This review may contain spoilers
The First Bad One
On Rewatch I liked this season a bit more. I think at the time it was such a shock, coming from Worm Valley - the downgrade is definitely real. There are some mountain scenes that made me think of a travel agency commercial - so poorly and boringly shot compared to the previous seasons.Like I said in my original review - there are little sparks of past greatness.
The next season is undeniably worse.
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(OG review)
What a disappointment!
What happened here? Was it covid? The new director? (iirc they changed this time?)
There are still glimpses of the old series - some character moments for both the main trio and the supporting cast. The goons and side characters are unusually well developed, which is what this show does. But they still mostly get killed off. :/
The two biggest problems for me are the story and the visuals.
This series of Candle in the Tomb usually has a pretty tight, well thought out structure. This time it felt like things just sort of happened, never really explained or returned to, plotlines just dropped. This is more like every other tomb robber show, ngl I was thinking a lot of the various daomu series - their stories are equally badly told.
What was the deal with the wolves? I think they were there just so the Tibetan dude's arc could be wrapped up, but it all just fizzled out. Where did the giant monitor lizards come from? We never learn.
For the first time in this series I was seriously disappointed with the visuals - not only does the CGI look abysmal and is all over the place, the creative and tight cinematography is GONE. The Wrath of Time season starts with an awesome dynamic shot, or remember that crazy brawl in Lost Caverns, with the camera flying around and looping up and down?
We get none of this.
The colours are bland and dark, everything looks fake and boring. The Yunnan adventure gave us glorious monsters in rubber suits, here we just get ugly and badly animated CG animals.
And the actors...they don't seem to wanna be there. Did they get covid? Are they just tired of the show? Pan Yueming looks bloated and tired, like he'd break a hip if he tried to do any action.
And they don't (do any fancy stuff), the action's just confused and badly edited.
I'm honestly kind of dreading the next season, if it's more of this or worse.
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What on Earth(s)?!
After 12 episodes I'm dropping this.The two leads have decent chemistry and are doing ok acting-wise, but this drama is just meandering nonsense.
I'm not sure if it's because of censorship and that the paranormal elements were cut and written around, or if it's meant to be like this. But paranormal or scifi, this show is extremely unclear about where anything is going and why.
Characters travel to places and do things, and act like it's perfectly understandable and logical. But it really feels like one of those dreams where things seemingly happen, but when you wake up you realize it didn't really have a coherent plot or a story you could recognize behind things just...happening.
I just find it tiresome. Which is a shame, because the leads really are easy on the eyes and work well together.
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Not as good.
It's mid, in most ways.Not amazingly good, not too boring or super terrible.
Mid.
The story's super average - you've heard it all before. I am honestly getting quite tired of protagonists with mysterious non-commoner past and I hate how so many wuxia have to steer their story into politics and courtly intrigue.
I hate courtly intrigue! The scheming princes, the power hungry eunuchs, the troubled emperors and forgotten consorts.
Good grief, shoot me now, I can't take it.
For the most part the story seems to have a clear goal and an endpoint and the pacing forward is not bad. But towards the end it slows down and almost stumbles into the ending head first, trips over its own feet and stops suddenly.
It felt quite awkward.
The characters are fine. You've seen it all before, every single character is a stereotype. But they're ok.
The acting is serviceable, with the older actors carrying the young ones quite often. Ao Rui Peng was too cartoony and weird for me, I didn't care for Lei Wu Jie.
Li Hong Yi held a single note for the entire show and it was ok? He's a pretty guy and the script didn't ask much more from him.
Liu Xue Yi seems to have had fun? Question mark? Wuxin as a character is used weirdly, mostly not being present and having his own story arc in the background. Also cartoony as a performance, but a much better actor than Ao Rui Peng.
Neither of the two female leads convinced me, or grabbed me in any way.
Tang Lian was also there.
Shout out to Cui Peng as Luo Qing Yang, who gave an incredibly strange performance and I had to laugh every time his weirdo sulky face was on screen.
Last honorable mention goes to Hu Wei, who looks like he was animated by Pixar. Very cute tho.
A good wuxia has to have cool fights.
The Blood of Youth does have fights, sure.
OK, I won't talk around it - I hate this stuff. Not just the heavy use of CG, I dislike how uninteresting it is and how low stakes it feels.
There's no tension, there's no context for anything. How strong is this character? Who the F knows, I guess I'll wait for them to tell me.
The main problem is that everyone already starts quite strong and every single character that comes later is even stronger.
But there's no difference in any of the fights, the environment doesn't matter, nothing matters.
The characters will conjure up some CG effects, point their weapon or fingers against the opponent and stand there.
That's it. Every single fight ends up as a finger contest with magical auras clashing into each other. No clever use of techniques, or the battlefield, no smart cooperation between characters. No, just point at the enemy and hope you're stronger.
This kind of power creep is a common problem in anime, compare the fights at the start of Naruto to many later ones in Shippuuden. And here it's like that from the very beginning.
Overall I didn't hate it, but it's nowhere near as good as people claim.
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Creation of the Gods Ⅰ: Kingdom of Storms
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I see.
This was ok?The Shang dynasty setting is cool to see - human sacrifice, lots of bronze armor and swords.
It's surprisingly horny for a big mainland Chinese movie, though the lusty sex-coded characters are all bad guys, obviously.
There's literally a scene of a dance number that's a metaphor for people fucking, with a woman shown "climaxing" with her dress and long hair.
That said, for such a big production it's surprisingly ugly at times - both the CGI and the colour grade.
I also wished all the hostages, princes and other young male characters were better visually distinguished.
I had trouble telling them apart at times, because they are all fit young men and wear the same hair and uniform all the time.
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boring CGI mess
What a letdown.The main problem is that the story is a) just kinda dumb and bad, and b) too condensed.
The protagonist is entirely bland (Good grief, is Raymond Lam ever a charisma black hole!) and none of the relationships get enough space, so any character development is impossible to believe.
All the twists, betrayals etc. are meaningless, because I feel nothing about any of the characters. (except for the princess, because she's hot)
And where the old KFCM worked - the crazy fun fights - just does not work here.
The fights are bland, fake looking and worst of all - boring.
It's just forgettable.
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Ultimately forgettable
I was looking forward to this, because it'd be cool if we finally got a complete adaptation, by the same director of my favourite version no less! Alas.There are glimpses of 90s Hong Kong here and there, sadly brought down by a very "current" mainland Chinese film look (= often indistinguishable from a TV cdrama), lack of humor and bland CGI.
The actor playing Mokei is not charismatic.
Sadly while very similar to Kung Fu Cult Master, it's nowhere nearly as fun.
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Satisfying Your DeDi needs
It's pretty nice.One thing I enjoyed is the structure - the characters usually travel to a new location and solve one or two cases there.
This keeps everything fresh and fun.
The characters take a while to grow on you, but when they do they are also enjoyable to watch.
Not quite as bonkers and colourful as Tsui Hark's Detective Dee movies, but overall in a similar vein.
I wasn't a fan of the Tang simping, but thankfully the nationalist meltdowns are not that frequent.
Ying Tao best girl.
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Delight of a show!
Not the greatest wuxia, not an amazing mystery show, BUT...This is a show that's much more than a sum of its parts.
Especially after I learnt it wasn't a big production, that it's a small budget web series, I can't but marvel at how good it is.
Beautiful to look at, the fights look excellent.
And the actors are wonderful, the story well written with lots of setup and payoff.
You absolutely can guess the big twist early (ep1 for me), but it doesn't make it not satisfying.
The romances also work very well.
It seems unlikely to get a season 2, but I am still hoping for it!
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This review may contain spoilers
One of the best Daomu series, for what that's worth.
Eeeh? It's good-ish?I generally care much less about the Daomu series than Candle in the Tomb, but I gotta admit this one's decent.
The story is a hot mess like always, and you don't really get any answers, as always. Gotta wait for that second season, you hope, and then it's the same thing and nothing gets answered in the next one either, probably.
This one is clearly a mystery show, and the mystery is even pretty intriguing. I do love the concept of listening to thunder for...some reason.
Not a fan of Xie constantly chasing his uncle, that's a bit old.
The plot, as usual, is broken up into randomly paced arcs. The tomb raiding is very well done for once, and we even get genuinely scary horror! Skinsuit zombies chasing the main trio through a flat cave while they're crawling was so freaky and nailbiting. Also skinsuit zombies animated by hand crabs? Very good, I approve.
There's a whole Shades arc which I couldn't give a shit about, because he's so cringey. But his gf is very cute and they have good chemistry. (so the conclusion to that is just...typical Daomu, always a disappointment)
Pacing in the first half is generally all over the place, cutting between boring south asian village militia crap and tomb raiding. It picks up in the second part and I enjoyed the whole "WuXie has adventures in Warehouse 11" bit a lot.
It's a cool concept, well done.
Onto season 2, I guess.
Random notes:
- Bai is a sweet cinnamon roll and I love her, but why is she a love interest? They even have solid chemistry with Wuxie, but he's very gay for his mute boyfriend, so we can't have none of this yucky girl-kissing. (why don't those two boys ever spend any time together though?)
- Liu Sang is also a grumpy cinnamon roll and I'd marry him. Wish he was in more of the show, as he just disappears in the second half.
- Wu Xie is kind of an asshole in this, right? Like I get it, his situation is not great, but he antagonizes absolutely everyone all the time. He's mean to Bai, he pisses off random people he meets. Including the villain.
He's usually cheeky, but also a nice guy? Even his older version in Tomb of the Sea was more brooding and pragmatic, rather than just a pissy bitch.
Mixed feelings about this version.
- Fatty is traditionally good, but I couldn't care less about his story arc, with his honestly pretty dumb girlfriend.
- I did like that Fatty and Xie had a genuine looking relationship, they had banter and seemed like real characters. (which reminded me, unsurprisingly of Hu Bayi and Fatty from the other shows, very similar) Their third boyband member is barely in the show tbh, not my fav version of him.
- A part of why I dislike Daomu over CitT is that the main characters are rich mobsters. Anything at any moment can be solved by throwing money at it. I appreciated that they wrote in conflict with uncle ErBai this time, so Wuxie was a bit less rich. But then he quickly reversed that by getting rich again.
(also - the whole PiaoPiao subplot could've been solved by a single phonecall to uncle. They're fucking rich as hell. Heck, they know miracle doctors who just a few episodes previously healed a mute friend of theirs. One of many examples of idiot-plotting in this series.)
It's ok. Cool even. I really enjoyed some bits. Two people in it are very hot and cute.
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Decent
It starts strong and finishes a bit muddled.Still, a very decent, almost good movie. Especially considering it's a friggin' MMORPG adaptation.
Pity about some characters' deaths, and the second half is pretty rushed.
The CGI is surprisingly good, with a very few exceptions. CG animals especially tend to be crappy in Chinese films, but here they worked well.
The overall art direction is very good and everything is quite pretty.
The acting is generally solid - Peter Ho is as menacing and intense as ever, and Jiang Lu Xia is hot AF with her short hair and a badass scar.
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Ugh
I'm dropping this for now. (?)Unfortunately I bought all three (?) seasons on disc, so I might finish it one day.
I remembered the beginning in the arena, which I still think is a fun scene - it actually feels a lot more realistic and gritty than I'd expect. And I remembered Dong Qing's animated performance as Qing Tan - I do really like her in this.
I also kind of like some of the side characters - Yang Hao Yu as horny Gandalf is funny.
But god, I despise Yang Yang as the protagonist. First drama I've seen him in and he's absolutely godawful.
Genuinely unhinged attempts at "acting", completely destroys the main character and makes him impossible to like.
The story is kinda just dumb cliched fantasy nonsense.
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Really boring and drawn out.
This was quite boring and I was amazed the thin premise couldn't support even the very short 14 episodes.That's it, really.
The actors were mostly solid, but they don't have much to do, since nothing happens.
This could've been a movie and I'd watch it, the basic idea is not entirely uninteresting.
But 14 episodes of THE SAME THINGS HAPPENING OVER AND OVER?
God no, this was dire.
.....................................................................................................
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Interesting if unremarkable
A cop caught in the middle of a conspiracy fights to survive.A simple premise, starts off strong and finishes a bit melodramatic and unevenly.
I enjoyed the acting, it looked very pretty and the story was decently written, even if some moments had a bit too much unearned pathos.
There is one exceptional fight scene, while the others are just serviceable. There is at least one case of shockingly bad CG that seriously took me out of the moment.
Overall a solid way to spend a few hours.
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Not for me.
I'm dropping this.The convoluted premise is just not interesting and Song Yi is not utilized super well.
See, I find she's at her best as a strong confident character, sassiness being appreciated.
Here she just pines and cries all the time.
Like girl, you got arranged-married into a rich family, how awful for you! And your husband even wants to divorce you and give you a ton of money? The horror!
Main dude tries, he's trying so hard I'm surprised he didn't pull a funny muscle in his face. Also his ears are massive.
But yeah, it's just not what I hoped. Definitely not Dream of Splendor, nor Joy of Life/My Heroic Husband.
Pass.
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