PeachBlossomGoddess

Oh of course ROP was just one of the best in terms of production value. With actor pay caps going forward hopefully this won't happen again, although I have heard they have found ways around it. The other solution is just more people have to pay and pay more to watch drama. All three streaming platforms lost over $1bn USD each last year on dramas! That can't last.

I believe the two ML's opposite personalities is very consistent with Gu Long's original characterization of the brothers. If anything, it is more likely the the Lan Zhan and Wei Ying characters could have been influenced by Gu Long's work which was written maybe 50 years ago. This obviously predates the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation which was only written fairly recently. That said, this drama may well have styled these two characters like Lan Zhan and Wei Ying were styled given the success of the Untamed. I did notice that too but their characters were written well before Lan Zhan and Wei Ying's author was even born.

Amazon Prime now has the full version with all 65 episodes.

All 65 episodes of this have now been released and it is complete on Amazon Prime. Viki is still up to 53 episodes only but hopefully will also get it all soon.

All 65 episodes are now available on Amazon.

Happy Birthday Chen Kun! Your Ning Yi rocks!!!

Unfortunately when this was shot drama production costs doubled from under CNY 8mm/episode at the time TMOPB was made to over CNY 15mm/episode because celebrity pay TRIPLED. Actors cost is 70-80pct of total production cost and lead actors make 70-80 pct of all salaries. So Vengo and Dilraba probably got paid 2-3x what Mark Chao and Yang Mi got paid to make TMOPB. As you can imagine there was not much money left to spend on costumes and sets, all the money went to pay the actors. The Chinese govt and the industry put a cap on pay in 2019 because it was clearly impacting production quality but this one escaped those caps so what you are seeing is probably the peak of the excess. Hence the "cheap" looking production even though the budget was probably a lot higher (like double). In light of that, I am in the camp that has high expectations that the actors actually do a good job and perform well - they probably got a 5-10x pay rise which just seems out of line with their improvement in acting skills!!!

I have found with all these romances it all comes down to the leads and how much you like them which is quite subjective. Even if well told, all of the stories tend to be tropey - its par for the course with these kinds of shows.

Yes I suspect he is still waters run deep. I like them both. This is such a good show.

I just couldn't quite figure out whether she is good or evil or neither...

China is in lock down and there is fear all over Asia already. People know this is much less lethal than SARs or MERs but the problem is there is still no vaccine and the virus itself is practically invisible as in infected people initially don't show signs of sickness. School has been cancelled for a month and people are working from home. Now there is a mask shortage throughout Asia not just in China, the streets are empty and no one walks around without a mask. Amazon just cancelled my mask order from more than a week ago. Last thing we need is a bunch of famous movie stars getting sick because that kind of news would just go viral. We do need more good shows to air though. It is really boring staying at home with nothing to do and no one wants to go out unnecessarily and risk getting sick. Even if you can recover, you can get quarantined for two weeks or more and possibly in a strange facility and not in the comfort of your own home.

Very enjoyable show. I thought I would be addicted to Pillow Book and watching this to pass time but it is actually the opposite...

Well it costs a lot of money to make these dramas. And she is not the only investor, just the owner of the rights. Likely no one was willing to back the production with her as the lead. And people who invest in these things want to make money - that doesn't make them bullies it is not their job to burn a lot of money just to make someone's dreams come true. At least this way she is getting a lot of airtime and she will probably make quite a bit of money from this. I am not sure being "bullied" into making a bunch of money is such a terrible thing. If it were me, I would be doing cartwheels. But if playing BFJ was so important to her, she could have gone for it solo and paid to produce it herself. Maybe her true calling is to invest in rights of good dramas and that is what she should stick to... And maybe make tons of money and pick up a DJ look-alike to be her toy boy!

Nirvana in Fire 2 is almost as good.

Ahh... that makes sense. No wonder she pops up all the time for no apparent reason. FL role should be won by merit not just because they own the rights. She is a very uninspired actress, that ship would just sink.

Heheh - I wanted to do the same but she seems like she is going to be an evil character so I didn't want to miss something...

PB is their original story. TMOPB didn't have the rights to it so they kind of wrote their own version. As such, it is not going to be consistent and I wouldn't call it a sequel in the traditional sense. And although many actors including the ML/FL are reprising their roles it is obviously an entirely different production team.

Is there any point to this Ji Heng character or is she just there to take up space and drag out the show?

Heheh I knew she was going to rant about it, that kind of stuff is her pet peeve. I usually don't mind that much but I already didn't love the overly bright celestial kingdom in TMOPB either but this takes it to an entirely new level of glaring vivid brightness. The lack of good body language type of communication is the bigger directing flaw to me anyway. This director is the same troll that made AOL and she is making Chinese Paladin 4and some other adaptation of Feng Shen as well. She is very well known for water injection (dragging out scenes forever). Sad.

Does anyone know where to watch this?