Acrobit12

Well, propaganda in the arts is nothing new. Historically, most of great art is propaganda of some sort (at least it's one way of looking at it ;)). But the level of propaganda at the end of this drama was a bit too obvious for my taste. Which detracts not a bit from the great work of the creative team and the actors and the amount of new knowledge I have gained.

I would even go as far as saying I wish they had younger actors to play all tree mains and kept them around for a while longer. But it is what it is.

I certainly don't disagree with you there.

To be fair, it's not just the Chinese. There is a famous joke that to play Romeo, who was 14, you have to have at least 30 years of acting experience :).

I also felt the whole unity message was a bit over hammered and unnecessary. It obviously had an "angle". But I come from a background where historical dramas were often used for propaganda purposes so I tend to be sensitive to things like that.

It's been a really long time since I have seen a historical epic like this one. I have learned so much. Thank you to @PeachBlossomGoddess, @Salwa Nice and those who provided the information along the way. The cast was amazing, especially the veteran actors and the mains once they didn't have to pretend to be teenagers anymore.

How is it possible that people haven't heard about it? It's been all over the news here in the US for years? You are either interested in what goes on in the world or you are not.

Thank you, so interesting!

It almost looks like they ran out of $ for battle scenes at this point so they have to give us more fictional political plotting. I actually want more battle scenes, they are really well done here! The catapults are awesome.

I mean Taizhen wasn't his one true love. Sorry, I am an idiot, I just realized you meant the Song emperor, not his wife, the names sound too similar 😄! Yeah, statesmanship is all work and no play.

I assume the 14 kids weren't all hers and she was not his one true love like the drama shows. At least not according to Wikipedia. And people at the time didn't think in those terms anyway (hell, most people still don't think in these terms).

Wow, Hongchu was a busy man indeed!

Why do I think Hongchu's son and heir is about to join the ranks of the stupid young men in this drama?

Agreed, now that we moved past the pretend teens/early 20s, he is fantastic. Truly the heart of the drama (and FWIW I think Bai Yu is doing a great job too but the story has really moved away from him).

Ditto

You need to get through the first three or so episodes and figure out who is who (just like Nirvana in Fire) and it gets really good after that. Honestly, my only complaint about it at this point is the age of some of the (albeit excellent) main leads. They are just too old to convincingly portray men in their late teens/early 20s. But many otherwise excellent productions in many places are guilty of that.

The trailer for Episode 13 looks interesting.

Oh I remember The Crying Game! I was truly shocked. Of course (I am admitting my age here lol) I was about 15 at the time and not particularly wordly.

Yeah. I actually think that the only man that was halfway believe was Yang Zi in Lost You Forever and that was a very odd "man" to begin with.

And I agree that the emperor in The Story of Kunning Palace was decent. The emperor in The Double was not bad either.