health. Overwhelmed by guilt, the protagonist began taking his father around to seek medical treatment, all while taking on the burden of supporting the entire family and learning to “understand” his parents.

“What exactly did he understand? What was there to understand?”

“So, what was this movie even trying to tell the audience?”

Guo Yingyu opened Weibo, where her homepage was flooded with posts about the National Day movie box office battle. Among the many blockbuster films, Song of Tears was no small contender in trending topics. One film critic had written an elaborate review, concluding with: “At the end of the story, Song of Tears reaches a sublime level…”

Guo Yingyu: “…Did a human being actually write this?”

What “sublime level”?

If anything, the crew behind Song of Tears had created a pile of crap—a pile of solid crap that skipped its liquid state entirely and sublimated straight into gas. When it was still solid, people could avoid it by staying far away, but now it had to transform into an odor so foul it polluted everyone around it.

This was the only definition of “sublimation” Guo Yingyu was willing to accept.

Hu Yan silently gave her a thumbs-up. “Your grasp of physics is impressive.”

Guo Yingyu: “Forced by life. Thanks.”

In short, by the time she reached the second half of Song of Tears, she felt as though her forehead was practically on fire, ready to ignite her hair.

Two precious hours of her life had been wasted on something that only succeeded in making her angry. It was utterly not worth it.

In her view, the director and screenwriter of Song of Tears weren’t interested in resonating with the audience. At least the first half bore some connection to reality, but the second half? It was like they were dabbling in “resignation literature.”

What, the audience is just part of their little play?

Guo Yingyu told Hu Yan she was going to give Song of Tears a low rating. Initially, it was half a joke. But now, both of them couldn’t resist actually rating it low. After they submitted their scores, the two turned to Lu Xu with a look that practically demanded he follow suit.

Lu Xu sighed. “Alright, fine.”

Lu Xu had read the original script of Song of Tears before, and even then, he had felt it was a typical example of raising problems without offering solutions.

However, after the movie was released, Lu Xu noticed that the final screenplay had undergone revisions—and, to his surprise, the changes made it even worse than the initial version.

He couldn’t quite understand the reasoning behind the script adjustments. Still, his takeaway was this: if Qi Di was aiming to win awards, and if the judges were willing to accept the screenplay’s logic, then perhaps it wasn’t entirely out of the question.

The biggest change in the script was in the psychological arc of the protagonist played by Qi Di. From initial stubbornness and resistance to eventual assimilation, and finally to a moment of awakening, Qi Di’s performance gave the character plenty of depth. The crying protagonist, the collapsing protagonist, the despairing protagonist—Qi Di brought them all to life on screen.

The hashtag #Qi Di Crying Scenes even trended on social media.

Under the tag, marketing accounts heaped endless praise on Qi Di’s acting, calling it “award-worthy,” “realistic and full of tension,” and “tears that resonate with the audience.”

Lu Xu: “…”

#Let’s See How Much They Can Scam On The First Day#

As it turned out, the National Day release window was indeed extraordinary. With relentless marketing and heavy scheduling in theaters, Song of Tears raked in an impressive 150 million yuan on its opening day.

Before its release, the movie had already gone semi-viral thanks to its trailer.

Under the trailer, there were comments from middle-aged individuals still haunted by childhood trauma. One wrote about how they still cried when thinking of those times. Though they had escaped their parents’ grasp, every year, relatives would criticize them for being unfilial, their accusations crashing over them like tidal waves, forcing them to empathize with their parents.

[Parents are not always wrong, but what crime did I commit as a child?]

Another comment came from a young woman who could never move past her parents’ favoritism.

Song of Tears was one of the rare stories written for this particular group of people. After the production team released the trailer, these individuals left comments expressing their support and promising to watch the movie in theaters.

As a lower-budget film, Song of Tears performed moderately well in pre-sale rankings for the National Day box office and achieved decent ticket sales on its opening day.

However, many viewers who went to the cinema due to their personal experiences left feeling as though they had been “betrayed.”

Guo Yingyu wasn’t the first audience member to feel the urge to criticize Song of Tears.

One of the top comments under the movie’s official social media account came from someone who had purchased tickets for the earliest showings to support the film. They wrote that they had hoped to see a story about self-redemption in the theater.

While many of the characters in Song of Tears were beyond saving, the protagonist, at the very least, should have found a way to save themselves.

[I don’t know why I sat in that theater. When the faces of the protagonist’s parents flashed on the screen, it felt like a reunion with the nightmares that have haunted me for over a decade. They looked so much like my parents—terrifying and oppressive. I’ve built a successful career and a happy family now, but deep down, I know that the experiences of my youth left a hole inside me, one that’s almost impossible to heal.]

[I thought Song of Tears would end with the nightmare being resolved. But it didn’t. In fact, it felt as though it was mocking all the effort I’ve put into the past ten years of my life.]

[That afternoon after watching Song of Tears, I had to go back on my antidepressants…]

This comment garnered hundreds of replies, likes, and shares. However, the production team behind Song of Tears was quick to delete this “negative review” from their social media page, unwilling to let such criticism remain visible.

But—their team only consisted of one or two staff members.

No matter how fast they deleted comments, they couldn’t keep up with the flood of angry viewers accusing the movie of being a “scam.”

The director of Song of Tears eventually stepped forward to address the backlash. Taking lessons from industry veteran Zhang Zhizhen’s infamous mistakes, the director wisely avoided criticizing the audience for “lacking taste” or “failing to understand art.” Instead, they said, “Life is full of regrets and cruelty. When facing adversity, some people manage to move on, while others never do. We should allow both outcomes to coexist rather than deny perspectives opposite to our own.”

The audience’s reaction?

“…”

Fair enough.

True.

But as one viewer put it succinctly: “We allow those outcomes to coexist, but our wallets don’t.”

Were they so rich they had extra cash lying around just to t*rture themselves at the cinema?

Spending 30 yuan on a lottery ticket would at least bring the fleeting excitement of imagining a million-yuan jackpot. Even if you didn’t win a single yuan, you wouldn’t feel regretful for buying the ticket in the first place. Plus, lotteries often have small wins—10 yuan, 20 yuan, and, if you’re lucky, even 50 yuan.

Spending 30 yuan to watch Song of Tears, however, guaranteed only one outcome: reliving the pain and regrets of your past experiences, while also swallowing a stomach full of anger.

Honestly, it’s good enough if you don’t get sick!

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