They resolve to still using a lot of cuts.
He really knows how to make the women of a story looks stunning and different.
Every blue you see in the drama as on the indigo end.
Hello, you're watching AvenueX
Where a junkie on good storytelling shares her thoughts,
knowledge and occasional weird ideas
on stories and how they're told.
shuo ying xiong shui shi ying xiong
Heroes, is a 38 episodes drama that's being aired
on the platform Tencent right now.
The drama is directed by Li Muge,
whose most well known works previously were
the Goodbye My Princess period dramam, also last year's Rattan
This is a Wu Xia drama based on a Wu Xia novel written
by one of the best known Wu Xia novel writers,
Wen Ruian
within my memory,
one of the strongest impression adaptation drama
work based on his novel was the early 2000s
Ni Shui Han, Zhang Zhilin, Zhong Hanliang, Li Xiaoran, Song Jia
the type of good looking cast you almost cannot imagine
to put together now.
So just in case people watching this video
doesn't know about Wen Ruian
and he's one of the big names.
Although in the process of adaptation to this drama version,
there's a lot of changes made.
The drama is led by Zeng Shunxi, Liu Yuning, Yang Chaoyue
Meng Ziyi, Chen Chuhe
It's another very classic cast makeup in today's dramaland
where you have the younger,
more popular traffic drawing actors leading the drama
with many much better established older actors
to do the supporting roles
This drama started production back in november 2020
and then they wrapped onset in march last year.
So it's been over a year for its post production and getting scheduled,
getting license.
All those things sorted out.
At this point, i've watched the first 12 episodes.
This first impression is based on that,
i'll give it a one gold mine rating on my scale right now,
depending on how it develops it could go up could go down later.
Let me quickly introduce you to the story.
And then we're gonna talk about the positive and not so positive things.
I see in this drama,
if you have read the original novel that the drama is based on,
you will see a lot of changes have been made,
it either would make the experience of you're watching it
more interesting or just make you complain all the time,
if you haven't read the novel,
well the story starts with introducing you to three main characters.
One girl played by Yang Chaoyue
two boys played by Zeng Shunxi and Liu Yuning
their second collaboration since Ultimate Note
they all have the Wu Xia background,
they all have wu gong kungfu.
They all got trained by different people and they come across
in the world of Jiang Hu
building up a friendship
very soon, they'll come across two more very important characters
played by Meng Ziyi and Chen Chuhe
who are in the drama version,
the heir to two different,
very powerful sects who recite in the capital of this drama setting.
These 2 groups are kind of on par with each other,
but also in fierce competition.
And then they also have a lot of dealings with the governmental,
with the political power, ruling power of the time.
And that makes these two people's relationship very complicated,
because they are first in love,
but also in competition.
And it's the adventure, growth, change, friendship, betrayal, love,
all that kind of element story,
mostly happening among these five characters.
That's my best way of putting it without
spoiling really anything important for you.
Now, let's getting to talk about the positive things first
Point number one,
the production quality of this drama is pretty good.
If you like to look at very refined things on screen
by which I mean they use good cameras,
there is a level of refined quality of the sets and props and costumes.
They also don't resolve to too much of a blurry
look of people's skins and their overall appearance
So there's a lot of detail for you to look at.
It also does a very good balance of lighting.
It's not super cinematic and making it super realistic
such as at night when it's only candlelight.
in period drama setting everything is super dark or high contrast.
They wouldn't go to the absolute realism level such as you
see in a couple of other dramas in recent years in china,
but then they wouldn't also lit the scene crazy bright
for this drama, they decided to go for a very peculiar way
of grading the color.
I don't know whose preference that is,
whether it's the director's,
the cinematographer's or the post production person's or producer's,
you never know,
but they intentionally destroyed all the teal color.
They completely desaturated teal color.
Every blue you see in the drama as on the indigo end.
And it's clearly being adjusted in post production.
And then they up the saturation of red,
making red pop like crazy.
It's not exactly the style you see in Goodbye My Princess,
neither is in Rattan
so for this particular period drama directed by the same director.
He went for another look.
He didn't do before, but it's so intentional
in certain shots, It looks beautiful.
In other shots, it looks a little bit weird,
because it's too indigo,
and it's not how things would look like naturally.
And your brain kind of registers that
If you look at a lot of color, for example,
I intentionally wear this color today.
I will look like
this,
depending on if you accept that look or not
back to normal
and it kind of make people's skin tone
under certain lighting conditions.
A little bit weird
Nirvana in Fire 2
that drama had overall too much teal
If the two persons responsible for these two dramas ever come together,
they should have a fist fight that could be called
The Battle
of The Teal Color
the second positive thing,
the story of this drama,
I would call it okay, watchable.
It's not perfect in the sense that every line,
every turn of logic is watertight or airtight.
It has problems if you wanna carefully think through things.
But if you willingly just ignore some of it,
it's not too bad.
It gets more interesting after the first couple of episodes
overall, I still put the stories quality on the positive end
because it's not like a lot of other dramas you see
in chinese dramaland these days that are so
lazy.
So without planning,
so without thinking,
so without trying to make any point cross
like those dramas,
a couple of examples
I'll put the posters here
where it's so looking like they just made it
so that they can harvest fandom's money
and money laundering
I don't know like what's the purpose of making these dramas.
But in comparison,
this drama's story actually shows you that
they did think through characters development.
Is there a bigger message that they wanna deliver?
And it's kind of sprinkled across those episodes.
There are very good moments.
Overall.
It's on the positive end,
but not so much.
Above the medium line.
The third positive thing about this drama that I really liked is
this drama has a lot of designs of things that are very pretty.
For example, the title sequence looks very artistic and beautiful.
The title song
the ending songs and ost tracks overall in the drama is very nice.
Definitely you're gonna hear Liu Yuning singing.
Because he's a singer, why not use that?
also, everybody before they start to watch this drama
had already anticipated something which did get pretty nicely delivered.
The director Li Muge is known now
in dramaland as the best male director to make
actresses and female characters.
Look pretty.
He really knows how to make the women of a story looks stunning and different.
And this drama did deliver that
Yang Chaoyue, Meng Ziyi
and a couple of other female roles all look
so pretty and so different from each other,
from their hairstyle to their color palette
to their little accessories of their costume overall,
everyone is pretty and if you enjoy looking at
very beautiful women on screen in period setting,
his works are the best to go for that
and he has now made that his standing reputation
these are a couple of things I see in this drama.
I enjoyed that sustained me watching through the 12 episodes.
Now let's talk about things that are not ideal for this drama.
Number one wu xia part still can do with a lot more work
choreography, fight design
before his drama went out.
There is a trailer, promotional trailer early on that you can hear
in that the director said I wanna make a Jiang Hu focused drama
a little bit different from previous Wu Xia drama
which is just like saying i'm gonna make a story of ancient normad mongolians,
but i'm only gonna talk about the praries and not the people
and how they ride horses
which just does not make sense.
So no matter what he says,
he is still filming a drama that's a Wu Xia drama
based on a well known Wu Xia author's Wu Xia novel,
you cannot run away from that.
and in that sense,
the fighting part of the drama is not up to standard
none of the leading actors actresses are trained fighters.
They don't come from a professional wu xia background,
unlike many older time actors who actually had training
and they probably didn't have not much time to train before
they got into this drama
So they resolved to still using a lot of cuts.
They use a lot of close up extreme close up
of your hands of your feet of one thing
focused on very small area and just cut cut cut cut,
cut like crazy.
And for the actors still mostly when they show
up as a whole person with their face and body,
it's like the starting or the ending pose
I would say it's a better way of fighting than Snow Sword Strid
in terms of actually showing you the fight and not making it super slow
everything in slow-mo
then it is better than Who Rules the World
in terms of not overuse too much cgi
fabric fight.
That's almost 90% cgi looks a little bit too snake like and not realistic.
So this drama wouldn't have those two problems,
but they still have the cut cut cut cut cut and not actually
showing you an extensive sequence of the person fighting.
And you can clearly see that a sequence of movement that didn't get cut.
The person did it by themselves
almost doesn't happen in this drama,
although they do resolve to kind of nicely designed
angles and things to make it look energetic.
it's still not,
thel et's say the good type of fight.
Most of the audiences in china want
As a Wu Xia drama, it lacks a bit in that department.
The second thing not super significant,
but if you're curious,
I think only Liu yuning dubbed himself
among the five core lead characters and roles
and he actually did a pretty good job dubbing himself.
I hope he can carry on doing that for his future projects.
Third thing about drama
I think is overall the leading cast acting ability is average
to below average level.
It's not bad,
it's not horrible to look at,
but it's not very satisfying.
It definitely doesn't add scores,
it doesn't make the drama better.
Zend Shunxi,
if you wanna compare just how well
the person and the character integrates
it's less than Ultimate Note I'd say
Liu Yuning
I think he tries his best and he looked better than before in other dramas,
but Liu yuning still has one thing he needs to.
like work on, is his posture.
He still is a little bit hunched over most of the time
and particularly this character in the book and also in the drama version
is known to like to stand with his arms in the back
being very proud.
So you know like when you're doing that,
you naturally just is more opening up your shoulders,
than hunch over.
He really needs that sorted out.
If he wants to play future period drama roles,
it just doesn't look good.
Yang Chaoyue, she kind of performed exactly to my expectation,
no sparks of extra surprise,
but she didn't drop it completely.
She plays a role that just suits her pretty well.
So she doesn't bring me out of the story,
but then there's no extra value she offers
Meng Ziyi, She really doesn't have them much screen time.
So far, her role is gonna get much more interesting later.
So I'll have to wait and see
so far, she's just being pretty
Chen Chuhe, probably is the most interesting role
among the 5 roles so far as the main characters.
He also probably is the best actor.
He would be one of those reasons to sustain me through
this drama, trying to see what happens later.
So overall those are they not so good things.
And if I have to think of another Wu Xia drama
that has similar makeup in recent years,
I probably will go for Xia Tan Jian Bu Zhi
Ancient Detective
If I have to compare these two,
I still prefer ancient detective.
It has a more coherent storyline.
It's better written,
it's more interesting engaging with characters and the plot
because in a way it's a detective story
and then I definitely think that drama's leading cast's acting
is overall better than this one,
then also the fighting in that drama.
It's better than this one
to be honest overall as a production
it is lacking in many things even with today's
much much lowered overall standard of chinese dramas.
So that would be my first impression of the drama Heroes
Shuo Ying Xiong Shui Shi Ying Xiong
I wouldn't say the time I've spent watching this drama is wasted
But it probably will be one of those dramas
half a year down the line.
I forgotten 90% of its content.
Thank you for watching AvenueX
i'll see you in my next video.
Meanwhile live long and happy.
Drama watching.