Dancing Serpent

Right? I played almost 20 hours to get 100% in the game.

I like that it still retains some staples of the DMBJ verse. Weird not!zombies, lots of tombs and tomb traps, tomb hallucinations because of special paintings, etc.

Zang Hai gets mentioned in the Lost Tomb-verse a lot, as the scary architect of ancient tombs with the deadliest traps. There are some other elements linking back to those dramas - the Ghost Seal, the bronze fish, the special seat and lighting the lantern at the Zhen tower, etc.

The magic zombie army should count as fantasy, I think. *g* (Sorry for the edit, that typo was stupid.)

I did.

The movie is mainly about the later chapters of the novel, but we get a bit of backstory in flashback scenes.

Kinopolis in Main-Taunus-Zentrum Frankfurt, Germany will show it on 19:30h this Sunday 02.02. and the next one 09.02.2025

We were actually notified by the staff that there was a problem with the subtitles before the start of the movie, and some people did leave and got their tickets refunded. I decided to stay because I drove an hour to get to the cinema, and I met with other online friends who had the same long drive to get there. I watched the 2017 drama adaptation about a year ago, and I'm currently reading the book, so it definitely could have been worse as far as following the movie goes.

I got lucky and watched it yesterday in Frankfurt, Germany. Not so lucky were the technical difficulties the cinema experienced, which meant we didn't get any subtitles. And half of the movie is in Mongolian, so even the group of Chinese girls to my right had their problems - we laughed about it afterwards, that at least we knew the story going in and didn't feel completely lost. It was visually stunning, the music was beautiful, and the main actors did a great job conveying their feelings. I'd love to rate it higher than the 7/10 I gave it, but for that I'll need to re-watch with subtitles first.

I'm assuming many people don't notice the propaganda when it comes to their own countries. But yeah, I agree with you here.

Honestly, she didn't even feel like a female lead in the first place. I didn't dislike her, but many of her scenes and actions could have been done by another character, as well.

Both "Is giving it a chance resulting in a low score better or worse than dropping it?" and "First Impressions Can Be Deceiving" are things I do think about a lot when dropping a drama. I usually start watching because of a favourite actor, and don't mind suffering through some things because of them, but that doesn't mean it ends up getting a great rating from me.

And some things take a while to get really good. I almost dropped one of my favourite dramas after two episodes, but stuck with it because I love the lead. And, lo and behold, it got really engaging in episodes three to five! I not only finished watching, but I wrote a review for it, watched it a second time, and have by now written five fanfics for it.

So, I don't drop all that much. Sometimes I park a drama on my on-hold list first. Sometimes I resurrect dramas from either list and continue. Which means, I haven't actually "dropped" them in the first place - I'm spending far too much time still thinking about them.

Thanks! I'll head over and take a look, then. Hopefully it's available in my country now. Three hours ago, it wasn't there yet.

Not all of them, sadly. Sometimes the subs even stop in the middle or towards the end. Still hoping they'll sub the rest of Tientsin Mystic some day. :-(

You can actually see that very often, especially in costume dramas. Makes me worry a lot for the actors.

Went back and had a look, it was episode 20.

Maybe my review might be helpful to you? I started watching because I love Li Yifeng, and was surprised how good it was.

It should be xuanhuan instead of xianxia, unless there's going to be daoist themes/yin & yang/etc at a later point. I'm only two episodes in, so far, so I haven't encountered those yet.

He really does love her. He does have ambitions, sure, but he's willing to give up everything for her, even to the point of going against imperial decrees.