Deirdre19
This review may contain spoilers
The dog has eaten my novel
I had high hopes for this drama as it is based on a good story, filled with high-profile actors and the original author was said to be in charge of the script. However, after undergoing the usual “idol”-standardisation of C-dramaland, nothing much of what I previously loved is left.
So if you are a fan of the novel or love dramas with political powerplay, you may want to steer clear of this one.
The plot
Sadly, the plot bears barely any resemblance with the original novel due to sweeping changes to both characters and setting that go far beyond of what would have been required to navigate the limitations imposed by censorship rules. It is clear that in order to make it work on screen the original story would have required some plot re-organisation (in the novel the ML barely appears in the first 30 or so chapters) and some tightening of the story, but what the scriptwriter(s) have come up with is an entirely new story, filled to the brim with the usual boring tropes and shallow romance in which some characters with the same names as in the novel also appear. It is no exaggeration to say that 95% of the plot has been made up by a bunch of rather inept scriptwriters.
I really cannot understand what could have driven the original author to so thoroughly massacre her own work and some of her best characters, but then money is said to corrupt the mind and those who wish to suck up to investors cannot afford a spine.
The result is a boring and highly annoying story in which none of the characters behaves in a consistent way. Whereas the novel had conflicting political ideas about how a government should be run and how the drive for independence of a mountain tribe should be dealt with as the driving force behind the two male leads schemes, the scriptwriters seemed to feel that this would be too much of a challenge to the viewer’s intelligence and reduced their motivation to a simple struggle between personal revenge and protecting one’s family.
Of the three main leads, the FL is without a doubt the most annoying character. Someone who fluctuates between the childish naivety of “let’s feed all the starving people” (how many are there? How much rice does she have”) to outsmarting everyone on numerous occasions (when the two male leads are supposed to be the most intelligent and scheming people around). The way she leads Pei Yan along, seemingly oblivious of his feelings for her, is worthy of any teasing slapper. Her behaviour towards Wei Zhao is just as inconsistent. How can a highly self-righteous goody-two-shoes like her accept being stabbbed, poisoned and tortured by a guy and then forgive it all because of a pretty sword dance? Seriously? Such writing is a slap in the face of any woman who has ever endured violence by a man. There is not much left of the taciturn and carefree young girl that mesmerised Pei Yan in the novel. Given how biased and obnoxious she has become (lying is ok, but only if she does it…) it is hard to understand how anyone would fall in love with her in the first place.
Wei Zhao is probably the character who has been allowed to keep the most of his original flavour.
His sadistic cruelty towards the FL stands in stark contrast to his sentimentality over his sister and friends which feels inconsistent for someone who is supposed to have become cold and unfeeling because of what he went through. Actual trauma victims tend to block out any feelings to protect themselves. This was very cleverly portrayed in the novel, but somehow, the screenwriters thought they knew better and turned the ML into a sobby whimp who instead of only caring about the mission that he devoted his life to, becomes a problem-solving servant to the FL.
The character of the SML, Pei Yan, has been completely distorted, diminished and vilified. Whereas in the novel he was equally matched with the ML both in terms of scheming capacity, political power and vision, he has been turned into a tattering fool who is hoodwinked by the FL and lead by the nose by the ML. He has been robbed of all the political vision and high ideals that he had in the novel. Whereas in the novel his quest for power was motivated by ideals of national unity and peace to put an end to the Emperor’s system of pitting the various factions against each other (with the common people suffering in the endless strife), in the drama he has been saddled with a corrupt family and a murderous mother to make “protecting the family” and personal ambition his highest goals. His best lines, that would reveal some of his tortured and loveless upbringing and go a long way to explain why he became so obsessed with the first female who showed him some kindness, have been deleted from the script to turn him into nothing more than an obnoxious creep for a good part of the story. It very much looks like the scriptwriters couldn’t bear the idea of a strong (and likable) SML for fear that it may throw shadow on their ML. It says a lot about their confidence in their own writing skills and/or the actor’s acting skills when they deem the ML so weak that he needs this kind of help to stand out…
The plot in the early episodes of the drama has become a collection of tit-for-tat between the ML and the SML over trivial things in which the supposedly clever and scheming SML usually runs around like a headless chicken, misses clues, cannot add two and two together and even lands himself in jail. Most of the remaining episodes are filled with similarly pointless squabbles, either between Wei Zhao and his tribe or Pei Yan and his family or between the two male leads. The greater political vision that guided every move of the two male leads in the novel is completely gone. The warfare that made up a large portion of the novel has been reduced to a couple of episodes and is completely devoid of military strategy or the tactical importance of each move.
Even An Cheng’s death, which in the novel is a crucial moment of tactical error and self sacrifice for the protection of a whole city, has been reduced to an idiotic scene of once again bailing out a hapless FL.
In the drama, Wei Zhao is present from the beginning and like a bad penny he seems to turn up in every frame, (lest the audience forget who is supposed to be the one and only hero in the story) turning every scene between Jiang Ci and Pei Yan into some strange threesome.
All the balance, that existed in the novel between two evenly matched adversaries, who the FL first meets separately and who later get together to collaborate, has gone.
Cui Liang seems to have become a totally pointless character who just tags along wherever Pei Yan goes to occasionally give him a meaningful look or remind him to set Jiang Ci free. The importance of this character and his inner conflicts in the unfolding of Pei Yan’s schemes and in the subsequent battles has been completely lost. At that rate, this character could just as well have been deleted (like so many other important characters).
The acting
Ren Jialun delivers a performance that is in line with his usual standards. Watchable and engaging in the parts where he can play the cold avenger, cringy and stiff as soon as complex emotions are required. His scenes with the FL are lukewarm at best and his screen presence clearly suffers as soon as he is in the same frame with one of the veteran actors (the Emperor or Madam Pei).
Li Landi has attracted a lot of criticism (especially for her looks) but I cannot say that I found it justified. She is believable as the innocent and cute girl and cannot be blamed for the inconsistent and annoying writing of her role. Her acting is standard fare for the cutsie romance dramas that she is generally cast in. If she was unable to give some depth to her FL, a big part of the blame must be put on the screenwriters.
Xu Zhengxi shows some very subtle and engaging acting in his emotional scenes and the scenes with his mother in some of the later episodes are a joy to watch. Overall it feels, however, like we’ve only seen a small portion of what he would have been capable of in a better written role. Rumour has it that he only read the script for the first few episodes before accepting the role, and given how much this role has been diminished compared to the novel, this sadly sounds quite believable. At no point in the story is he allowed to fully become the “powerful and scheming minister” that many fans had been hoping for (based on the Pei Yan character in the novel) and too many of his scenes are wasted on fawning over the FL. His fighting scenes are exceptional, though. Unlike many other actors, he doesn’t seem to hold back at all and it is no wonder he got injured on set.
The most impressive performance of the whole drama is without any doubt Wen ZhenRong who plays Madam Pei. Her every scene is an absolute delight to watch and her magnetic aura overshadows many of her co-stars in their scenes together. I would gladly watch 40 episodes with her as a scheming FL…
So if you are a fan of the novel or love dramas with political powerplay, you may want to steer clear of this one.
The plot
Sadly, the plot bears barely any resemblance with the original novel due to sweeping changes to both characters and setting that go far beyond of what would have been required to navigate the limitations imposed by censorship rules. It is clear that in order to make it work on screen the original story would have required some plot re-organisation (in the novel the ML barely appears in the first 30 or so chapters) and some tightening of the story, but what the scriptwriter(s) have come up with is an entirely new story, filled to the brim with the usual boring tropes and shallow romance in which some characters with the same names as in the novel also appear. It is no exaggeration to say that 95% of the plot has been made up by a bunch of rather inept scriptwriters.
I really cannot understand what could have driven the original author to so thoroughly massacre her own work and some of her best characters, but then money is said to corrupt the mind and those who wish to suck up to investors cannot afford a spine.
The result is a boring and highly annoying story in which none of the characters behaves in a consistent way. Whereas the novel had conflicting political ideas about how a government should be run and how the drive for independence of a mountain tribe should be dealt with as the driving force behind the two male leads schemes, the scriptwriters seemed to feel that this would be too much of a challenge to the viewer’s intelligence and reduced their motivation to a simple struggle between personal revenge and protecting one’s family.
Of the three main leads, the FL is without a doubt the most annoying character. Someone who fluctuates between the childish naivety of “let’s feed all the starving people” (how many are there? How much rice does she have”) to outsmarting everyone on numerous occasions (when the two male leads are supposed to be the most intelligent and scheming people around). The way she leads Pei Yan along, seemingly oblivious of his feelings for her, is worthy of any teasing slapper. Her behaviour towards Wei Zhao is just as inconsistent. How can a highly self-righteous goody-two-shoes like her accept being stabbbed, poisoned and tortured by a guy and then forgive it all because of a pretty sword dance? Seriously? Such writing is a slap in the face of any woman who has ever endured violence by a man. There is not much left of the taciturn and carefree young girl that mesmerised Pei Yan in the novel. Given how biased and obnoxious she has become (lying is ok, but only if she does it…) it is hard to understand how anyone would fall in love with her in the first place.
Wei Zhao is probably the character who has been allowed to keep the most of his original flavour.
His sadistic cruelty towards the FL stands in stark contrast to his sentimentality over his sister and friends which feels inconsistent for someone who is supposed to have become cold and unfeeling because of what he went through. Actual trauma victims tend to block out any feelings to protect themselves. This was very cleverly portrayed in the novel, but somehow, the screenwriters thought they knew better and turned the ML into a sobby whimp who instead of only caring about the mission that he devoted his life to, becomes a problem-solving servant to the FL.
The character of the SML, Pei Yan, has been completely distorted, diminished and vilified. Whereas in the novel he was equally matched with the ML both in terms of scheming capacity, political power and vision, he has been turned into a tattering fool who is hoodwinked by the FL and lead by the nose by the ML. He has been robbed of all the political vision and high ideals that he had in the novel. Whereas in the novel his quest for power was motivated by ideals of national unity and peace to put an end to the Emperor’s system of pitting the various factions against each other (with the common people suffering in the endless strife), in the drama he has been saddled with a corrupt family and a murderous mother to make “protecting the family” and personal ambition his highest goals. His best lines, that would reveal some of his tortured and loveless upbringing and go a long way to explain why he became so obsessed with the first female who showed him some kindness, have been deleted from the script to turn him into nothing more than an obnoxious creep for a good part of the story. It very much looks like the scriptwriters couldn’t bear the idea of a strong (and likable) SML for fear that it may throw shadow on their ML. It says a lot about their confidence in their own writing skills and/or the actor’s acting skills when they deem the ML so weak that he needs this kind of help to stand out…
The plot in the early episodes of the drama has become a collection of tit-for-tat between the ML and the SML over trivial things in which the supposedly clever and scheming SML usually runs around like a headless chicken, misses clues, cannot add two and two together and even lands himself in jail. Most of the remaining episodes are filled with similarly pointless squabbles, either between Wei Zhao and his tribe or Pei Yan and his family or between the two male leads. The greater political vision that guided every move of the two male leads in the novel is completely gone. The warfare that made up a large portion of the novel has been reduced to a couple of episodes and is completely devoid of military strategy or the tactical importance of each move.
Even An Cheng’s death, which in the novel is a crucial moment of tactical error and self sacrifice for the protection of a whole city, has been reduced to an idiotic scene of once again bailing out a hapless FL.
In the drama, Wei Zhao is present from the beginning and like a bad penny he seems to turn up in every frame, (lest the audience forget who is supposed to be the one and only hero in the story) turning every scene between Jiang Ci and Pei Yan into some strange threesome.
All the balance, that existed in the novel between two evenly matched adversaries, who the FL first meets separately and who later get together to collaborate, has gone.
Cui Liang seems to have become a totally pointless character who just tags along wherever Pei Yan goes to occasionally give him a meaningful look or remind him to set Jiang Ci free. The importance of this character and his inner conflicts in the unfolding of Pei Yan’s schemes and in the subsequent battles has been completely lost. At that rate, this character could just as well have been deleted (like so many other important characters).
The acting
Ren Jialun delivers a performance that is in line with his usual standards. Watchable and engaging in the parts where he can play the cold avenger, cringy and stiff as soon as complex emotions are required. His scenes with the FL are lukewarm at best and his screen presence clearly suffers as soon as he is in the same frame with one of the veteran actors (the Emperor or Madam Pei).
Li Landi has attracted a lot of criticism (especially for her looks) but I cannot say that I found it justified. She is believable as the innocent and cute girl and cannot be blamed for the inconsistent and annoying writing of her role. Her acting is standard fare for the cutsie romance dramas that she is generally cast in. If she was unable to give some depth to her FL, a big part of the blame must be put on the screenwriters.
Xu Zhengxi shows some very subtle and engaging acting in his emotional scenes and the scenes with his mother in some of the later episodes are a joy to watch. Overall it feels, however, like we’ve only seen a small portion of what he would have been capable of in a better written role. Rumour has it that he only read the script for the first few episodes before accepting the role, and given how much this role has been diminished compared to the novel, this sadly sounds quite believable. At no point in the story is he allowed to fully become the “powerful and scheming minister” that many fans had been hoping for (based on the Pei Yan character in the novel) and too many of his scenes are wasted on fawning over the FL. His fighting scenes are exceptional, though. Unlike many other actors, he doesn’t seem to hold back at all and it is no wonder he got injured on set.
The most impressive performance of the whole drama is without any doubt Wen ZhenRong who plays Madam Pei. Her every scene is an absolute delight to watch and her magnetic aura overshadows many of her co-stars in their scenes together. I would gladly watch 40 episodes with her as a scheming FL…
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