Omniscient Reader: The Prophecy

As a precious fragment of dokja i will never accept this monstrosity

Kim dokja would rather give SSSSSS-grade Infinite Regressor a chance than watch this. Han sooyoung didn't sacrifice 13 years of her life to write TWSA to save dokja's life for this either. We don't need LA or even anime adaptation just leave orv alone, i rather sacrifice orv popularity than see my beloved fiction gets ruined by someone who never made an effort to check the og work, no respect for neither fan nor author. I will never acknowledge this LA as ORV, the disrespect is hurtful for us dokja's fragments. And yes i will rate it 1 star even though i will never watch it. Why should i when dokja defended his most beloved novel from haters, i also have the right to do so by bashing the poorest execution of my favorite novel.

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One Man's Greed and His Attempt to Destroy A Beloved Work

This movie could have easily been one of the top ranking and most profitable movies but the director's greed destroyed it and made it into one of the Unspeakables right up there with ATLA Live Action, Dragonball-Z LA & AOT LA that we have all done our best to erase (if you don't know what I am talking about, GOOD! Let's do our best to forget this too).

They made a movie from a very popular and beloved novel with a huge fan base that was very much ready to support this and completely screwed them over. They completely destroyed beloved characters and twisted the original work into something nearly unrecognizable.

To be frank this isn't an adaptation, it is more accurate to say this is someone's badly written self-indulgent misogynistic fanfiction or a badly plagiarized attempt of the original work.

Let me try to paint a picture of what they did with some analogies:
**Please note that the following are made up scenarios are not a reflection or opinion of how I feel about the following works or characters. It is not a critic on other works, I am just trying to explain what this movie has done and changed from the original work**

1) Why are fans mad about the guns?
-For anime fans: This would be like if they made a Bleach Live Action and gave everyone a gun. Ichigo now has a handgun and his bankai changes it to a machine gun. Sounding ridiculous?

-For Chinese wuxia/xianxia fans: Instead of flying swords, they all now have flying guns.

-For Harry Potter fans: You guessed it! Wizards get guns! But not the purebloods because guns are muggle and too high tech, no they get swords and no wands for anyone! Good luck deflecting a bullet with your sword Voldy.

(It should also be noted that the other issue with giving a master SWORDSman guns is that guns are the WEAKEST weapon in ORV)

2) On the subject of Kim Dokja (the main character):
-For Marvel fans: This would be like taking away Captain America's iconic shield and giving him a gun NOT to shoot nazis but so he can go and kill all the people who didn't believe in him pre-serum.

-For anime fans: If Naruto didn't bother with talk-no-jutsu and friendship & just destroyed the entire Hidden Leaf so no one would ever think he was weak.

3) Misogyny? Where? (In the case of Yoo Sang Ah (played by Chae Soo Bin):
-For anime fans: This is like if in FMA Hawkeye was made Mustang's secretary instead of his Lieutenant OR if she quit all together because she couldn't handle the horrors of war. You get the picture. The destruction of a strong and amazing female character into someone who just fades into the background because only male characters can be in the spotlight.

Again these analogies are just for a comparison of what this movie has done and how it has changed the source material.
If these all sound insane or ridiculous to you then you now know exactly how ORV fans felt every time they learned something new about this dumpster fire they call a movie.

Do not waste your time OR money on this. Don't even waste your thoughts.
If you have any interest at all then go read the original novel or even the webtoon.

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It cant be called ORV LA

How it can be an adaption when it changes nearly the whole plot?!?!?
Some people say we're overreacting, but honestly, I think the director just has skill issues. The original work was written in their own language, so I can't tell if they're deliberately distorting the content or if they truly just don't get it. Some of the changed plot points even involve their own country's history. Watching the movie, it looks like the director hasn't even read it once.
Even fanfics wouldn't dare to write stuff like this, seriously 🙏. No shame at all, just riding on the novel's millions of reads and then easily spitting all over someone else's hard work. So proud of yourselves, huh?
p/s: To those "LA fans", you guys don't even have the right to call us 'toxic,' especially when you haven't read a single chapter of the novel, know nothing about the original work, and only support this sh!tty piece because of actors you like, just SYBAU 🥀🥀🥀

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Thank You Kim Byung Woo For This Anti-Fan Fiction!

[THE MAIN REVIEW HAS BEEN WRITTEN]

==> WHO IS THIS REVIEW SUPPOSED TO BE FOR?
For that one reader who is willing to read it, and also because of my desire to get my thoughts about this films out there.

==> MY EXPECTATIONS FROM IT
Let me preface this by saying that my expectations for this film were honestly at rock bottom, so I thought that I might actually like some aspects of it because of having zero expectations from it, but in all honesty I really don't have a lot of good things to say about it.

==> MY FAMILIARITY WITH ORV
As for my history with ORV, I've read the manhwa up to the Dark Castle Arc and recently even started reading the webnovel, but I'm currently only in the starting parts of it. As it's been some time since I read the manhwa, honestly I don't remember everything in exact detail, but I do remember the very basic details of events and I obviously won't be dissecting every deviation they did just because of how often it has been prefaced.

==> ADAPTATIONS AND THEIR NEED TO BE FAITHFUL
Some people have stated that an adaptation doesn't need to be a 1:1 copy of the source material. In all honesty, I totally agree with you on this point, it doesn't need to be one. But it shouldn't have as many creative liberties as to the point that it becomes a completely different entity from its source material. It should have an identity of its own while still being a mouthpiece of its source material. If we had actually wanted to see a variation in it, believe me there's a ton of fan-fiction for ORV out there, and you can obviously count on our amazing ability to read.

==> WHY THIS FILM WOULD'VE WORKED AS A LOOSE ADAPTATION?
There's a thing called loose adaptations, and in those adaptations, the creators of them actually take an already established IP and put their own twist on it to the point it becomes unrecognizable from the original, and they most of the time even change the title and character names for the adaptation. If Kim Byung Woo had actually done it, I might have honestly maybe liked it a bit. He literally took every single thing that makes ORV so beloved out of the film.

==> WHY DIRECTORS OF ADAPTATIONS OF AN ESTABLISHED IP NEED TO CATER TO ORIGINAL FANS?
If we were to take ORV as an example, the only reason it got so popular to the point of it even getting a live-adaptation is because of the original fans. Their love for the story, the themes, the characters, and just about every thing this story stood for made the IP that much popular to the point that producers were willing to invest that much money into this being made, even going as far as to casting A-list actors for it. And their priority should be to cater to them, the original fans and I honestly don't even know who this adaptation is supposed to be for, the original fans or your average fantasy flick watchers because it even fails to amuse most of the later ones.

==> THE NEED TO INCLUDE ORIGINAL CREATORS OF AN ESTABLISHED IP IN THE MAKING OF ADAPTATIONS BASED ON THEIR WORKS
From the interview, the author of ORV (Sing Shong), it's already clear that they only visited the filming site once, and he had no such say as far as to the production of the film and had put all of their trust in Kim Byung Woo. the amazing director of this film. If we were to look at the Live-Action Adaptation of One Piece, one of the major reason that got so much popular is that they were willing to give the reins of the production in the hands of the original creator of it and every decision had to be approved before being incorporated in the series. Had they maybe done the same for this film, we honestly might've seen a different product altogether. I'm not saying to let them decide everything, but they should at the very least have a say on what goes in the film and what doesn't. And the director should also look at the original and try to please both the author and the fans of it.

==> THOUGHTS ON THE STORY ITSELF
As for the actual story itself, the changes honestly bothered me a lot, but the thing that bothered me the most is the lack of any such crucial information that actually explains the world building of this story. It ended up being more of an action fantasy flick that you watch first, maybe it might intrigue you very mildly, but you'll eventually forget about it.

==> CHANGES I DIDN'T LIKE
There has been one thing that has been said before, but I honestly want to say it myself too. Who exactly is Kim Dokja? In the original, he's supposed to be a reader. Then I honestly really want to know where's the most crucial part of the story? In the original, Dokja gets extremely OP skills because of him being a reader. Where is the FOURTH WALL, BOOKMARK, & the most important of all OMNISCIENT READER'S VIEWPOINT??? Like please someone explain this to me, I can maybe understand every single change the director made but why this, like that's the whole point of this story to begin with, and they took that away. Also, maybe a smaller change in comparison, but Junghyeok dies now instead of Dokja, are the memes now supposed to get reversed lol. And the King of No Killing is a revival skill, that's the second most important part of the story, and you went ahead and changed that one too. I'm honestly astonished at the choices or creative liberties this director took.

==> A GOOD STORY DOESN'T NEED KNOWN FACES
Now, on to the actors, this is just a point of mine that I do want to convey that when you actually believe in the story and your ability to create something good, you honestly don't need big names to do the promotion for it. If you want to take an example, let's look at the Live-Action Adaptation of One Piece, none of the actors were big names or had much fame, but they all embodied the original characters so well and the story was written perfectly that the adaptation spoke for itself.

==> WHAT I THOUGHT ABOUT THE ACTING
I don't mean to actually disregard the efforts of the actors because they actually seemed to have worked really hard on it, especially Lee Min Ho, that guy nailed the character of Yu Junghyeok. Yes, there were changes to his character's writing too, but in all honesty, he exceeded my expectations. The only reason I decided to up the rating to 2 stars instead of 1 was because of him. I was honestly expecting Shin Seung Ho to do some good, but I definitely wasn't expecting myself to be impressed by Lee Min Ho. All the others did some decent work, they were alright and sometimes bearable in my opinion, but still pretty decent.

==> TERRIBLE VISUAL EFFECTS
Now, let's talk about the visual effects, and calling them lackluster would be an understatement. This film was supposed to a decently high budget for as far as I am aware of, and this is what they came up with. The monsters were laughable for how horrendous they looked, especially the grasshopper. Since I had already seen clips of Dokkaebi's ddesign, I was already expecting it, but I'm still going to say that it was a downgrade from its original design.

==> THE ENDING
They decided to do an original ending for the film since rather than going to the Theatre Dungeon, they decided to introduce a Flame Dragon that Kim Dokja and Co. will fight together and emerge victorious due to the "MOST BEAUTIFUL POWER OF FRIENDSHIP". Seriously, I would've rather watched a shounen anime or read a shounen manga if this was going to the end theme for this film. Also, them doing a big bad villain for the finale of the film does solidify its position as just another average action fantasy flick.

==> CHANGING THE OVERALL THEMES
Honestly, I might've been content with every change had they not changed what ORV stood for. Even if they wanted to do this theme for the film, there were much better ways to do this rather than saying it to the face of the audience, subtle gestures are sometimes much better reflected in fictions like these rather than direct ones. And the ending scene with Kim Dokja saying that line looking at the camera smiling:
"I, who was nothing, lived this story and met new companions. Together with my companions, we will write a new ending to this story."
I honestly almost vomited at this line for how cringy and badly written this was.

==> OVERALL THOUGHTS
This in my opinion is a disgustingly horrible adaptation and maybe a somewhat decent below average standalone film. If you want to watch it, you can go ahead and do that. These are just my thoughts, people seem to have a very subjective taste regarding things like these, so you can obviously have your own opinion after watching this, but I honestly don't think you'll like it all that much either.
If you have zero expectations from it and know nothing about the original, you might actually end up liking it a lot and my personal recommendation at that point would be to go read either the webnovel or the manhwa but then again just do whatever you like.

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serious skills to make the perfectly good novel to an abomination

No matter how much effort you put in the process, if they deliberately fucked the first process which is the writing, then everything would turn into a waste. They're not even short on money so I dont get why the la ended up like that. Were they given a tight pre-prod schedule? Not given enough time to write and brainstorm everything? Not given enough time to read the whole original novel? Or not given enough freedom by the executive producers to make the la as close to the original as possible to cater to a wider audience for money? Either way, that doesn't change the fact that they fucked this up big time and they wasted a lot of money to create this abomination. Bad writing is always a huge turn off in a film no matter how good the visual is, but damn, even the cinematography is bad I couldn't stand watching the whole thing. This is obviously created to farm money from the actors fans, not for film enthusiasts nor novel fans. HIGHLY NOT RECOMMENDED TO WATCH. JUST PIRATE IT IF YOU'RE CURIOUS.

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Stripped everything that made ORV good

They turned Dokja into a nervous loser. I could have accepted various other changes but ruining Dokja's character from an unabashedly confident, strong, incredibly smart on-the-go thinker, and strong-willed character who LOVED Three Ways To Survive The Apocalypse (TWSA) into a weak-minded, loser-ish, selfish man who hates TWSA? And on top of that they used his trauma to turn him into becoming a murdeous bully. Why? They also got rid of his main trauma. My heart actually broke with the way he was portrayed in the movie. I admired Dokja in the webtoon and that's why so many things made 0 sense in the movie.

SPOILERS/COMPARISONS

Dokja's reality is now the novel that he alone read which is what gave him his confidence and even arrogance in several instances. He never lowered himself to anyone. Not the Dokkaebis, not the constellations (which are barely given importance in the movie whereas they are crucial in the webtoon), not even when he faced the protagonist Yoo Joonghyuk, whom he admired in the novel. In the webtoon, he challenges Joonghyuk to throw him off the bridge. He also NEVER calls himself the prophet but let's Joonghyuk think whatever. And because they got rid of the fourth wall skill, he couldn't block off Junghyeok's lie detection in the movie. The fourth wall is an incredibly useful protective skill for Dokja and I don't understand why they decided to get rid of it. In the movie, he is practically shaking while talking to Junghyeok. Their back and forth in the webtoon is so good. The movie ruined it.

In the novel/webtoon, Dokja levels up his skills extremely quickly because of how in-depth his knowledge is of the book which impresses constellations and their curiosity gets them to sponsor him a lot of coins which just does not come across in the movie and is not given importance. His actions also shock the constellations and that is why BiHyeong agrees that Dokja is impressing them and decides to strike a deal. But in the movie, Dokja has not been impressive in any way. In the train, he is so timid he allowed his boss to take control of the ant box. In the novel, he is the one in charge of the situation and gets everyone scrambling for the insects. He leads the group in every scenario which gets them to trust and respect his leadership. Like telling them to leave the train as soon as possible and run across the bridge. This is why he gets so many constellations who want to sponsor him. And he knows that tying himself to a sponsor early on isn't wise which is why he rejects the selection. In the movie it is Lee Hyeon Seong who tries to escape the train and not Dokja guiding them. They don't explain why he rejects picking a sponsor and barely goes through the list. Can fans of the movie really say they were impressed by Dokja at that point?

Dokja having the fourth wall also helps him to offset the memories of his past haunting him. He also understands the importance of having companions because he read the novel. Because movie Dokja hates the novel, he has no foresight into the importance of his companions either. He even becomes selfish at crucial moments wanting to abandon them and survive alone and his survival comes across as more luck and not active use of his knowledge. The original Dokja also works hard to help them grow their skill set and become more powerful. Movie Dokja is like - oh btw you can use coins to power up.

Honestly I could complain about his rescue of Hui Won (leaving her to breath poison gas), not being able to expose the mayor (who is now a monster for some reason) of killing people for coins and how coins "spill" out rather than directly being transferred to the killer, the kid (Gilyeong) being so much younger than in the webtoon and Bihyung shooting lasers from his eyes. But it's not as important. But little things build a character and they took everything away from Dokja that made him Dokja. Also getting rid of Heewon's backstory of being SAed? This is what explains her anger and her seeking justice. Sang Ah became an average healer instead of a brilliant woman turned assassin.

On top of that they even tried to make Junghyeok a horrible person in the movie when he asks Dokja to ditch the kid while they are surrounded by monsters. Nothing of that sort happens in the webtoon. If anything Joonghyuk tries to get the kid to team up with him. They made him into such a lackluster character. The guy who is supposed to be a looker by the way.

Gong Pildo was also a big character but I can let it go because they didn't have enough time to set up every character.

Also the use of guns in this movie is ridiculous especially for Junghyeok. Even Lee JiHye should not have been using guns. But then they removed any connection to constellations.

The final fight, as everyone said, did not exist in the webtoon. The closest is the lesser dragon disaster which was way above their level that the Dokkaebi acknowledges but in the movie the Dokkaebi is like, yeah let's make this harder. But the situations were entirely different. It was really funny when Junghyeok lay charred to death because if he dies, he actually moves to a parallel timeline and Dokja has 1 less hero in his. But in the movie, everyone dies. Half of those characters were not supposed to be there in this fight. This is the problem when the movies decides to spend all it's budget on a star-studded cast. The director changed the plot so much in order to give everyone importance in a limited time. So now the main character is a shell of himself with no redeeming qualities or useful skills besides strength and even that he seemed tired at many points of the movie.

All that remains in the movie is a lot of different action sequences to wow audiences that have never read the source material and are missing much enjoyment from the original plot and true character of Dokja. Because you could have gotten action from any action movie and disaster scenes from any disaster movie.

I don't normally hand out 1 stars but the director chose to forego the whole OMNISCIENT READER part! They could have made a movie using elements of ORV and called it something else. That would have been better than reducing this incredibly detailed and complex story with great character arcs to action and CGI.

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Too much changes

That's not an adaptation if you only take the names and change everything else
How can you justify the title Omniscient Reader if Kim DokJa doesn't get the skill ?
Where are the constellations ? What is the Star Stream for if we don't see their interactions?
Yoo SangAh is supposed to be viewed as the protagonist of a non-fiction novel, and later we discover that she is the most "normal" person (and not referred to as a character), so her quitting her job doesn't fit her personality. Plus, if she's not learning any languages, then she can't have the multilingual skill, which was important in the Disasters arc.
And honestly, does the director really think that swords are too unrealistic when fighting against FANTASY MONSTERS???
How is a bullet more useful when even a blade can slash through an itchyosaur???
And how come every backstory is just pure nonsense now? They don't even make good obstacles to overcome or a good plot twist. It just feels like someone had to add words for an essay and just wrote whatever to match the word count.

There's so much more problem with the storytelling and all the scenes and characters that were deleted, but you should probably just go read the novel or manhwa because it'll be more enjoyable that way than knowing about it through a comment.

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Eww

1 star is way too generous. Everything is so wrong about this live action. Not respecting the story by changing IMPORTANT parts of it, changing character's story, personality, and backstory, even making misogynistic decisions and not respecting their own south korean history for the sake of "Realistic". Wtf do you mean realistic? realistic in a fantasy story? Youre joking.

Ass looking CGI, even Hamood habibi looks better. Changing the dokkaebis looks until it looks like a labubu without makeup. Not giving a fuck about making the actors dress like the real character at all. Actually, to the hell with clothes. They cant even tell the difference between a sword and a gun, how blind. And not even giving a fuck to actually reading and understanding the story. This is not a live action. Theyre just borrowing the character's names for a new trash story because the random name generators couldnt work. "The film is good" Either youre a people pleaser or youre paid to say that. Dont lie.

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