Blue Veins (2016)

Starts off really promising and then farts at the end

I watched this back when it was first on TVB but I didn't write anything about it as I was not on MyDramaList at the time. But recently a suggested YouTube video played the intro music to this drama and it brought back so many memories, so I thought why not talk about it.

This drama started off really well and it felt special, like a break from the typical TVB nonsense as it was full of cool CGI and style. The Chinese title of the drama was very simple. just one word and it was designed in a very clever way along with some really cool style choices. And there were cool scene transition b-roll where it is a close up of Kevin Cheng and it panned a little around him, just like on the title screen with Raiden in Metal Gear Revengeance. I was excited to find out more about what was going on with the drama as the story initially felt really compelling and the whole thing was dripping with style, but holy crap, it fell hard on its face as the drama continued.

So the show is about vampires. Yes, vampires. Nothing wrong with that as long as they do it properly. And at first it felt like it was all mystical and cool, but we eventually discover that everything - and I mean everything - is purely scientific. That destroyed all the mystical aspects of the drama and immediately made it crap. Imagine if Journey to the West had Sun Wukong doing magical stuff because he was a deity, and then halfway through we discovered he was actually an android. How many WTFs would you throw at the drama? For a more real-world example, do you remember the awesome movie Highlander? There can only be one! It was all magical and mystical and it never deviated from that fact in the storytelling. And then, Highlander 2 came out and it goes "oh you thought it was mystical? No! All science and different planet stuff." That p***ed off a lot of people, and this was what happened to this drama for me.

So, to explain my disappointment I'll explain the story how I remember it. In the future, humanity is all messed up and near extinction because of a vampire virus. Yes, a vampire virus, so it was taking a page right out of the Underworld IP. Two uninfected humans from the future - yes I said the future - played by Joel Chan and Kay Tse decided to take a sample of the virus and travel back in time to retrieve an extinct holy water that could cure the virus. How do they know this could cure the virus? Dunno, it was simply brought up without much explanation from a terribly voiced computer AI. While they were flying to the past in their time machine, they encountered problems that led to crashing, leaking of virus, Joel Chan and Kay Tse getting infected, and then the both of them emerging 500 years in ancient China where they went crazy and started biting everyone.

While these new vampires were going nuts and biting everybody and making new vampires, Kevin Cheng and his band of Imperial Guards from ancient China - yes Imperial Guards who were supposed to be guarding the Forbidden City but were now outside - were on a mission to defeat the vampires who were terrorising the town. They obviously lose because they were only human, but then suddenly all the guards - including Eddie Kwan - get struck by lightning and become immortals with superpowers. Yes, immortal just like immortals in Highlander so they can only die by being beheaded. Now we have human immortals and vampire immortals, both with super powers running around unchecked. The immortals continue their mission to hunt down vampires to the modern day with the belief that they would become human again when all vampires are destroyed.

Since this was a TVB production, you bet your ass that the characters all decide to set up base in Hong Kong because you know... Hong Kong is a great place to be when you are immortal and stuff. I didn't really mind this too much. There were some great effects and fight scenes, some great - if predictable - conflicting drama when Eddie Kwan, as an immortal, decided to make his son into a vampire so that he wouldn't die, but it is all overshadowed by the darn annoying reveal that vampirism was a virus and there was time travel involved. They didn't just jump the shark, they skipped over the blue whale as well.

Besides my main complaint, there were other issues. The main cast loved going to Amsterdam for some reason, and the story makes everything - and I mean everything - happen in Amsterdam. Where was that super magic holy cure water? Yes, it is in Amsterdam. This was purely because TVB had a tight budget so they had to choose one country and then write the entire story based in that country to save money. This meant that vampires also came from there, which made me laugh because weren't vampires historically from Transylvania, Romania? Not here, everything is in Amsterdam, yo. Every time there was a scene where they had to return to Amsterdam I shook my head like why Amsterdam? I bet they only went there for the redlight district and to smoke weed at the cafes while they tried to write themselves out of the plotholes.

Speaking of plotholes, the biggest one was how the immortals came to be after getting struck by lightning. I thought maybe some higher being gifted them that power to fight the vampires, but the drama never gives us a true explanation. We are given a half-assed explanation that some things cannot be explained by science. Wtf, the drama used science to explain vampirism but the immortals we have nothing?

The vampire acting in this drama was also so over-the-top it was hilariously bad. When Joel Chan and Kay Tse use their vampire modes they get this really stupid growling voice and they do the old-school Hong Kong movie ghost claw hand pose that kept making me laugh when I saw it. It was so bad, man, you have no idea. Joel Chan being the big bad was not a problem for me because he had the acting chops to pull it off, but damn the effects and poses they decided to use here were so bad that it removed everything intimidating about the vampire forms. Even the vampires in Buffy the Vampire Slayer are scarier, and that's not saying much.

And man, I found Grace Chan so annoying as well. She spends the entire drama just hopelessly in love with Kevin but Kevin turns her down because he is an immortal. When she discovered this, she chose to become a vampire so that he didn't have to worry about her dying, completely ignoring the fact he wasn't into her to begin with. The best part about this is that in real-life she succeeds in getting with Kevin and they got married and had kids, so she sorta succeeded I guess?

Finally we have Kay Tse as the female lead and boy she sucked. She has no, and I mean NO charisma at all. I had more fun watching Anjaylia Chan being an awesome martial artist learning under Kevin but hiding her skills, but later she becomes a vampire. Kay Tse's acting is so wooden and I really did not like watching her, and she has no chemistry with Kevin at all. I have seen more chemistry between Kevin and Chun Wong (the fat guy in the drama) than between her and Kevin.

On the bright side, it does have a great intro song.

Ultimately, a real letdown of a drama. Kevin Cheng did have a topless scene showing off how buff he was despite his age of 47 at the time, but that doesn't make up for all the awfulness of this drama. This was just disappointing and it was made worse by having a great start and then doing a stupid science twist later that just ruined the entire mystical mood it started off with.

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