Major:
Uuuuughhhhh. That's a punch to the gut. That's literally one of my favorite scenes in all of DD. I was just describing it in the comments section. Tai Tan's test followed by his unswerving loyalty to TH and TS in spite of what happened to the four sects was soooo moving.
:( A lot of the characters have turned into characters by name only with very little of their actual personalities in them. Even Dugu Bo pales heavily to what I’ve come to except and he’s my favorite character.
I just saw your comment and agree completely. He and his family have lost their impact but again, I feel like this entire S1 has been sacrificed in a way for S2. All this set up would make the second season good but lol what a waste! The characters are all a pale imitation of what they actually are like. Have you met Sword Douluo cos lol he’s a joke in this as well. Literal joke.
apocalib:
:( A lot of the characters have turned into characters by name only with very little of their actual personalities in them. Even Dugu Bo pales heavily to what I’ve come to except and he’s my favorite character.
I just saw your comment and agree completely. He and his family have lost their impact but again, I feel like this entire S1 has been sacrificed in a way for S2. All this set up would make the second season good but lol what a waste! The characters are all a pale imitation of what they actually are like. Have you met Sword Douluo cos lol he’s a joke in this as well. Literal joke.
It really seems like nobody's scary in this version. Tang San isn't scary, Grandmaster isn't scary, Chen Xin (Sword) isn't scary, Dugu Bo isn't scary, nobody's scary. None of them were scary all the time in the novel but u definitely got the feeling they could and absolutely would bring the pain if you crossed them. I get that Tang San needed to be nerfed cuz OP but it really feels like they nerfed EVERYBODY.
Even Qian Renxue/HLN is constantly whining about things when she's with the party. She's creepy but really not intimidating.
Xien_Rue:
Great to see a sane actor fan. The situation with the Douluo Dalu adaptation is very sad and disappointing. Since this is Xiao Zhan, and I saw him did well in The Untamed, I have high hope to see Tang San adapted to living version. But this Tang San depicted in the drama is not Tang San we original fans familiar with. Making him grow is fine, but with different core personality, any grow in the drama will not give us our Tang San.
Moreover, I suspect the scriptwriter either didn't read the whole novel or he just didn't like this genre. Because he was literally scrapped everything that make this IP so enjoyable to the original fans and replace them with something that he THOUGHT was better. First of all, xuanhuan genre usually caters to male readers so it has lots of cool moments with so little sob story. Here in this drama, this is subverted.
There are many sane actor fans. Most don't speak and are just watching the series. I've met one on here who is a solo fan of his who is also very sane. I'm very aware of how different the drama is from the novel/donghua as I speak to ppl on weibo about it, and get my spoilers lol. Moreover, I don't know what the screenwriter was thinking and I've never seen his other work. Douban is a very messed up place as that's where the antis are rating with 1s and reviewing with "ban Xiao Zhan at all costs" messages as that's been going on for a year as part of that criminal enterprise; these ppl literally blame Zhan for the poor script, acting of others like all of it, like he's a God that controls the world. Officially considered the worst cyber violence campaign in internet history. Can't wait for the attorneys to send these freaks to prison. The anime/novel fans ratings are in the 2-4 category. I'm not into anime/donghua of any kind and I dont read books before watching a series just because there's always a difference and obviously in this case a huge one. But I can fully understand when a fandom of a novel is upset about live action and I can and do respect it. To me this series is cool but not perfect. The Untamed was Oscar worthy. This was filmed right after TU wrapped filming so Xiao Zhan wasn't famous yet. I have nothing bad to say about his acting; in fact I think considering he was still new to the biz, he's doing a pretty damn good job given the script. So all faults lie solely with the screenwriter and his apparent lack of vision. Whether you guys drop it now or continue to the end is up to you obviously. I do hope something happens where you actually enjoy it because it sucks watching something you dislike.
It really seems like nobody's scary in this version. Tang San isn't scary, Grandmaster isn't scary, Chen Xin (Sword) isn't scary, Dugu Bo isn't scary, nobody's scary. None of them were scary all the time in the novel but u definitely got the feeling they could and absolutely would bring the pain if you crossed them. I get that Tang San needed to be nerfed cuz OP but it really feels like they nerfed EVERYBODY.Singularity:
It just seems like Wang Juan doesn't know how to utilize the cultivation system really well to build up the world outside of directly showing it on screen. No one mentions Titled Douluo at all in the series unless they're immediately relevant to the plot, so they're not intimidating at all because they're not hyped up nearly to the degree of the novels and donghua. The new viewers also have no idea just how important Titled Douluo are until the screenwriter shoehorned that line from XG about Du Gu Bo appearing and not knowing who he is. There's a lot of last second shoehorning of lines, now that I think about it, right before an event happens. Of course, only we would know that. Also ironic, they mention that there aren't many Titled Douluo in the Du Gu Bo entrance scene, and yet they don't know who he is despite his personality really not giving too many shits. The amount of random name dropping of Soul Land vocab words right before a big scene makes the script feel so amateurish. It's like Wang Juan got so caught up in his own story that he forgot he's in DD.
The story tries very hard at being comedic and serious at the same time and it doesn't flow all too well. Comedy and characters idling around lasts too long, so most of the serious scenes end up feeling very rushed when it comes to transitioning into them because there's no time for build up or proper building of context imo.
The problem is that Wang Juan tried to apply the same formula to this script, adding in mysteries and complexity that didn't previously exist, which makes it feel much less natural. Meanwhile the central cultivation/team battle aspect is done in a pretty mediocre and half-hearted way because that's just not what he's interested in. I think that maybe Wang Juan should stick with political/mystery stories and not cultivation stories.
Exactly. To people like us, it's pretty obvious Wang Juan does not care about the cultivation aspect, despite it being basically part of the title of the IP and synopsis, which new viewers wouldn't understand. I mean, he went ahead and added a crap ton political conspiracy stuff right from the get go that doesn't exist in the novels. It's why before, I mentioned new viewers will never be able to grasp how the cultivation or tactics truly works in the drama. Instead, we basically just have another run of the mill political drama with pretty colors. In my opinion, it just shows that Wang Juan doesn't really care about this genre nor how big the IP was.
Talking about it like this just makes me feel like it's one of those situations where a person is too old and doesn't understand the appeal of Shounen anime plots and the like. I only say this because he dumbed down the cast into super cookie cutter character archetypes compared to how they actually are. Then he's apparently also known as someone who kills off likeable characters? So that already gives me flags that he enjoys "darker" and I guess more grounded story settings, so "edgy" in a sense. I mean he introduced that characters can die in the first arc of DC in Nuo Ding by killing the bully, which doesn't happen in the novel. That was an immediate red flag to me, that he might've not cared to adapt himself to the source material, but forcefully adapted the source material to him, which takes huge ego imo.
I personally haven't watched too many dramas because of time, but I personally would think that some of the King's Avatar screenwriters would've done much better simply because in that drama they actually tried very hard imo to explain tactics, mechanics, and etc. which would've been perfect here. I didn't read the source for that, I knew about it from the donghua, and as a gamer, I could tell they were definitely trying to flesh out the mechanics in the drama.
I think he finds this type of theme brainless and beneath him so he changed everything to fit what he sees as "smart". Too bad anyone who has watched TV in the past years has seen much more complex and intelligent writing.Shrimpy:
That's basically what I was getting at. With all the praise going on for him and how he's treating DD, it very much seems like he sees this stuff as beneath him, or not intelligent enough to pull interest. So since he has his own echo chamber now, he sort of feels justified and empowered to change things because "his taste is oh so refined and he knows what works and what doesn't," especially with a title like The Industry's Conscience, jeez.
Theses types of writers are always dangerous in their own way. Like he responded to the community by basically saying: "Just wait for the twist, you'll love it! Everything I've set up, you'll never see it coming!" Which can very much give off the vibe of him trying to justify that he just knows better, rather than not saying anything, It's like an M. Night Shyamalan meme except edgier.
JOL is actually one of my favorite dramas of all time, probably top 2 right behind NiF1 and I'd agree that the DC script is much weaker. I've read both novels too. I think the distinction is that JoL (both the drama and the novel) is pretty light on the cultivation part, it's really more of a political thriller. Scheming and mysteries are the core, the fighting /cultivation aspect is incidental, ppl fight to achieve political goals. Wang Juan pretty much ignored the cultivation aspect and focused on the political/machination aspect and it works well.
100% agree with everything you commented. JoL (and coincidentally Nirvana1) are some of my only 10s out of all the cdramas I've watched. It had an excellent adapted screenplay and extremely well acted cast along with a great pace/flow and directing (although some of the lighting was iffy at parts but that's excusable, lol). Wang Juan definitely tried to apply the same sort of formula he used with JoL to Douluo and I can't really fault him for it bc of how successful JoL was/is, but unfortunately, Douluo's more political-heavy stuff doesn't make an appearance right from the start. I don't know if it's because Douluo isn't "brainy" enough since I'm not Wang Juan and he said in his Weibo post that he actually did put in a hidden plot-line from the start so I don't think it sounds like he is underestimating or thinking that the source material is "under him", so to speak. To be really blunt and honest, he just failed at adapting Douluo. It happens. A lot. I guess it's one of the first times he's missed the mark so terribly.
Also, the humor that worked so well in JoL was largely because of the cast of actors (Guo Qi Lin is a cross-talker and he's basically his character IRL). It won't translate well to every drama and it certainly didn't here. Nothing against Oscar's actor because I actually like him (and Oscar) but it's probably a two notches too high on the cringe scale to be funny.
That's basically what I was getting at. With all the praise going on for him and how he's treating DD, it very much seems like he sees this stuff as beneath him, or not intelligent enough to pull interest. So since he has his own echo chamber now, he sort of feels justified and empowered to change things because "his taste is oh so refined and he knows what works and what doesn't," especially with a title like The Industry's Conscience, jeez.OniBro:
To be fair, he basically started his Weibo post off saying that he accepts ALL criticisms and complaints as a writer since that's par for the course with his job. The tone he used in his post and the manner in which he wrote the entry wasn't bad, actually? He wasn't putting anyone down, rather he was actually kind of like teasing fans and faux-pleading with them to stop guessing his plot bc some of them were kind of close-ish to getting it right and he didn't know to do if they did since he doesn't think he could think of another twist esp with S2 in the works. I assume he means he's at least got a rough draft/plan for what he wants for S2 and either wrote it when he did S1 or has an outline. Also, he said he's 100% open to discussion but he's waiting till the series finishes airing since (like us here) not everyone will finish it at the same time with it airing on TV, VIP and normal Tencent.
Not to sound like a defense attorney, rofl but I know sometimes that the tone doesn't come across well in translations and his Weibo post wasn't actually rude. Still think he failed with this script and even with a "hidden plot" I don't see any salvaging.
Wang Juan definitely tried to apply the same sort of formula he used with JoL to Douluo and I can't really fault him for it bc of how successful JoL was/is, but unfortunately, Douluo's more political-heavy stuff doesn't make an appearance right from the start. I don't know if it's because Douluo isn't "brainy" enough since I'm not Wang Juan and he said in his Weibo post that he actually did put in a hidden plot-line from the start so I don't think it sounds like he is underestimating or thinking that the source material is "under him", so to speak.
It's just one of those things where I think a lot of source or donghua people, especially those not familiar with him, are going to end up asking themselves:
"Did he really need to add that? Change that? and this and that and this? What problem was there? Was it not engaging enough or what?"
And like I said, I think if anything, it ultimately comes down to him not knowing how to take advantage of the strengths of the heavy and hard cultivation genre as much as we'd like him to.
