Really?
What's the point of doing that?
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.
Te Zhan Rong Yao, China Special Forces
is a 45 episodes drama
that's currently being aired on china's satellite television as well
as all three major web platforms iqiyi, tencent, youku
The drama is led by Yang Yang and Li Yitong
directed by Xu Jizhou
written by Feng Ji and Xu Jizhou
for this writer and director.
They've actually worked previously on other projects,
focusing on the life of soldiers
and they've actually produced a couple of
really well received projects before
the thing about this one that's different is is based on an existing novel.
中国特种兵之特别有种
literal translation would be
chinese special force soldiers,
dash or subtitle,
the ones who are especially
ballsy
The title really doesn't make you take the story very seriously.
So thankfully, when they adapted it to screen,
it changed it to Te Zhan Rong Yao
It is produced by two companies, Yao Ke (耀客） and Mo Tie （磨铁）
This drama was actually filmed back in 2019.
It wasn't until 3 years later now that it came out.
So for the leading actors featured in this drama, actually,
this is their older work compared to a lot of works that
you've already watched in the last couple of years.
So when it comes to thinking about their performances,
that is something that you can put into perspective.
At the moment.
I'm making this video.
I've watched the first 10 episodes of the 45 episodes drama so.
I think it's a fair place to talk about first impression.
I'll give it above 0.5 gold mine under one gold mine.
That's where i'll put it.
It's still on the positive end.
And the reason is some parts of the drama is really enjoyable and I
appreciate but then there are also a lot of things in this drama that
does just give me a lot of question marks
really? wha? why?
?? who thought of that?
So this is a very mixed drama.
Now,
let me get into the details the positive
and not so postive part of this drama
on the positive end number one is,
if this particular genre theme talking about
special forces, army, soldiers, weapons, tactics, fightings, life on camp.
If that's your cup of tea,
this drama probably is rather enjoyable.
And I have to say the following things that I would say that's good about.
This drama totally comes from me,
watching other people making videos and writing things about the drama.
Because they are experts of weapons and armies and
how it works in contemporary 21st century army,
whereas I am totally totally a blank page
regarding any information and knowledge.
In this area of human life,
I did watch some videos made by previous special force soldiers who
watches this drama and then they share their opinions with the audience about
what is well done,
what is not well done from what I can gather.
The drama did certain things very well,
and then certain parts of it does look like because they
have to weigh between the dramatic tension and reality.
Also what can be shown on camera,
can be shown to public
What cannot be
with all these things play together.
It ends up being a drama where certain parts of it.
Gives a very accurate portrayal of if there's
this team going on this mission doing this job,
they would act like that under this circumstances.
But then certain other parts are...
does not make sense, I guess.
Unless you are an expert of military operations, tactics,
21st century latest weapon,
how usually different armies, different countries' armies do things.
You probably would not be able to tell whether it's accurate or not.
So you can only watch it as an entertainment piece
But as long as you're interested in this theme
this probably is still a worthwhile drama.
so that brings me to the second positive point is,
although I do not know exactly how accurate it is,
I can tell that this crew spend a lot of effort, time, energy,
and actors really gave a lot to make this drama.
There's a lot of very intense physical things they have
to do when you have to do it and then you have to do it.
To look good on camera,
it's kind of a double of the difficulty.
And this drama does depict certain parts of army life,
how soldiers get along,
how they live.
From day to day the details,
they do do a fairly good portrayal of the particular
atmosphere and actions and behaviors and speech.
People have as a soldier.
And I think that comes from that the scriptwriter and the
directors they are specialized in military army focused dramas.
And I think they also both have military background themselves,
so that part of the drama they can gauge it rather well.
And if you watch a lot of army focused dramas that comes from china,
you get a sense that at least that part of the drama is pretty well done.
The third positive thing about the drama is up to this point.
I think the story progresses rather fast.
It doesn't have water down problem.
It's very much like a main lead character
going through challenges after challenges,
archetypical way of a hero journey kind of writing
things such as encountering drug dealers unexpectedly,
such as getting trapped by a landslide
On this journey you have a lot of highlight points.
Then in between those highlight conflict heavy parts
you have the daily life on the camp as soldier type of
story that gives you a lot of comedy
mostly is helped by a lot of good supporting rules.
For example the actor Jiang Long
showing up in dramas such as
Luo Yang and recently Under the Skin as small supporting roles,
I find him quite unique and very capable and he shoulders
pretty much all the driven by lines bantering language,
comedy, jokes, funny things of this drama and he did a really good job.
I really enjoyed his acting.
And when he needs to be super,
emotionally highly charged,
he can be that too.
So the pacing and structure of this drama up to this point,
i'm satisfied
then on the not so ideal side of this drama, for me.
Point number one is a style thing.
Some people like it, some people don't mind it,
some people hated it.
I'm pretty neutral,
but then i'm not on the side of preferring it,
which is they use a lot of handheld in this drama
ever since Bourne's Identity and somebody discovered shaky cam.
This whole world is crazy about shaky cam,
particularly when it comes to action,
whether it's like military army action or its spy chase
or car chase or you know all that type of thing,
just shake it okay shake it and somehow gives it more energy.
I guess
overuse of shaky cam can be very,
very disorientating
and for television,
it's a different thing as cinema.
cause Cinema has a big screen and you're more immersed in it.
Whereas these days most people watch it on ipad or on their computer.
They don't even bother to have a projector or television.
When it's that small and they just shakes you know all the time,
it really can lose people and make people feel
so annoyed that they don't wanna watch it anymore.
Also, there are a lot of very dark scenes in this drama,
which on one hand,
I appreciate that because if it's really night and
in forest and everyone is trying to be low key,
don't be discovered by you know the opposite side of things.
You obviously wanna it to be really dark,
but when you have dark and then you have shaky cam
like I don't even know what i'm looking at sometimes.
and If you say there's a reaasonable argument of using
a lot of handheld and shaky stuff for in action,
but sometimes when they're just having daylight,
nothing weird is going on
2 people stand still talk, over the shoulder shots.
They just still use handheld and they don't even use a very steady handheld.
It's like
this kind of handheld
just shake shake shakes.
Really? What's the point of doing that?
Second why I give it not so good a rating
The biggest problem I think is the drama is
it constantly 反复横跳
It jumps between moments that are wow this is so cringy
oh god like I wanna dig a castle out with my toes.
Then the next scene is like, oh that's fine.
It's like riding on a roller coaster blind folded
you don't know next moment whether it's going down or going up.
For example,
early on in this drama our male lead character
who just got into the army as a newbie
Very soon they run into a night kind of mid- night,
training exercise to a mountain site
and they have to use what they're given to find their way out.
The small group of our main characters,
they happen to run into another military operation's,
night training exercises,
and they weren't involved in it.
It's not their exercise,
but they just just
joined in.
They jumped onto those parked military vans and ended
up in other people's very serious training exercises.
And they use shovels to into the two sides of that training.
One of their headquarter center
pretend we have like guns and held you
all at gun point and you lose this exercise against your opponent.
But we three actually do not even belong to this exercise.
We do not belong to the opposite team.
We do not belong to your team.
We just came in from no where and cutting
the electricity off their headquarter,
making that side lose.
ah?!!!
I don't even know where I could start to ran about the
does not make senseness of this part of the plot.
I know the story is trying to make our male lead as somebody
who has a great ambition of making his way to the top team,
like the best special force team in china.
He's had that since he was a child because of his background story,
histfather and all that
he came in as a newbie
but already got years of trainings under his belt.
And he just wanna be a personal hero.
And the story is about him from that point onwards started to learn.
It's important to collaborate with other people.
Personal heroism can only go that far, blah, blah blah,
you know getting more matured become a team player.
That's like where the story is going
but heavens.
Even if you wanna set up this contrast of the character arc from the
beginning as this type of person
ending up being a much much better
developed person
don't intentionally make him.
So unlikable, stupid, rushy to the point that It
just doesn't make a logical sense at the beginning.
So this drama has a lot of those moments where Yang Yang's role
just is so defying basic rules of being a soldier,
in army as a newbie
plus Yang Yang's acting.
He has this thing where if the character or himself,
under a particular circumstances in a scene
he's aware of how good looking, how....
he is
it starts to just ooze off the screen and it starts to become,
he's such a show off.
He gives you that vibe that's so strongly like he wants
to cut you with his
I don't know how many people get it.
I can literally physically feel he's trying to cut me with it.
And because of this character set up over how over the top
ridiculously rushy he is at the beginning of the drama.
And then yang yang sort of weak point, really,
I think is whenever he plays a character who is too self conscious of how,
outstanding he is
he just becomes too much.
So this drama is like double buff on that.
And I think about last year's you're my glory,
a scientist role he does where he is much more civilian relaxed.
Most of the time does not need to show off how
good looking or how clever or how special he is.
And sometimes he actually is very burdened with life.
He has a that air comes out of him and somehow that feels much much better.
I feel much easier to
Sympathize, empathize with his character.
Often while I was watching this drama,
I literally cannot bear staring at the screen.
Because every moment he's on,
he's showing off
that's totally me okay ?
as another personal thing,
you may like it very much.
You may like him being super self aware of how good looking he is.
If you dig that I mean this drama will be golden for you
because it's literally littered with those moments.
But for me it's really hard
so with those reasons above,
I don't have a very high rating personally for this drama
and then I don't think I have the either patience
or that much of an interest to continue
watching throughout 45 episodes of this drama
as other new dramas come in.
I probably will switch my focus.
I mean Yang Yang has another period drama coming out
right now, I'm praying that in that drama.
He wouldn't stick his chin out that much to me.
I remember him showing up in a lot of like variety
shows where he just does very goofy dancing,
stupid, joking things and immediately his aura becomes much more lovely.
As long as he he's like,
start to hold himself.
if you like Yang Yang and you absolutely love that side of him,
just just
ignore me.
But if you have similar reactions as i do
you know what i'm talking about
that should wrap up this video talking
about the first impression of the drama
china special forces.
Te Zhan Rong Yao
thank you for watching AvenueX
I'll see you in my next video.
Meanwhile live long and happy drama watching.