El Señor del Águila de las Nieves (2023)

Smart Demons + Stupid Humans = Extraordinary Mess

Watched this to see Xu Kai act but just like in a previous series of his; his and everyone else's acting was great but the story itself was a hot mess. Wish he or whomever chooses for him, chose better. The only reason this even got a 6.5 and not lower was because of the literally only 3 pros. Otherwise, it was like the mighty morphin power rangers and mortal kombat took LSD and spit this out.

Pros: Leads chemistry, the actors hard work which included great fight scenes, and costumes (except for the Halloween store costume lion for Uncle Tang), and good OSTs. No other pros.

Cons: Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for smart antagonists but not when the protagonists are so ridiculously idiotic. Just about everyone was led by the nose by the demons the ENTIRE show. Even when our ML told them otherwise, the Elders still chose to believe evil people. The amount of times the good guys failed to understand something very simple made you want to run your face into the wall. The entire series made a ton of no sense because the bad guys were running the show while the good guys were just walking around like zombies and talking in circles.

Did just about everyone really deserve to die; KYY's death in the last episode was pointless and meaningless. Some really did die as heroes but what made much of it senseless is that if they put two and two together sooner and made it 4 instead of 7, they could have made things happen sooner and survived. It made me feel like whoever the writer was, had no clue how to write a novel or one that's understandable or cohesive. Ji Rong staying alive and even her death at the hands of probably the show’s stupidest character, made me feel like I lost brain cells. DXY warned his brother and the two elders something was fishy about her from nearly the beginning and yet both uncles died because of her.

The sets and CGI looked very cheap. The words chucked up on the screen each time a new magic trick was used was eye roll worthy. Welcome to the 90s and not in a good way! Situ Hong's ruthlessness was completely ignored and his death and that of the weird random cultivator that at first clung to XY was completely pathetic. Both were sucked dry for big bad demon God that most of the time sounded like an alien cat that sucked in a helium balloon. We were all expecting a fight between him and XY but yeah, why bother?

Demon Ao Lan turned himself into a psychedelic Venus flytrap to try and kill XY in the last episode and it had me laughing. Little Shop of Horrors that was filmed in the 1970s had better CGI than this mess. I shed a tear for Shifu sacrificing himself at the end as out of all the guardians, he was the only one that infiltrated the demon clan and didn't do too poorly. Yes, happy ending for leads and the maybe 3 other living people but what did I watch for 40 episodes?

Would I recommend? No way. Even if you are a fan of the leads or anyone else, please find something else. Leads chemistry is not enough to hold this thing together.

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I really wanted this to be great, but.......

Going into this drama I had such high hopes that this would be a great watch, it contained a story that I was familiar with, having previously watched the donghua and it was to feature Xu Kai as the male lead. I 've seen several drama's of his and generally enjoyed them
Unfortunately having trudged my way through 40 episodes of this drama, for me, it was a real mess. Based on the plot it amazes me that the demons actually lost. Throughout much of the drama the demons were clearly more intelligent and made sensible plans. Ironically, any plans that they did make didn't even have to be that good, as their opponents were actually rather stupid.

If this had been a boxing match the referee would have stopped the fight and awarded the victory to the demons. It was not even close.

From the opening episode I was instantly concerned on what was to come based on the appearance of one the casts prosthetic mask. I assume it was a mask and not CGI either way it was just plain bad.

The script gave our main cast very little to work with throughout and the carnage that swept through so many of the cast might have been a relief to some, as at least they could get away from a nonsensical plot.

I don't know if the director purposedly wanted to avoid any similarities to the donghua, if so, they certainly accomplished it. All the things that I enjoyed about the donghua and had me so excited to see the live action version were missing.

There also seemed far to much screen time given to characters other than the leads. In some episodes, if you blinked you would have missed Xu Kai And Gulnezer Bextiya despite them being the leads.

To some, the happy ending that was given to our main leads might have been welcome, to me it felt completely forced and very contrived. After watching it, and getting over the fact the demons actually lost, I came away thinking that was some kind of an attempt at fan service. I was suddenly supposed to forget the previous 39 episodes and be pleased with the ending! Sadly, it didn't work.

The performance of the cast, despite the flaws with in the plot should be admired, they really did try. Despite all the limitations they were presented, the cast did a good job, I did like the chemistry between the leads unfortunately the lack of screen time didn't help them though.

Xu Kai spear skills, which I'm told were real were also excellent and certainly a highlight when we got to see them.

I really did want this drama to be great but even Xu Kai and the efforts of the entire cast couldn't save it.

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