A good story ruined by poor execution!
I am sure I heard this was a big hit in its country of origin. So, I got curious and had quite a bit of an expectation. After completing the drama, I am just utterly disappointed. I almost dropped this because of the poor casting choices. They could have chosen better actors in the leading role. I guess they went after who is popular at the moment. The actor playing the King is so wooden and uninspiring. I can't believe they got him to play the famous Qin Shi Huang. He was supposed to be an authoritarian tyrant. He exuded so much power and vitality in him but I couldn't feel it with this actor. He had almost the same expressions all throughout the entire drama. He looked and acted weak. Gongsun Li's character was supposed to be vibrant, smart and outstanding. Again, I couldn't feel it with this actress. She was bland. I like the actors playing Jing Ke and Madam Chu. I like her little facial expressions and the way she talks. She had this irritating persona and therefore, was a really effective character. I prefer Han Shen over everyone on this drama. You could feel his suppressed emotions. He portrayed the character of a man in love with a woman he could never have well. As for the visual effects, they looked like it was done by amateurs. Lastly, there were so many plot holes and inconsistencies with the characters. I really wanted to like The King's Woman but I just can't. It is a good story but ruined by poor execution.Was this review helpful to you?
Mediocre Acting for a Tragic Drama
Summary: just watch the first few episodes bec of its original lines . This is not a romantic lovely story. More tragedy really.Pro:
- good casts but could be better
- many original plot . Watch till about 11th episode and enjoy.
Cons
- chemistry is just plain. The main actress is really cute and sweet but she lacks the toughness and can’t act on the most painful crying scenes. I wanna cry because she can’t cry well esp the last episode.
If you compare her with the actress in Princess Agents, you’ll get the feel why she’s not so great in this story. She doesn’t exude that tough persona. She’s great with the Pillow Book & ten miles of peach blossom kind of story. She’s not appropriate for tragedy
- the chemistry between main characters are so-so. Even with the rival is so-so.
Was this review helpful to you?
First of all I want to mention, that I was really excited about this drama, and the trailer just made us love it even more, but not the end was a decision as the course of the drama was too fast and very cruel to our protagonist.As typical of Chinese dramas, especially epics, here we have the case of "everyone loves me", that is, all the male characters love our protagonist but the female ones feel envy and hate .... I thought it was like Empress of China a sweet woman with men who love and respect her. However, this turned out to be a lie because only one of the protagonists truly loved the senior, since the king, in my view, saw it as a necessity, an obsession ... many excuse the attitudes of such because it is beautiful, but put yourself in the the protagonist's place ... to suffer physical and verbal abuse as she suffered no one deserves it, they would like someone who you are not attracted or like to start assaulting you to put you down whenever you can, because in Women Kings we witness this ...
Too much shit and obsession from the male leads..
Was this review helpful to you?
Story (7/10):
In more ways than not, the premise is unconventional - not only by Chinese dramas standards, but in the realm of romance. If one is even slightly familiar with early Chinese history, then the idea of a forced relationship with a man whose ruthless tyranny is more infamous than his merits in unifying what is now China, has all the ingredients for an interesting romance. A romance tying into real historical characters and their famed personalities, leaves one curious to see how this equally unstable yet devoted ruler thaws his way into the heart of the object of his infatuation, after taking her away from the life she wanted and those she loves.
Throw in a second lead (Jing Ke) whose name is synonymous in history with balls rivaling the Great Wall for his assassination attempts on the emperor, and imaginations be running wild from all sorts of directions this story can go, and the immense potential it has. Sounds very ambitious, doesn't it?
And yet it fell flat. Over-saturated with unoriginal, predictable tropes that take away substantial momentum from the bigger picture, and in the end achieved nothing for plot and characterization. Despite active ingredients for what could have been good storytelling and real conflicts, poor characterization is probably what ruined the drama. Characters that garner neither sympathy nor respect, whose actions make no sense of the insensible, and mostly controlled by situations rather than in control of. Drama begins with a plot only to end with none (minus the part where they stuck to history). Seriously, will someone please think of the plot?!
And then there's flashbacks. The only thing more overused is good ol' flashbacks with the cheesy music, to cement itself as extremely lazy, poor writing at its finest. One flashback in particular has me thankful for helping me realize self restraint levels I never knew existed.
Because everytime it comes up the urge to shave myself bald before pulling my hair out from seeing it for the 100000th time is real. To paraphrase another user, the excessive flashbacks is "an insult to audiences as if the lot suffers from amnesia" couldn't be more accurate.
And ultimately, all is left are frustrating characters, unfulfilled potential and whole lot of disappointment.
Acting (6.5/10):
Not much to be said here. The cast does little to connect the audience, poor characterization aside on writers' part. Dilraba is wholly unimpressive as the leading lady , and proved herself as lacking depth to carry heavier roles like her character here. As for Zhang Bin Bin, he delivers as a mean guy with tender moments, but lacks the magnanimous charisma of a unstable frightening ruler that is Qing Shi Huang. Seriously just read up the guy on Wiki for those unfamiliar with Chinese history. Chemistry between the two however, might be the only saving grace for the drama, if ever is one.
Supporting characters played by actors for Han Shen and Li Zhong are more convincing than mains.
Music (7/10): The OST is good. And by OST I mean two songs for the entire 48 episodes. One in particular is the jack of all trades, used for happier moments to tragic ones, rain or shine, Li Er with Jing Ke, Ying Zheng, etc you name it. One can even guess when it cues and where. The producers of this drama tend to have a single favorite for everything, from music to flashbacks. Besides that, the OST reflects well the tragic theme of the drama, and is memorable. Though may be a function of being hounded into one's memory.
Rewatch: (5/10) only reason I can imagine anyone wanting to bother with this is for the leading pair during more romantic moments. One is better off finding those YouTube MVs for all those "swoonworthy" moments instead.
Am I being too harsh? Perhaps. However, as a frequent watcher of Chinese historicals, I can't help but feel unimpressed. Maybe a better writer, production team and leading cast would have brought out a better outcome. Went into this excited but came out with shattered expectations. Unfortunate because the cinematography, filming (minus choppy editing)and costumes are gorgeous, and despite the complaints, I wanted to like this so badly for parts I did enjoy. However redeeming aspects are largely overshadowed by what is not
Was this review helpful to you?
Okay Royal Court Drama! (Surprisingly)
“The King’s Woman” was actually one of my very first c-dramas. I watched this drama without the same criticism that I have today. However, I remember this drama as one with a good cast, including Dilraba (one of my favourite actresses) and Vin Zhang, who I thought played the role of the emperor quite well. The story… could be better, but I think this is still a decent historical drama based on the royal court/family. If I were to watch this drama again, I don’t think it would be all that interesting, because I never really rewatch dramas, to be honest. Overall, I give this piece a 6.5.Was this review helpful to you?
I found it difficult to sympathize with any of the characters in this drama They all do unrealistic things. Han Shen is the only exception, as the long suffering senior brother who sacrifices all happiness to protect the one he loves.
The costumes, design and on location departments get top ratings from me. They did a wonderful job making the show a feast for the eyes as usual. Unfortunately, it isn’t enough to help a show that lacked substance in plot. Nothing was really happening and the final 20 episodes tended to meander towards a predictable end.
My biggest pet peeve was the spoiler previews. What was up with that? I could have skipped whole episodes with all the storyline they gave away. Great soundtrack, weak drama that left me sad and disappointed.
Was this review helpful to you?
This review may contain spoilers
Is is a bird? Is it a plane? No, ITS A TOXIC ALERT!!
Although it was intended as the main storyline of this series, personally I wouldn't watch this drama for 2 main reasons:1. The toxic relationship between the male and female lead
2. The amount of 🤦 moments in the drama that kinda make you go huh?
Unfortunate to say, but I did finish this series only because I was hoping for it to pick itself up at the end but it didn't so it was relatively disappointing.
The utter tyrrany, manipulation, obsession, corruption and toxicity radiating from this series is just not healthy and it's definitely hard to preservere through the drama knowing that it's there in every episode.
Overall, I wouldn't recommend the drama if you're looking for a healthy and lovable one although, if this is your kind of trope, by all means, it's possible one of the best ones in that category.
Happy Binging!!
Was this review helpful to you?
I rarely do fast forward when I'm watching but with this--especially scenes & conversations about politics, I just did. I also got disappointed on how they came up with episode 1, it didn't leave any impression at all.
BUT, i loved the sweet moments between Ying Zheng and Gongsun Li especially when GL gave in and finally learned to love YZ
Was this review helpful to you?
I liked the initial episodes of this story and watched it all faithfully, but the drama rushes through some of the relationship between Li and her senior so that the audience can't totally buy into her strong romantic emotions toward him...at least I couldn't. I get what they were doing because drama does have King in the title after all. Unfortunately, because time wasn't spent on this early relationship, I never really bought that she passionately loved senior.
I could nitpick a lot of the drama, but my main issues were that I was totally uninterested in the secondary story and quickly started to fast forward through these parts. The three characters I cared most about were the king, Li and Han . Also, a lot of the drama is spent on the political shenanigans, and I was totally uninterested. To compare, I found The General and I flawed, but the political maneuvering was actually done quite well.
My other main complaint is that several times Li does things in what I would say was "for his own good" i.e. the king/a prince/senior. Sitting down and having an honest conversation might have actually worked better. They make her a bit of a too perfect martyr and in one case have her do something that makes no sense and puts people in danger. We are let to believe that's something she would care about but she doesn't give it a second thought.
The end is pretty much how I thought it would go and, though overly convoluted, I appreciated some late twists and turns. I also appreciate that the relationship between the leads was quite complex, and the drama writers did not sugarcoat the reality of the king being a tyrant. The mixture of the writing and the actor's talent really makes for a nuanced performance which I liked.
The first half of this drama, I would rate a solid 7.5 to 8 so it is the second half which brings me down to 6 or 6.5 range. I can't honestly say full steam ahead when I felt the need to fast forward through a lot of the drama; however, for the story about the king and Li and with some judicious fast forwarding I found it a compelling watch.
Was this review helpful to you?
Was this review helpful to you?
The King's Woman aims to portray a ruthless tyrant as a complicated character that we can sympathize with in telling the story of his true love for a beautiful and talented woman. It's kind of difficult to do well and basically I don't think this drama did a great job at it. It relies too much on the actors' charisma and good looks, slow mo flashbacks, and pretty cinematography rather than thoughtful story writing and good character development.
By episode 40 or so I had a lot of built up frustration and dislike for the main characters so I didn't really care about them anymore. The side characters were uninspiring, but at least Jing Ke and Han Shen were more consistently written and had some good fight scenes. The main characters behave inconsistently and don't feel like real people. The most problematic character is the heroine, Gong Sun Li. She is supposed to be wise, upstanding and tough. As the story progressed I felt more and more repulsed by the idea of her falling in love with the King and being such a martyr for him. He is murderous one scene and then suddenly cute and seductive in the next. The drama jumps into a romantic comedy tone whenever the king does something terrible and they need you to feel sympathy for him and buy into the love story again. It bugged me that an intelligent woman would become submissive to such a man. The main failing in the storytelling is that there was not a compelling reason for her to be won over by him. They didn't portray much of her internal struggle to be with him. It goes against her character to fall in love with him, so give us an explanation. There were hints that she might have done it for political reasons or to protect others. But mostly the romance is portrayed as just fate - that Li was fated to always protect, love and serve the King no matter what his actions and he would always love her because of it. But why? This wasn't enough for me to buy into the romance.
I watched the last part of the drama mostly out of curiosity to see how the events played out. I knew I was supposed to feel the tragedy of it all as a result of the king's fatal character flaws and feel the heroine's selflessness and integrity, but the feelings just weren't there for me. Still, there were ample slow motion flashback scenes to inform me that something dramatic was happening. And every time they played a certain childhood flashback scene (which was A LOT) I knew I was supposed to be feeling how poignant it all was.
Then again after all my complaints about this drama again, I never once thought of dropping it. On a basic level it is watchable and entertaining enough to see the good looking costumes, actors, cinematography and martial arts scenes and find out what happens in the end.
Was this review helpful to you?
the acting skills with our actress Dilraba wasn't that impressive there were some scences where i was yelling to the screen "really, that's it!! " i was so dissapointed on the other hand actor Zhang vin he did deliver the typical alpha male but i don't like it when the role is alpha and ruthless but weak when it comes to his woman i find this quiet hard to believe. the plus point in this drama was that i really enjoyed the martial arts fights scenes
Was this review helpful to you?
