Hello, you are watching AvenueX
where a junkie on good storytelling, shares their thoughts, knowledge,
and occasional weird ideas on stories and how they're told.
Xing Han Can lan, Love like A Galaxy is a divided into two parts,
first part 27 episodes,
next part 30 episodes,
period drama that's being aired on the platform Tencent right now,
the drama is directed by Fei Zhenxiang
who is the director of the Candle in Tomb recent
couple of series of dramas.
It's written by Zou Yue and An Yimo, based on a
novel written by the author Guan Xin Ze Luan
Named the same
this drama started shooting back in July last year,
went all the way to the end of the year December.
Currently in china,
the length of each drama,
although it's not 100% locked down on a number
that you cannot exceed,
it's recommended that you make it short and concise
with this drama,
they resolve to break it into two parts.
Honestly, I find this whole thing is pretty ridiculous.
Shang You Zheng Ce, Xia You Dui Ce, When there's a policy
There's a way to get around it.
I've watched the first 18 episodes,
and since this drama is not gonna finish sharing until september,
because it has another close to 40 episodes left.
It's just gonna take too long if I only make one final review.
That's why I decided to talk about it NOW
Based on what i've seen so far, i'll give it a
One gold mine rating,
the more honest number probably is like a 1.3/4.
This is a in the drama's own words,
period ensemble family drama.
They actually categorize themselves very specifically and correctly.
This is an ensemble drama and focusing on a couple families.
Most importantly,
the female lead's family
it will involve the younger generation's courtship and marriage.
It will involve the relationships between parents' generation and children,
grandparents generation and parents' generation and grandparents generation with
the grandson generation,
then within their own generation, brothers, sisters, cousins,
or their parents' colleagues' families' children,
aristocrats, the imperial family,
roughly based on the Han dynasty power relationships between different groups,
although it's not really a historical,
you have Zhao Lusi and Wu Lei leading the roma as the
young people who are eventually gonna end up together.
She comes from a general's family who happens
to be super neglected as she grows up.
Both mother and fathers are fighters,
and they were posted far away from the capital in the
small city on the border fighting for years and years.
So she grew up in her grandmother's household
super neglected and treated very badly
until she gets to the teenager years
where it's time for her to think about her marriage.
Her parents comes back creates a lot of domestic drama between this.
They've never really met daughter and this pair of super negligent parents.
Then the male lead character is a young general,
very young,
but very, very successful
feels like a mix of a couple of real people in chinese history.
and he has a very sad family background story.
The emperor played by Bao Jianfeng considers Wu Lei's role
a son of his,
although not blood related and adores him
over the top level
and Wu Lei's young general is a super stern,
super cold,
hard to please
and everybody is scared of him,
classic, I 'd say web novel male lead character
these two are gonna meet and
through many obstacles and many many many coming together,
breaking up, coming together,
breaking up all kinds of challenges they eventually get together.
Now, in my opinion,
what is good about this drama and what is not so good
on the positive side
Number one, this really is a qualified period family ensemble drama,
the parents and children generation's hard to get along problems,
the extremely unfair,
let's say grandmother generations preference to her
different children and different children's children that
creates the earlier parts of dramatic tension in this drama.
That's funny to watch,
but often will make your blood pressure rise a little bit.
You have peer pressure, you have the parents constantly
putting the children down,
comparing them to better children in the family.
And the tone is overall still very comical
when it comes to this specific kind of in entertainment value
from a period drama,
this drama did it pretty well.
The second thing I like about this drama is I really really
highly appreciate the overall casting of the parents and
grandparents generation characters in this drama,
Zeng Li, Guo Tao
playing the most important parents generation,
the mother and father of our female lead character.
They're just really good.
They've does such a good job playing these 2 roles
And honestly, if they don't work,
the story wouldn't work.
And the grandmother character played by Xu Di
This old lady has been around in drama film in china forever,
and the moment her face shows up you know what she's
gonna do and she's just gonna play it perfectly.
You also have Bao Jianfeng
I 've already said
he's not that old and not so long ago.
He was still an idol drama actor who would lead it as the male lead.
Now he's the father generation.
He is the leading CP shipper, of our
male lead and female lead.
Think about that.
When you have an emperor who is literally sitting there
and just trying to put two leads and make them kiss,
how could the story not work out?
So basically for the parents and grandparents
generation of characters in this drama
I have nothing to complain about.
and most of my enjoyment of watching drama come from
their performance and their story lines
and their interaction with our younger generations
who are technically the focus of our drama,
because this story is mostly about Zhao Lusi's
Character, her multiple fiances who engaged with her,
for some reason failed, engaged with her,
for some reason failed.
And eventually she ends up with the right person she's destined to be.
That's the type of stories so you'll come across.
A lot of cousins, sisters,
the female competition,
but also all the guys who are interested in her that belong to her generation.
So in that ensemble of actors, honestly, in my opinion,
their acting compared to their parents' generation.
is not on the same level.
Among them, probably the favorite performance
comes from the actress Zhang Yue who
made her name known a couple of years ago in the nothing but 30 drama.
And i'd say she probably is the strongest actress among the young
cast members of this drama and I really like her character.
so overall the acting part is watchable,
particularly the older actors really make this drama work for you.
The third thing I would say overall,
that's on the positive end of this drama is
before I went in,
I really worried it's just gonna be another Tencent s+ drama that's crap.
I think fortunately this one isn't
it does show that the people who make
this story care about the story they wanna make it a proper drama.
They probably aren't the most talented,
most capable,
best storytellers out there,
but they also just do not wanna randomly do something,
just get the money and get out of it.
At least that's the vibe I get from watching this drama,
so I think attitude wise how they position themselves
and how they treat this story is good enough for me.
Now let's talk about what's no ideal about this drama.
Number one is personal thing.
I am not a fan of its makeup styling, overall look,
it really didn't create a style of its own.
It doesn't stand out among other period dramas of similar setting.
It's just not pretty enough for me and it doesn't
actually flatter the actors that they picked.
Zeng Li, although now she plays the mother generation
when she was younger,
she was widely acknowledged among her colleagues
among her classmates as the classic big Qing Yi (青衣）
yi role of chinese
because she also comes from beijing opera background.
That type of most important female lead character material actress,
she's so pretty and this drama just totally didn't flatter her.
At all.
and When I was watching when she first showed up,
i'm like this is Zeng Li? Sure?
what have you done to her?
And then you look at other female or male really actors overall
just the style in this drama doesn't make them look good.
Or they could look much better
color palette, hairstyle, makeup, lighting,
none of that really flatters any of the actors.
And the fact is if you want to,
you can cause drama is putting a three dimensional space
on a two dimensional medium.
And there's always things you can do to make people look better.
This drama kind of didn't care about that.
Zhao Lusi, pretty young girl,
she doesn't have the perfect face in which I mean no matter how you style her,
she's just gonna look stunning.
There are certain hair style that will
make her look so much better than others.
And unfortunately,
this drama just pick the style that really doesn't make her look the best.
They're really imitating an imagined way of what Han dynasty will look like.
But it's so far from historical reality.
So since you are already not a very authentic historical,
you can actually make this styling more inventive in a way to
flatter the leads
decide a type of look that will make the leads look the best.
And then you kind of work from there and make the other people kind of
following the same similar look so that you are creating the coherent
look of a time.
I'm just not a fan of color, makeup, lighting. look,
I think it could be done so much better.
So I put it on the negative side, if you like it.
That's totally fine.
The second not so ideal thing after i've watched 18 episode,
is the leading couple's chemistry at least by now,
which is about 1/3 of the whole drama
hasn't worked on me and it's just me,
okay?
You may completely feel differently.
So what I get from this drama with Zhao Lusi and Wu Lei is
it probably happens due to a couple of reasons.
Number one is script wise.
They really don't have that many opportunities meeting
each other that much in the first 18 episodes.
And then when there really eventually had a
significant scene of them coming together,
when she is trapped and he comes to rescue,
she extracts the arrowhead from his chest with a qin string.
You have to watch over 10 episodes to get to that point.
I know in the original novel, it is like that, too.
The guy doesn't show up until rather late.
And their official story doesn't develop until rather late.
And I also know there isn't a hard rule that you have to make your male lead
and female lead meeting the first moment and running through the whole thing.
But I would say, even though you have a story of a main couple,
one of them doesn't have a significant presence in the story.
Early on.
You still have to with some tricks to make their presence.
Always there
people have to be aware of like that guy or that woman is the lead.
And and there's something going on between the leads.
And eventually something's gonna happen.
You have to play that tension,
like you have to make people realize that,
but this drama doesn't quite do that.
Earlier on.
It's a pure domestic drama and the male lead has too little a presence.
I still feel he needs to be more frequently showing up in the story.
Just to remind people the male lead of this drama is Wu Lei
First 10 episodes you can't get it really.
If you are not told,
that's the case
you can't tell from the story itself.
And then when they finally have that first significant scene,
that's totally shot with the camera language and with
the intention to quickly quickly build up their
chemistry.
It only happens to them leads.
I think it's a joint efforts of the leading actors and actress
and the director who eventually gave you that scene that
doesn't work to my expectation.
I wish that scene could work emotionally.
More, make me really sense that chemistry,
unfortunately, to me,
it just is on the presentation side of things,
functions as the type of scene that you hope it to be.
But I didn't get any visceral reaction
from the performance of the two leads.
And then the last thing,
if I have to compare Zhao Lusi and Wu Lei
since there are the female lead and male lead of this drama,
i'd say Zhaon Lusi did a better job so far okay as her character.
One thing is obviously she has much more screen time,
so she has many more scenes to do,
and it's still within her comfort zone,
this particular type of role she's done.
Many already, she does it, as you expect,
in a way that it's good enough,
we shall wait and see if later episodes,
when the story starts to develop to its late stage,
she can deliver something that's out of our expectation
Wu Lei, on the other hand,
one thing is he doesn't have that much screen time so far,
so not that many opportunities to show you anything,
but within the things that he's got,
whether it's the romantic relationship scenes with our female lead or
the other thing about his own family story or his professional job.
As a general fighting or investigating certain cases,
you feel like he hasn't really relaxed at all throughout this whole drama.
He's very tense.
He's very self aware that there's a camera looking at him,
whether he's trying to look good all the time
or whether he's trying to play that.
I guess from the script level,
the super cold stern, aloof, ambitious,
but then because of all the tragedies that's happened to him,
kind of closed off his heart and human emotions type of general,
like he's so trying to do his imagined version of
that kind of person what they should look like.
He is so tense and often very wooden.
And the drama really likes to shoot him from like front,
super staring at the camera angle
where it just makes him even less like a living human
and it strongly vibes,
the young men trying to predent to be much older than he really is.
I mean physically speaking,
Wu Lei has put so much work that he is now very strongly built,
musclely, probably more fit the most of the young
actors these days in china
which is hard work,
not easy.
He can also ride horses like a master
because he put a lot of time in that and in this drama you can see that
he shows off his skills and it's perfect.
In that sense,
but then it's almost like his
his understanding of the character,
his ability to make that person look like a real person,
falls very much behind his ability to train his own physics.
In my opinion, okay i've said in my recent live stream, because he is,
a child actor he started doing dramas very young,
and one of his most impressive,
younger and well known role is his Fei Liu in Nirvana,
and I'm a huge fan of Nirvana.
So I would always have this filter on Wu Lei
Now in his very early 20s,
I feel he still hasn't completely gotten what acting is.
It's like there's something stopping him from breaking through
waiting for the day the enlightenment of acting dawns on him
with everything else he has.
The look, the body and already kind of established fame
in the general public's mind as a child actor.
He just need that one thing and he will be a different actor totally,
but he's not yet there.
Let's pray the god of acting would just
do that on his forehead soon.
This is gonna be a long marathon drama.
It's gonna run until September,
although they haven't said when the second part is gonna come out.
If nothing weird happens,
it's gonna immediately show up like Zhou Sheng Ru Gu, that drama
or like Blue Whisper
Yu Jiao Ji
I will keep watching this drama and I do hope
the later parts of the story is gonna get more intense,
more interesting,
better performances,
better chemistry.
I much prefer watching this type of detached from reality period,
romantic drama with good looking people than anything.
That's right now based on realism contemporary and raises my blood pressure,
I just wanna entertainment
to make me jump out of reality for a little bit
while I was watching.
so let's hope Galaxy later ports is gonna do that for us.
Thank you for watching AvenueX
i'll see you in my next video.
Meanwhile, live long and happy drama watching.