Chapter 167: The Other Two Awards
After Lu Xu won the Contention Award for Best Actor, many voices praised him highly. However, some people went to great lengths to prove that his award was not particularly prestigious.
How could they prove it? The only way was to subtly imply that the Contention Award committee had made its own choice, that the selection criteria for other awards might differ, or that the Contention Award was aiming for innovation this year.
Although everyone knew this was nonsense, nonsense itself had the power to annoy people.
But today, with the announcement of the Golden Flame Award nominations, those claims that the Contention Award lacked prestige took a serious hit.
The Best Actor nomination list for the Golden Flame Award was almost identical to that of the Contention Award. The two committees did not follow the same selection process, yet both ended up choosing actors with well-established reputations in the industry.
Even if Lu Xu hadn’t won the Contention Award for Best Actor, the fact that he appeared on the nomination list already proved his exceptional talent.
“So strong!”
[Lu Puppy, the strongest in the universe! Super Puppy!]
[If he wins both the Contention Award and the Golden Flame Award, at this rate, I feel like I’ll be seeing him receive a Lifetime Achievement Award in a few years.]
[+1. Sigh, Verse disbanded not that long ago, and yet Lu Xu is already this amazing.]
Although the discussion about whether Lu Xu would be nominated for this year’s Golden Flame Award had been heated—mainly due to his immense popularity—insiders in the film industry already had a clear understanding. While there were distinctions between the Contention Award and the Golden Flame Award, the differences were not significant.
When it came to award selection, the Contention Award and the Golden Flame Award focused on different aspects. However, at their core, such awards existed to recognize high-quality films. If the number of high-quality films exceeded expectations, then discrepancies in the selection process were bound to arise.
However, the problem was that in a given year, only a handful of films could truly be considered high quality.
The judges had a limited selection to choose from, which naturally led to nominations being concentrated on a fixed group of actors.
Beyond that, although the industry was reluctant to admit it, the fact remained—compared to ten years ago, the overall acting skills of actors had declined significantly.
In the past, neither the Contention Award nor the Golden Flame Award had been particularly conservative, nor had they deliberately favored middle-generation actors when selecting winners. But now, the judges were making a real effort to identify promising young actors. After all, everyone understood that relying solely on the current generation of established actors would not be sustainable in the long run.
There was a clear need to nurture young actors in order to retain younger audiences.
Yet, despite the judges’ best efforts, the pool of young actors with strong acting skills remained extremely limited. Some actors who were considered “quite talented” by their fan bases struggled to even secure a nomination in the eyes of the judges.
On one hand, there was the need to uphold the awards’ credibility and fairness; on the other, there was the desire to promote young, skilled actors. Balancing the two was no easy task.
This was precisely why Sang Yuan had strongly advocated for Lu Xu to win the Contention Award for Best Actor.
It was obvious that Lu Xu was the kind of young actor who didn’t require “nurturing.”
If the industry was scrambling to find young talent when none was available, then when someone truly outstanding appeared, only to be denied recognition out of reluctance—what was the point of fostering new talent in the first place?
Was the goal simply to make young actors endure an endless wait?
Moreover, in Sang Yuan’s view, Lu Xu winning the Contention Award for Best Actor would only serve to inspire more young actors—just as the Stellar Award had proven.
First, Lu Xu had been nominated for both Best Supporting Actor and Best Actor, then he went on to win. And after his victory, Shao Yao and Zheng Xiao emerged as rising stars.
There might not have been a direct causal link between these events, but Sang Yuan preferred to see it in a positive light.
Since there had been a first, then surely there would be a second and a third.
…
The Golden Flame Award nominations were relatively uneventful—after all, the Contention Award nominations had come first. Since Lu Xu had already been nominated for the Contention Award, his nomination for the Golden Flame Award was hardly surprising.
The only real talking point was the competition between Lu Xu and Hang Xiaguang.
Once again, Hang Xiaguang’s name appeared before Lu Xu’s in the nomination list, which meant that at this year’s Golden Flame Awards, the two of them remained the closest contenders for the trophy.
Lu Xu had already claimed victory at the Contention Awards. As the competition carried over to the Golden Flame Awards, the question lingered—would he win again?
This uncertainty remained ever since the nomination list was announced, persisting all the way until the night of the award ceremony.
The Golden Flame Award committee was even more mischievous than the Contention Award committee. Based on seating arrangements, Lu Xu wasn’t seated with the Reverse City cast, nor was Hang Xiaguang placed with his own film’s crew. Instead, their seats were right next to each other.
Meanwhile, the other three nominees, including Ren Ningyi and Pei Han, didn’t receive such “special treatment.”
Ren Ningyi and Pei Han were seated in the row in front of them. Before the ceremony began, Ren Ningyi kept turning around multiple times as if watching a comedy unfold.
Lu Xu: “……”
He had arrived later than Hang Xiaguang on the red carpet. After entering the hall and finding his seat, he was momentarily stunned to see Hang Xiaguang sitting beside him.
For half a minute, he hesitated.
“Go on, sit. Don’t be nervous,” Hang Xiaguang said with a smile. “I don’t bite.”
“Don’t believe him. He does,” Ren Ningyi turned his head and grinned. “I can vouch for it. He ate someone in Devil’s Crown.”
Lu Xu suddenly looked enlightened and, playing along, put on a terrified expression.
Devil’s Crown was an old-school suspense-horror film in which Hang Xiaguang played a cannibal. His portrayal left such a deep impression on moviegoers that even after taking on numerous heroic roles, fans who had seen Devil’s Crown couldn’t shake the feeling that he was about to pull out a knife and start dissecting someone at any moment.
Although Lu Xu and Hang Xiaguang were seated next to each other and were each other’s biggest competition, the atmosphere between them wasn’t nearly as tense as outsiders had imagined.
Since the committee had arranged their seats this way, the cameras naturally panned to them from time to time. For the most part, both of them sat with serious expressions, watching the stage, occasionally exchanging a few words. However, there was no visible tension, nor was there any forced attempt at friendliness that would have made things awkward.
[Committee: We’ve been waiting forever and got nothing.]
[LOL, what exactly were they hoping to capture? Lu Xu looking pissed off? Hang Xiaguang looking pissed off? Don’t forget, there’s a difference between the Golden Flame Award and the Contention Award—four actors were nominated for Best Actor at the Contention Awards, but the Golden Flame Award has five.]
[OMG! That’s right! It just hit me—our puppy is officially a Best Actor winner now!]
[Lu Xu isn’t the type to sulk just because he loses, okay? Getting nominated is already a huge deal!]
Lu Xu had previously added Hang Xiaguang on WeChat. The latter had mentioned wanting to collaborate in the future, but since they weren’t close, Lu Xu hadn’t been able to tell whether he was serious or just making polite conversation. Now that they were seated together, they had the opportunity to chat a bit more.
Though they weren’t particularly familiar with each other, having shared two major nominations together was enough to slowly bridge that gap.
“It might not just be two times,” Hang Xiaguang said with a smile. “The Critics’ Award hasn’t been announced yet.”
Objectively speaking, among the three major film awards, the Critics’ Award didn’t carry as much prestige as the Contention Award or the Golden Flame Award. However, for film actors, winning all three and becoming a “Triple Crown Best Actor” was the ultimate achievement in their careers.
Under such circumstances, even the Critics’ Award—despite being the least prestigious of the three major awards—held considerable significance.
Looking at the entire history of Chinese film, since the establishment of the three major awards, only two actors had ever received recognition from all three and won all three trophies.
One had swept all three in a single year, while the other had won them across different years.
At present, Hang Xiaguang had already won both the Contention Award and the Golden Flame Award—he was just missing the Critics’ Award.
The reason he hadn’t won the Critics’ Award was that critics considered his acting to be overly technical.
He had received formal training and hadn’t been particularly gifted in his youth; it was only after years of playing various roles that his skills had gradually improved. That was an undeniable fact. But Hang Xiaguang couldn’t understand—if raw talent counted as acting ability, then why didn’t years of dedicated refinement count as well?
However, like him, many male actors in the industry were also missing just one trophy or another. Few had achieved a perfect sweep.
Given this year’s landscape, Hang Xiaguang felt that he and Lu Xu were very likely to be nominated for all three awards together.
That being said, while they had the highest chances at the Golden Flame Award, the Critics’ Award was less certain. Though critics were generally fond of Lu Xu, they also had a tendency to differentiate themselves from the traditional Contention and Golden Flame Awards. As a result, they might just throw in an unexpected winner.
In other words, the Critics’ Award liked to stand apart, while he was a traditionally trained actor.
…
The outcome of the Golden Flame Award played out exactly as predicted—the Best Actor winner would be chosen between Hang Xiaguang and Lu Xu. This conclusion was drawn by netizens who had scrutinized the amount of screen time both actors received during the ceremony, practically analyzing the footage under a microscope.
[…They put the two of them together for this exact reason!]
[LOL, for someone to laugh, someone else has to cry. The Golden Flame Award committee really doesn’t care about the other guy’s feelings, huh?]
In the end, Hang Xiaguang won the award.
What made netizens laugh was that, even though Hang Xiaguang was the one who won, the cameras focused more on Lu Xu when the winner was announced.
[Who exactly won the award?!]
[I bet the cameraman, just like me, was waiting to capture Lu Puppy’s ‘beautiful crying face.’ Tsk tsk, a little evil.]
[If you want to see his beautiful crying face, just watch The Path of Bones—I guarantee, he cries non-stop.]
Lu Xu himself didn’t mind the way the Golden Flame Awards handled things. After the ceremony, he gave a relaxed interview and even discussed a potential collaboration with Hang Xiaguang.
This was confirmed by Hang Xiaguang as well. When reporters asked him about his plans after winning Best Actor, he said he wanted to star in a movie with Lu Xu.
As reporters went around interviewing the other nominees, they found that nearly everyone had a similar answer—they all wanted to work with Lu Xu.
As for why? Aside from the unspoken but obvious factor of box office appeal, most of the other four nominees had already worked with each other in some capacity.
After all, there were only so many mid-career actors who had made it this far. Some had collaborated as early as the late ’80s, while Ren Ningyi and Pei Han had worked together in recent years.
Lu Xu was the only fresh face among them.
…
Hang Xiaguang’s prediction turned out to be correct.
Just over half a month later, he and Lu Xu crossed paths again—this time, at the Critics’ Award ceremony.
The Critics’ Award had much less overlap in nominations with the Golden Flame Award and the Contention Award. This time, neither Ren Ningyi nor Pei Han attended, and the award did not go to either Lu Xu or Hang Xiaguang. Instead, it was given to the lead actor of a relatively niche film.
Lu Xu and Hang Xiaguang could only leave empty-handed.
However, after the Critics’ Award nominations were announced, Lu Xu became one of the very few actors in the industry to be nominated for all three major awards with a single film. The three major awards followed a pattern similar to solving a math problem—each year, around ten male actors would be nominated for Best Actor, but only one or two would manage to secure nominations across all three.
Still, Lu Xu gained a lot from the experience.
Aside from the direct financial benefits of winning an award, Lu Xu also received several high-quality scripts from invitations by Hang Xiaguang, Ren Ningyi, and others. These were the kinds of scripts that wouldn’t typically be offered to most actors in the industry—they were only presented to a select few.
The scripts in Hang Xiaguang and Ren Ningyi’s hands were projects in which they had a significant say.
Had Lu Xu not crossed paths with them through these nominations, they might not have considered letting him read them.
Everyone in the industry knew how rare a good script was.
To a certain extent, once an actor’s skills reached a high level, further breakthroughs became increasingly difficult. At that point, the only thing that could push them to unlock even greater potential was a truly exceptional script.
Only classic scripts could give actors the opportunity to leave behind unforgettable performances.
After some deliberation, Lu Xu ultimately chose to take on a commercial film—a full-fledged blockbuster he planned to collaborate on with Li Yan.
It would be Lu Xu’s first attempt at a commercial blockbuster since entering the film industry.
