MinJi23

I despair....

... I really do despair because I am eagerly waiting for a K-drama with an intelligent storyline.
The last one I saw in the more action-related theme was 'my name' which was comparably brilliant.
Since then, no matter what is super hyped before release, I take a look into it and despair often after a few minutes in, and get angry because the writers seem to have left their brains at home in bed. Oo

Shortly, why is that the case for 'Black Knight:

1. So there was a huge (and I mean HUGE, as shown) asteroid that hit planet earth around 2030. We are now located in 2071 in South Korea and what we see is total devestation 40 years on. It's claimed that only 1% of people survived the initial hit of the asteroid. Fourty years later there is still no sunlight, extremely polluted air and people can only go outside wearing oxygen masks and they have to buy oxygen for their homes to survive.

What is wrong with this initial picture?

If such a huge asteroid would have hit the earth, and as there is so much destruction still seen 40 years later in Korea? People wouldn't just have trouble breathing and wearing some masks ( they often just take off by the way, for having funny little bad stunt fights, talking, whatever), - what would have initially happened would have been that the 25 (at least!) Korean atomic plants would have blown up and they would have had ( and those few who then would have survived still would have) an atomic catastrophe. People couldn't get outside not only because they couldn't breathe much, they would be grilled like a steak outside, there would be no food or drink available as everything would have been highly radiated. But hey, let's totally ignore that Oo

2. So, going on from my point 1 with the radiation - there would be no power nowhere. It's almost funny that in that destructed world they show they all have smart phones, electricity, computer games, driving cars with whatever fuel/gas and everything is shown like that asteroid hit did NOT happen, like technology of the 2020s just went on like there was no interruption - how totally impossible Oo
If the asteroid would have hit like shown, apart from air pollution, no sunlight (which would by the way bring other very bad consequences..) and the rather unimportant total radioactive pollution, no one could generate any kind of working energy. No, not even huge modern high tech wind engines, there would be no infrastructure, no raw materials, no nothing. Everything concerning technology up to the date of the hit would be GONE. Especially funny the scene in the futuristic business room with about a thousand huge telly screens - just funny with no source of electricity. Totally illogical no-brain nonsense.

3. Also other things wouldn't be available, for no one, also not for any 'upper casts'. There would be no world trade of no goods, for a looooong time. They wouldn't have fancy new uniforms, weapons, high tech gear, they woldn't have any kind of high tech clothes with high tech mixed fibres, they wouldn't even have hair dye.

I made it into episode 2 giving it a fair chance, but after seeing the young guy getting shot in the head from behind point blank, and I mean fully hit, and then he... is still alive and can sit in a driving truck? Enough for me, total nonsense.


Other things I didn't like: the 'backstory' isn't only total nonsense like that, they just don't give any real backstory at all. The first episode starts with some action fight scenes that didn't really make sense, in between there is this strange family setting in the house where the siblings (?) banter around, all of it with some kind of clownish slapstick music all of a sudden - wtf?

And I could go on for quite a while. Please K-drama writers, stop this trash story writing that is an insult to anyone with half a living brain cell! K-dramas were so good in the past, any genre of it, there were always good ones with great storylines, intelligent plots, what happened? This one is so bad, if you have ANY basic knowledge of anything, it's unwatchable.

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fail

it's really hard these days to find good dramas with an action score. I was looking forward to this as Ji Chang-wook is a long time favourite (although I prefer his non-action roles), and Wi Ha-joon was promising in several roles, I really liked his mysterious criminal vibe in 'little women'

That said, after having watched the three first episodes: what a disappointment. I think the first 25 minutes of the first episode was just really bad fight and brawl scenes. And not much else actually.
I'm afraid it didn't really help that I recently rewatched 'my name' with Park Hee-soon as the most charismatic, evil and attractive drug kingpin EVER, with such authenticity it sent shivers down my spine constantly... so, seeing Wi Ha-joon now trying really hard to be an equal character? No chance. I can see him acting while acting here, maybe even trying to copy several things from 'my name'.

The storyline didn't really grip me, lots of fights, flat characters. Young guy wants to take over the area of the old boss guy, so far, so non-exciting.
Ji Chang-wook... I don't know, he is trying hard too here, but I don't buy his character either. All the cursing seems fake, all the smoking too, just everything.
I also don't like the whole atmosphere and vibe this show has.

If you want to watch a brainy, actually deep, and psychologically interesting and multifacetted story, see amazing aesthetic visuals and brilliant, authentic characters, main and side roles with intelligent action included? Watch 'my name'. If you want 30 minutes non-stop bad blood-spatter action and actually good actors trying really hard to fit roles they are not (yet) up to? Watch 'the worst of evil'.

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just doesn't work for me

the tearjerking story of the two kids in the first episode strangely didn't touch me at all. It's really strage, as the story itself of violent parents is definitely something normally getting to me, but here - nothing. I also didn't find the two actors very convincing, and it just seemed... 'invented' and also exaggerated, especially when they are on that ship to flee, and that very young boy gets beaten almost to death by the girl's psycho dad. I didn't understand, why he didn't just tell the girl on the ship when he saw her father outside at the port, they both could easily have hidden in the ships toilet until it had taken off, and nothing bad would have happened? Next thing, the boy super tragically leaves the girl without warning her, and then he is the one going straight towards her dad at the port and bringing his attention to them both, thus confirming with his behaviour the girl is on the ship? Then we see how is is badly beaten, holding the aggro-dad off from going onto the ship... we see how the ship with the still clueless girl is finally leaving the port - and then all of a sudden, the dad is on the ship? How?? How did he even get on, without a ticket, and when the ship had actually already taken off? Didn't make any sense to me and it all seemed to be a forced story to make it extra extra tragic.

The dad can then even chase his daughter like a serial killer all around that huge ship without anyone hindering him? No personell there? No security? After he almost killed a boy for all to see at the port, leaving him there presumably dead?
The girl jumps into the water to escape the dad - cut - she is alone on a remote island.
There she has some interesting items, tea pots and whatnot, no one knows wherefrom she has all these things as she actually dropped the huge bagpack that was filled with all the good stuff on the ship, when she ran from her father.

Another cut, and it's 15 years later, so we jumped from around 2008 to 2023. Interestingly enough our now 15 years older island girl has a great haircut with nice longer wavy bangs - one wonders how she managed that all alone? Even more, she still has that same set of clothing, the only clothing she had actually for 15 (fifteen!!) years, and these clothes are perfectly fine, not torn, or ripped, colours not washed out =D

So, after these 15 long years, finally, and no one knows why it didn't happen all the years before, some dorkies with their drones are suddenly there, and our island girl is supposed to see the first human after those many years alone. They take her back into civilisation and .... I re-checked like how long was she supposed to be gone? And since when, which year? So, she was lost there since 2008. A rather modern time I'd say? Yet, when she is back in the city, she suddenly acts like a person from rather 1800, not 2008, trying to use a water tap in the bathroom, not knowing how to actually use it and then spreading water all around the bathroom like an idiot? Did she not know water taps back in 2008? they make her seem like she grew up in the jungle since she was a toddler, why?

And I could go on with these things...I really like Park Eun-bin, she had some great dramas in the past and she is good actress, but here, the story is so lacking basic sense, even she can't save it for me.

I am really annoyed meanwhile that many promising new dramas do not pay attention to anything concering logic and intelligence. Things don't have to be perfect but the mistakes just can't be that obvious and jumping at me like that, at least I get so annoyed and distracted I don't want to go on watching at all.

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Strange in the wrong way

I was looking forward to this, Jung Hae-in being one of my favourite actors.
I just read the main storyline before and thought it sounded promising, but the actual series didn't deliver it for me.

The start is just confusing. So we are where? In a dystopic parallel world? Or in our world? I don't know, because if someone like the main character really existed with these kind of healing and recovery powers, and that would have been known since his childhood, he would not have seen the light of day ever again because every nation in the world would have tried to put him into a laboratory and disect him to find out his secret. That at least was my first thought after 20 minutes in.

The next thought was, who are all these people, why do all the things happen, and at some point I felt annoyed as the main character loudly speaks all of his obvious thoughts in a way nobody really does. It's just something I don't like in general. I don't like being spoonfed every single thing like that. For all the abilities he possese he seems awkwardly helpless and clumsy most of the time. I finished the first episode and most of the time you see him clutching his missing eyesocket or both his eyes in panic and uttering obvious things. He is steadily on the run and can escape, until a very tiny woman shows up, (either knowing all the secrets for an unknown reason or just trying to be the weird 'I like creepy things'- character) and after seeing his healing ability, happily throws him off a roof. Oo

I honestly didn't like any of this. It's dark, and I like dark, but this just feels unpleasant. The characters seem flat and constructed altogether, and I don't like any of them, at all, it just seems sterile and weird to me. It also reminds me of rather bad copies of some Marvel movies I didn't finish either because I disliked them.
You get thrown into the storyline without any necessary background information, instead there is lots of graphic organ cutting, pulling and slicing and this steady rather helpless out loud commenting of the main character. It would have been so much better and more intelligent the other way around. Give visual background, let the audience think and let it understand the mysterious lead character by his actions, his gaze, etc.

I stopped watching after the first episode, so if it got any better or even brilliant later I might have missed that. I simply didn't care about any of the characters or the story, it just seemed too artificially fabricated and thrown together in the attempt to create atmosphere and tension - which sadly it failed to do.

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not good enough

I hardly made it through the first episode. So, they would have this fantastic storyline to start with, some kind of righteous, superpower angelic creatures who come to earth to save humankind - more or less... and what they did is they made some strange slapstick, pseudo-comedy nonsense out of this.
Music is annoying, and actionlike in the wrong settings, the actors look like clowns instead of mystical revenge angels, and the dialoges are either boring or nonsensical.
This could have been fantastic with a serious, touching approach. Instead it's just forced funny and annoying.

And, as Seo In-guk is one of my favourite actors - I don't get it. He is so talented concering acting, he did two of my favourite dramas where he excelled concering acting (especially 'the smile has left your eyes'). And for quite a while now I can't even see his acting capability because he only chooses (for my taste) totally crappy productions with awful writing and stroylines.
Still hoping for something better again in the future - this isn't it.

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