Yuckkkk
I have wanted to watch the drama for a long time but I never got around to it…
I should have just stayed away.
SOKP is time travel drama that uses the trope of rewriting a past life. It's similar to The Princess Royal, but somehow it's worse in every single way.
This show is BAD.
It's ugly, nonsensical, juvenile, and dumb.
The technical aspects are borderline horrendous. The sets look generic and cheap, the costumes are boring and also look cheap. And the cinematography?
This show looked so bad that I HAD to look up the director. ( found that I've been unknowingly hating on his work for the past decade.)
I'm not a film student, but even I can tell that whoever was behind the camera had a fundamental misunderstanding of what should be communicated in the cinematography.
Everything is so bright and pale, it makes everything feel bleak. The exterior shots in some scenes were startlingly bad. The lighting was so artificial in some places that it made me laugh at how bad it looked. Be prepared to look at multiple shots of clenching hands over and over and over and over and over again. There's hardly any variation in how anyone is filmed. Everyone emotes the same ALL THE TIME.
I'm not sure how this team achieved it but they also managed to make objectively attractive people look awful. Both Bai Lu and Zhang Linghe suffer from this… but Zhang Linghe is the biggest victim.
I can't comprehend how a director would look at his performance and expressions and think it was appropriate to shoot, edit and air those scenes. Bro was working overtime to seem menacing 24/7 but I'm not sure if that was the best approach for both the character and HIS FACE.
People will be talking and the camera and cuts will give you expectations that never come to fruition, OR it'll have the most terrible shots with egregious usage of flood lights and fans. It's dumb.
I can't remember a single song that made an impression on me. In fact I hated some of them.
So just to speak on the plot itself, it makes no sense at all. We have a weak emperor who lets a known treasonous subject just chill after committing heinous acts??? The main villain massacred hundreds of people (including children) and his rebellion was quelled…. but instead of being executed, they just let him go back to his fief with basically no consequences. Mind YOU later in the show another party basically does the same thing which resulted in multiple executions and the exile of all related people. One of these parties seems way worse than the other and yet the punishments are so unbalanced. It's dumb.
The court politics is nonsensical as well, our ML is soooo smart and he anticipates everything and everyone without flaw. Bro never stumbles a single time, all his opponents are dumb. FL lead deals with the most juvenile conflicts, and if she is involved in something more serious she becomes a wooden post that just gets led around by the ML.
Side characters are just as underdeveloped and shallow as the plot. None of them feel like real people. Not a single one seemed like they existed outside of the scene they were currently in, even when they DIED. I felt nothing. They feel like the toys in Toy Story. Once the camera is not on them they drop to the ground and stop moving.
The female villain from the Xue clan is probably the most frustrating supporting character. She gets caught basically committing treason because she sends her maid with no mask or change of identity to do her dirty work. After this incident she does the same sh*t AGAIN, clearly not learning her lesson from the first time she got caught. She gets frustrated with being used by her family and cuts ties with them and proclaims that she will get back at them, only to immediately fold to her father's wishes and jeopardizing her new elevated position. She basically commits the same mistake THREE TIMES. It's dumb.
And the romance offended me the most. This is the biggest lack of chemistry I've seen in YEARS. That includes ANYONE in the main triangle. It's even worse off than Blossoms in Adversity and that show had a wooden nutcracker for a ML.
The FL spends 70% of the runtime chasing after a man with no personality who ISN'T our ML, while a man with no control over his face chases after her. 30-sum episodes in and the creators have these two actors scream at each other and forcibly kissing… they expect me to be invested in a relationship that does not exist? The FL has no romantic interest in the ML until 30-sum episodes in and the plot decides its time.
This was a growing experience for me because I really forgot how bad things can get, this show doesn't have a single redeeming quality, it doesn't do anything right. I hope I never see a clip from it again.
I should have just stayed away.
SOKP is time travel drama that uses the trope of rewriting a past life. It's similar to The Princess Royal, but somehow it's worse in every single way.
This show is BAD.
It's ugly, nonsensical, juvenile, and dumb.
The technical aspects are borderline horrendous. The sets look generic and cheap, the costumes are boring and also look cheap. And the cinematography?
This show looked so bad that I HAD to look up the director. ( found that I've been unknowingly hating on his work for the past decade.)
I'm not a film student, but even I can tell that whoever was behind the camera had a fundamental misunderstanding of what should be communicated in the cinematography.
Everything is so bright and pale, it makes everything feel bleak. The exterior shots in some scenes were startlingly bad. The lighting was so artificial in some places that it made me laugh at how bad it looked. Be prepared to look at multiple shots of clenching hands over and over and over and over and over again. There's hardly any variation in how anyone is filmed. Everyone emotes the same ALL THE TIME.
I'm not sure how this team achieved it but they also managed to make objectively attractive people look awful. Both Bai Lu and Zhang Linghe suffer from this… but Zhang Linghe is the biggest victim.
I can't comprehend how a director would look at his performance and expressions and think it was appropriate to shoot, edit and air those scenes. Bro was working overtime to seem menacing 24/7 but I'm not sure if that was the best approach for both the character and HIS FACE.
People will be talking and the camera and cuts will give you expectations that never come to fruition, OR it'll have the most terrible shots with egregious usage of flood lights and fans. It's dumb.
I can't remember a single song that made an impression on me. In fact I hated some of them.
So just to speak on the plot itself, it makes no sense at all. We have a weak emperor who lets a known treasonous subject just chill after committing heinous acts??? The main villain massacred hundreds of people (including children) and his rebellion was quelled…. but instead of being executed, they just let him go back to his fief with basically no consequences. Mind YOU later in the show another party basically does the same thing which resulted in multiple executions and the exile of all related people. One of these parties seems way worse than the other and yet the punishments are so unbalanced. It's dumb.
The court politics is nonsensical as well, our ML is soooo smart and he anticipates everything and everyone without flaw. Bro never stumbles a single time, all his opponents are dumb. FL lead deals with the most juvenile conflicts, and if she is involved in something more serious she becomes a wooden post that just gets led around by the ML.
Side characters are just as underdeveloped and shallow as the plot. None of them feel like real people. Not a single one seemed like they existed outside of the scene they were currently in, even when they DIED. I felt nothing. They feel like the toys in Toy Story. Once the camera is not on them they drop to the ground and stop moving.
The female villain from the Xue clan is probably the most frustrating supporting character. She gets caught basically committing treason because she sends her maid with no mask or change of identity to do her dirty work. After this incident she does the same sh*t AGAIN, clearly not learning her lesson from the first time she got caught. She gets frustrated with being used by her family and cuts ties with them and proclaims that she will get back at them, only to immediately fold to her father's wishes and jeopardizing her new elevated position. She basically commits the same mistake THREE TIMES. It's dumb.
And the romance offended me the most. This is the biggest lack of chemistry I've seen in YEARS. That includes ANYONE in the main triangle. It's even worse off than Blossoms in Adversity and that show had a wooden nutcracker for a ML.
The FL spends 70% of the runtime chasing after a man with no personality who ISN'T our ML, while a man with no control over his face chases after her. 30-sum episodes in and the creators have these two actors scream at each other and forcibly kissing… they expect me to be invested in a relationship that does not exist? The FL has no romantic interest in the ML until 30-sum episodes in and the plot decides its time.
This was a growing experience for me because I really forgot how bad things can get, this show doesn't have a single redeeming quality, it doesn't do anything right. I hope I never see a clip from it again.
Was this review helpful to you?
