1
No one willingly stays in hell
TL;DR Watch for the supporting cast, stunning visuals, hauntingly-beautiful soundtrack, and bring your tissue boxes.
For a drama that is all about highlighting how wrong it is to see the world as black and white, MM really shot itself in the foot when it became the very thing it sought to critique. For a story with so much emotion and heart at its core, it ended up feeling like a nothing burger as empty as its sets, devoid of life.
STORY: The problem with writing a story as grand and magical and fable-esque as MM is that there's A TON of responsibility on the shoulders of the leads, both as written characters and actors performing those written characters. When EVERY SINGLE supporting role is outshining your leads, how do you expect the audience to care when the final ten episodes are only about the two leads? When Fan Yue has died and come back to life ten times, there is no emotional impact left to be made on the audience. When Bai Shuo is protected by heaven itself, no one is worried about her failing or losing her life because we know it will all work out for her. It always does. Even if she's not able, every other supporting role will bend over backwards to get her a win. This is great if you're all about the 'good triumphs evil' shtick, but not when you're trying to be poignant with your writing.
You know who did leave an impact? The story of Qi Feng, A Xi and Chong Zhao. You know what they had in common? Flaws. Flaws are what make a character come to life and grow on the journey that is their story. They were all such layered characters, each suffering in their own regard and making costly mistakes as a result. Each got some sad excuse for a redemption ultimately, but I won't go into it. The point is, making your main characters perfect will make them boring across a 40 episode run. Aside from gaining and losing spiritual power and falling in love with each other in every timeline possible, what growth did Fan Yue and Bai Shuo have as characters? SHORT SPOILER AHEAD, SKIP TO THE ACTING SECTION. You know what would have been gaggy? If Fan Yue never came back and Jing Yuan was stuck in that body and Bai Shuo had to fight the entire final battle on her own knowing that she's lost her love forever, is now a mortal without the Contemplation Stone and could die any moment. Just like how the other characters' deaths were so permanent, if there was any inkling of permanent consequences on the part of the leads, the drama (in my eyes at least) would easily be ratable as so much higher. Writers need to stop fearing about making their lead characters messy. Messy characters make for the best, most memorable watches.
ACTING: Since completing the drama I saw a ton of clips of Ao Rui Peng on my TikTok FYP and honestly, I should've seen this coming when he slayed as Mu and even the early Jing Yuan that his range is limited to characters that emote outwardly, have a playful demeanor and are more expressive. While he tries his damnedest to bring Fan Yue (a much more somber character) to life, he struggles and his acting is quite one note. If I had to compare, I'd say the temperament of Fan Yue is similar to that of SFL Fu Ling, and everyone and their mother knows Dai Lu Wa went viral for her incredible micro expressions. That is something that's absent in ARP's portrayal. He has gorgeous eyes but they can't hard carry everything else. In contrast, Chang Hua Sen with the most inconsistently written character of Chong Zhao outshined him in the acting department, especially visible during his scenes with Bai Lu.
As for Bai Lu, I'd been watching her since her debut, and she thrives in powerful, badass roles and she was okay here for the most part. The problem with her acting is that she performs like she's delivering a solo monologue, there's only her in the scene, and no one else. This is cool when the character is LZY from The Legends but Bai Shuo is just an ordinary girl with extraordinary responsibilities thrust upon her shoulders. When we need vulnerability from her we get an ironclad, "nothing can hurt me, I'm so badass" performance instead. There's no consistency in her progression from scene to scene, it's like it all takes place in a vacuum in her brain. For example, Bai Shuo just got done crying her eyes out at her father's funeral. Next scene, she's joking with Old Turtle and like I get it, grief comes in waves but your face has no sign of it? I hate to bring Dai Luwa back into this but gosh she's such a good actress, you can see everything in her face, the scene preceding the current one, and even hints of what's to come, a huge example of which is her scene sitting atop a rooftop watching chaos unfold in Ning An city as she holds Bai Shuo behind a barrier.
So when you have 3-5 episode character arcs (Ling Long x Rong Xian, Mu Jiu x Tian Huo, A Wu x A Qi) out-chemistrying the leads, not to mention, A LITERAL SECOND CP THAT IS HOTTER THAN FIRE AND UNLIKE ANYTHING WE'VE SEEN RECENTLY, you're really setting your leads up for failure both in the story and acting department. Bring back auditioning for prominent roles please.
MUSIC: 10/10 No notes. It haunts me and will haunt me for a while I fear. Sa Dingding is that girl and all the other artists were also incredible.
REWATCH VALUE: There's a very retro, kdrama-esque fairytale charm about this story, especially in the mini arcs situated in each new region. I'd say up to episode 33, the drama (although not without flaws) was pretty solid, but the XY, JY, ML arc really highlighted the cracks in the story, rushing things, introducing the most random bits of info and making characters drop dead like flies. If I were writing this drama, I'd add 3-5 more episodes, to flesh out the past, give more time for Fan Yue and Bai Shuo to interact so that their romance doesn't feel rushed, and flesh out some other characters to make them less one-dimensional (cough cough: the eternals, every single moment they were on screen was a waste of valuable footage space on the cameraman's SD card).
For a drama that is all about highlighting how wrong it is to see the world as black and white, MM really shot itself in the foot when it became the very thing it sought to critique. For a story with so much emotion and heart at its core, it ended up feeling like a nothing burger as empty as its sets, devoid of life.
STORY: The problem with writing a story as grand and magical and fable-esque as MM is that there's A TON of responsibility on the shoulders of the leads, both as written characters and actors performing those written characters. When EVERY SINGLE supporting role is outshining your leads, how do you expect the audience to care when the final ten episodes are only about the two leads? When Fan Yue has died and come back to life ten times, there is no emotional impact left to be made on the audience. When Bai Shuo is protected by heaven itself, no one is worried about her failing or losing her life because we know it will all work out for her. It always does. Even if she's not able, every other supporting role will bend over backwards to get her a win. This is great if you're all about the 'good triumphs evil' shtick, but not when you're trying to be poignant with your writing.
You know who did leave an impact? The story of Qi Feng, A Xi and Chong Zhao. You know what they had in common? Flaws. Flaws are what make a character come to life and grow on the journey that is their story. They were all such layered characters, each suffering in their own regard and making costly mistakes as a result. Each got some sad excuse for a redemption ultimately, but I won't go into it. The point is, making your main characters perfect will make them boring across a 40 episode run. Aside from gaining and losing spiritual power and falling in love with each other in every timeline possible, what growth did Fan Yue and Bai Shuo have as characters? SHORT SPOILER AHEAD, SKIP TO THE ACTING SECTION. You know what would have been gaggy? If Fan Yue never came back and Jing Yuan was stuck in that body and Bai Shuo had to fight the entire final battle on her own knowing that she's lost her love forever, is now a mortal without the Contemplation Stone and could die any moment. Just like how the other characters' deaths were so permanent, if there was any inkling of permanent consequences on the part of the leads, the drama (in my eyes at least) would easily be ratable as so much higher. Writers need to stop fearing about making their lead characters messy. Messy characters make for the best, most memorable watches.
ACTING: Since completing the drama I saw a ton of clips of Ao Rui Peng on my TikTok FYP and honestly, I should've seen this coming when he slayed as Mu and even the early Jing Yuan that his range is limited to characters that emote outwardly, have a playful demeanor and are more expressive. While he tries his damnedest to bring Fan Yue (a much more somber character) to life, he struggles and his acting is quite one note. If I had to compare, I'd say the temperament of Fan Yue is similar to that of SFL Fu Ling, and everyone and their mother knows Dai Lu Wa went viral for her incredible micro expressions. That is something that's absent in ARP's portrayal. He has gorgeous eyes but they can't hard carry everything else. In contrast, Chang Hua Sen with the most inconsistently written character of Chong Zhao outshined him in the acting department, especially visible during his scenes with Bai Lu.
As for Bai Lu, I'd been watching her since her debut, and she thrives in powerful, badass roles and she was okay here for the most part. The problem with her acting is that she performs like she's delivering a solo monologue, there's only her in the scene, and no one else. This is cool when the character is LZY from The Legends but Bai Shuo is just an ordinary girl with extraordinary responsibilities thrust upon her shoulders. When we need vulnerability from her we get an ironclad, "nothing can hurt me, I'm so badass" performance instead. There's no consistency in her progression from scene to scene, it's like it all takes place in a vacuum in her brain. For example, Bai Shuo just got done crying her eyes out at her father's funeral. Next scene, she's joking with Old Turtle and like I get it, grief comes in waves but your face has no sign of it? I hate to bring Dai Luwa back into this but gosh she's such a good actress, you can see everything in her face, the scene preceding the current one, and even hints of what's to come, a huge example of which is her scene sitting atop a rooftop watching chaos unfold in Ning An city as she holds Bai Shuo behind a barrier.
So when you have 3-5 episode character arcs (Ling Long x Rong Xian, Mu Jiu x Tian Huo, A Wu x A Qi) out-chemistrying the leads, not to mention, A LITERAL SECOND CP THAT IS HOTTER THAN FIRE AND UNLIKE ANYTHING WE'VE SEEN RECENTLY, you're really setting your leads up for failure both in the story and acting department. Bring back auditioning for prominent roles please.
MUSIC: 10/10 No notes. It haunts me and will haunt me for a while I fear. Sa Dingding is that girl and all the other artists were also incredible.
REWATCH VALUE: There's a very retro, kdrama-esque fairytale charm about this story, especially in the mini arcs situated in each new region. I'd say up to episode 33, the drama (although not without flaws) was pretty solid, but the XY, JY, ML arc really highlighted the cracks in the story, rushing things, introducing the most random bits of info and making characters drop dead like flies. If I were writing this drama, I'd add 3-5 more episodes, to flesh out the past, give more time for Fan Yue and Bai Shuo to interact so that their romance doesn't feel rushed, and flesh out some other characters to make them less one-dimensional (cough cough: the eternals, every single moment they were on screen was a waste of valuable footage space on the cameraman's SD card).
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