The Tyrant (2024)

The Tyrant.. A Missed Opportunity in The Witch Universe..

I honestly cant believe this is part of The Witch Universe.. What was this even about?? There was no real story.. The action scenes were bad.. VFX were poor.. The color grading was even worse.. With such a strong cast this is the best they could do??

First of all this should have just been a movie.. The four episodes felt like fillers with a slow dragging storyline. .. They could have atleast fitted in a well choreographed action scene just to compensate for the weak plot.. Jo Yoon Soo's acting didnt do her character any justice.. Her coldness just felt forced.. And Kim Seon Ho was completely underutilized.. He is a great actor.. And though his acting was solid here.. It wasn’t enough to save the series..

Considering the potential of the cast and the The Witch movies released before this.. It’s hard to believe they couldn’t deliver a more engaging series.. Instead it was a drawn out.. Underwhelming experience.. Overall The Tyrant was a major letdown for me..

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Short action kdrama with not that compelling story being a spin-off to Witch universe

Disclaimer: Watching both Witch part 1 and part 2 doesn't seem like needed, but you can find some mythos from those movies appearing in this series.

Even though I've watched both movies before watching Tyrant. Like both movies I found world building as a nice thing. What is missing in it was adding reasoning why the things are happening, reasons for certain characters decisions etc. This makes plot feel really flat. Someone kills someone, there're some factions which fight each other, but all those things make impression similar to adding diffrent spices, toppings to your pizza, but it never aims to make a final consitent product, but rather just ends being a mix of things with main focus on "decoration". The best conclusion for flatness is one of dialogue line from main character: "I apologize, but this is very serious government business"...

What stand out for me was acting especially I was impressed with acting from Cha Seung Wong , Kim Seong Ho and Joo Yoon Soo. They kept me interested when they appeared on screen. At the same time their quality acting overshadowed how much other actors/actresses weren't on par. Characters played by Kim Kang Woo, Mu Jin Sung and Kim Joo Heon were much less interesting not to mention that I had an impression that everyone else acted below their capabilities.

Action scenes still delivered, I'd say this is on par with what you could see in Witch part 2. One small caveat is that some scenes are a bit too dark which made it harder for me to follow up on what was happening.

Conclusion:
Like I've said plot felt flat with really good acting from certain actors and it added new things to established universe. Overall after finishing Tyrant I find similarities between progression of Park Hoon Jung works of Witch universe to progress of Dragon Age video game series.
We've got really great introduction to the world with Witch part 1 where plot and characters had some meaning and relation between each other, but with part 2 we got incluion of more world building, but with less enthralling stories and much more focus on action scenes. From my perspective this trends keep in Tyrant which is a bit of shame.

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