《憤怒的小鳥》 想象力成就最好的故事

A few years ago, a Finnish app took the mobile gaming world by storm. Its set-up was simple and its premise absurd: Angry Birds was little more than a shooting game, with birds instead of bullets and green pigs in place of targets.

幾年前，一款來自芬蘭的應用席捲手機遊戲領域。這款遊戲設置簡單、故事背景還有點荒謬：《憤怒的小鳥》跟其他射擊遊戲並沒有太大區別，就是用小鳥代替了子彈，用綠豬代替了靶子。

It led the way for a slew of other equally silly, equally addictive games to invade cell phones everywhere. Shortly after Angry Birds took off, audiences found a new distraction in Fruit Ninja, a game where the object was to chop falling produce. Then there was Candy Crush, where players could save a candy kingdom by matching like-colored bonbons.

《憤怒的小鳥》引領了一大波傻乎乎卻又讓人上癮的遊戲，它們佔據了全世界的手機。在《憤怒的小鳥》火了沒多久，大家很快就發現了新的消遣工具——《水果忍者》，遊戲任務就是切開掉落的物品。之後又有了《糖果粉碎傳奇》，玩家們通過匹配消除相同顏色的糖果，來拯救糖果王國。

Never mind that these games made absolutely no sense from a narrative standpoint. That was their charm, after all: They were knowingly absurd, a foray into mindless amusement. In games like Angry Birds, players found an escape from reality. All they had to do is resign themselves to the logic of the game, a world of simple cause-and-effect: Slingshot a bird, kill a pig, score points.

從講故事的角度來看，這些遊戲絕對是沒啥意思。但是不要在意這些細節，這纔是它們的魅力所在：故意做得很荒謬，也是對於這類不需要動腦筋的娛樂活動的初步嘗試。在類似《憤怒的小鳥》這樣的遊戲裏，玩家們可以遠離現實。他們唯一要做的就是全心投入遊戲的邏輯之中，一個簡單的因果世界：彈射小鳥，消滅綠豬，贏得分數。

Fast forward to 2016, and there’s now an Angry Birds movie, here to fill you in on all the details you never wished to know. The birds have been given personalities, motives and back-stories, and so have the villainous green pigs.

快進到2016年，《憤怒的小鳥》大電影來了，填補一切你壓根沒想到要了解的細節。小鳥們有了個性、目的以及背景故事，當然反派邪惡的綠豬也一樣。

The movie comes full of puns and bathroom humor – exactly the kind of raucous good time you’d expect from Hollywood animation. But while the film preserves the quirky tone of the original game, one has to wonder if some of the whimsy gets lost in translation. A film needs a plot, so the game’s nonsense had to be made sense of. Logic replaced absurdity.

這部電影充滿了雙關語以及低俗幽默——就是人們預期中的那種好萊塢動畫，爲你帶來喧鬧的快樂時光。但是，當電影保留了原作遊戲的怪異基調時，我們也在想，在電影解讀原作時會不會遺落了某些東西。電影需要情節，所以遊戲裏那些沒什麼道理的地方需要被改正，（電影中）邏輯取代了荒謬。

Angry Birds is not alone in having its gray areas sketched in for the big screen. Hollywood has made an industry of answering the questions no one ever thought to ask; to the point of even giving a brand of toy blocks its own story in 2014’s The Lego Movie. Countless secondary characters have also been plucked from the sidelines and given their own franchises. That includes the forgetful blue fish Dory from 2003’s Finding Nemo, whose spin-off premieres this summer.

《憤怒的小鳥》並不是唯一一個在大屏幕上面臨灰色地帶的作品。好萊塢開創了一個產業，回答了這些從來沒人想過的問題，比如2014年《樂高大電影》，他們就給玩具品牌編了一段故事，數不勝數的次要角色也被拉了進來，並且有了屬於自己的情節。這就包括2003年《海底總動員》中的藍色小魚Dory，今年夏天以他爲主角的電影要上映了。

In its efforts to feed the audience’s curiosity, Hollywood may in fact be stifling it. Viewers no longer have the luxury of imagining back-stories for their favorite characters, or debating the open-ended questions in a film’s source materials: An endless flow of prequels, sequels and spin-offs fill in those blanks for them.

看上去好萊塢在努力滿足觀衆的好奇心，但實際上他們的做法可能反而會扼殺好奇心。觀衆不再有充足的空間去想象他們最愛角色的背景故事，也不會再根據影片的原始素材去討論開放性結局：因爲無窮盡的前傳、後傳以及番外會填補這些空白。

When children today play Angry Birds, they won’t wonder why the birds are so grumpy. They’ll know. Everything will be determined for them: According to the movie, the main bird Red gets picked on for his bushy eyebrows, and that leaves him feeling isolated and, well, angry.

如今的孩子們玩兒《憤怒的小鳥》，他們不會再去想爲什麼小鳥們會如此暴躁，他們會知道原因。每件事都已經有了定論：按照電影裏的說法，主角胖紅因爲眉毛被嘲笑，讓他感到被孤立，當然也倍感憤怒。

In some ways, Hollywood has taken on the role of fan fiction writers, by expanding and exploring every corner of its fictional universes. But when these universes expand too widely, what will be left to imagine?

某種角度來看，好萊塢扮演了同人小說作家的角色，擴展挖掘其虛構宇宙的各個角落。但是，當這些宇宙擴展得太寬泛時，還有什麼可以留給想象力呢？