Final Review The rebel Chinese Drama
The rebel Pan Ni Zhe has finished airing at the end of June, and this is the final review on that drama.
Hi, you're reading my drama list where a junkie on good story telling shares her thoughts, knowledge and occasional weird ideas on stories and how they're told.
The 43 episode drama that's been aired on both web platforms and cctv eight in china has concluded.
First, my final rating for this drama will stay at two goldmine
Although it hasn't gotten the highest possible rating from AvenueX I would still say this is the best espionage drama set in republic of china.
That I've seen in the last...three years i've gotten emails from people asking me about particular words or of what is going on, because they're not very familiar with the political background that the drama is set in this is a very concise, very concise explanation.
The year, 1912 is the founding year of republic of china. At the time the official party that's in office is the Nationalist party or guo min dang which is also what most of the characters belong to in this drama, including Lin Nansheng Chen Moqun wang shi and, all of them between the 1912 and 1949.
That is the party in office at least technically or theoretically, because during this time it was very turbulent, there were different warlords fighting at places.
There are different parties. And even within the nationalist party at the time, there are many different power groups fighting against each other.
But let's say from 12 to 49, 37 years, nationalist party, guo ming dang is the official party running the country.
Chinese Communist party was founded in 1921. It's a younger party by its birthday.
And during those 37 years, there was about 1/3 of that.
When the two parties are in collaboration, two major periods.
One is called Di Yi Ci Guo Gong He Zuo The first time the nationalist party and communist party worked together.
That was between 1924 and 1927. Then the second time collaboration happened between 37 to 46.
Apart from those periods, chinese communist party was pretty much the underground party.
It's been hunted down by the nationalist party and a lot of very horrendous murders, massacres tortures happened in history.
That is why in the drama, you will hear the nationalist party members, the characters, would call, the communist party, bandits or underground, because that was during the time when the two parties are at throat with each other, then there was a time in the drama because of japanese invasion war.
So pretty much from the official big outbreak of the war 37 to the end 45 during those years. It is officially collaboration time on surface.
There's no hunting you down, stuff going on, but the parties are not really friends.
Let's just say then after japan's surrender, things got back to, i'll kill you and i'll hunt you to the end of the world leading up to 3 years of full on civil war within china, eventually leading to 49 an overall success of the communist party.
And then the nationalist party is kicked out. And then that's the story of taiwan.
That's like the very, very rough sketched out time frame.
So hopefully that helps you to understand why the characters do the things they do and are like the way they are.
Now. Talking about the drama itself.
First, i'll talk about the things that I think it could do better.
And if they did, it probably will be a three goldmine See if you have the same reaction.
As I do. First, i'm not happy about the ending it's intentionally done in a very, very vague, ambiguous way.
A lot of people are arguing online about whether the female lead actually survived.
Did she actually physically appeared in front of lin nansheng?
And then they were sitting in the courtyard and sing the songs?
Was it totally just an imagined scene the happened in Lin Nansheng's head?
Because of the camera language, the editing, the music, the style the pace It does give you that feeling is I don't wanna be clear.
It's like the director's telling the audiences go figure.
I don't think that many people really care about whether it's a HE happy ending or a BE bad ending.
Because of that particular turbulent time. We pretty much accept.
Most people wouldn't end up with a good ending. It's a part of the reality really living at that time and doing what they do.
I do understand why productions tend to do that because they don't want to offend people.
But then a part of being a creator is like you have to have the guts to stand, right? for your own expressions and ideas.
It's like, this is my opinion. You know, like it or not.
If you don't like it, you can disagree with it. You can go away, but I am not gonna be riding on the wall. I want this side, but I want that side too.
I personally, i'm not a fan of that. It's not a huge problem, but I do prefer actually give me a very clean cut ending about who is who and what is what and who ended up where.
And I can accept anybody die in this drama honestly, because it is the type of drama that you totally expect Such things happening.
The second thing about this drama is, although its espionage plot is written pretty well,there's definitely still room for improvement.
The point that I still feel most uncomfortable in the entire game of espionage is that around the female lead's First big challenge and failure is she returned, and supposedly she should go to her safe house and disappear.
If you go back, you probably die and you probably get tortured, and you may sell out your friends and comrades because who knows whether you can take it, particularly if you are already a qualified member of the underground force and kind of always doing that job, you have the idea about what you are in for A lot of people try to explain it away for the character.
I still think. The why she got back is not 100% convincing.
It does feel like it's written, because if it's not written in this way, the later plot would not happen.
So that's one of those things. Within the story.
There are a couple of more smaller things that happens, which I would seriously consider, probably wouldn't happen realistically.
But then if it doesn't happen, the plot wouldn't move forward.
Then the third thing that I hope the drama could have done better is the female lead character's writing So it's mostly to do with the script.
She's been written as too perfect a character.
Her name is literally zhu yizhen which sounds like zhu yi zhen which is her ideology is true pretty much everybody in this drama, their name can be interpreted when you change a little bit of the pronunciation of the name meaning a different word as a written character in the story she has the problem.
Classic problem as been the perfect character wise moral wise, value wise, lead character It becomes very bland and uninteresting If you compare her character with the character Lan Xinjie played by Zhu Zhu you can immediately see the difference, although the other female character is not a lead character, she has very limited screen time.
Her story line is very condensed, but every scene that she's in she shows up, there's something interesting happening.
And overall her arc is a much more exciting arc as a character. And this is also the classic problem of often you have supporting roles that are much more interesting to look at towards the end of the drama.
I did feel I almost hoped lan xinjie is the female lead character. I almost hoped she would be the love interest of lin nan sheng because she's such a vibrant real person in comparison to the almost made into a symbol female lead character.
So this drama gives us a very classic situation that happens to a lot of story writings everywhere not just in china.
Everywhere in cinema in dramas, we tend to have much more interesting supporting roles than main roles plus Tong Yao is natural demeanor and style of her acting.
And even the styling of her character makes that even more pronounced Making the ZYZ character too mute too agreeable, and therefore leaving very soft and erasable impression.
In the audience's mind, at least that is how intuitively I would receive her character.
Plus honestly she really doesn't have that much screen time either This drama is definitely mainly focused on the guys in this drama and particularly on Ju Yilong's character.
So those are the things after watching the whole drama that I think affected my rating of Rebel, not giving it the highest score possible. But then the good things about this drama.
There are obviously many the first thing about this drama that makes it so watchable and I watch it daily when the updates and never dropped it for one day is great casting for all the roles, main supporting alike and for the core supporting roles Gu Shenyan, Chen Moqun, Wang Shi'an these three particularly and I maintain my opinions I've said in my first review.
I think those supporting roles made this drama, the drama The second thing that this drama did reall well is it actually has a lot of details.
But you kind of have to be an expert of chinese history to spot all the details this drama provides you at what time, what year, what historical events happened and leading to particular things been mentioned in people's conversation, particular products being used, what is the streetscape, the props that are possible to show up the newspapers that actually comes from history, the particular brands that are on the street that is actually research and stuff.
Lot of those details everywhere. It shows this dramas's production has very good working ethic.
We're doing this, so we should do a proper job if this is set in 1939 at this month, then what could happen in the cinema?
For example, what could be showing what kind of things can be happening, what can not we have to put that detail in the drama and 99% of the people will not care about that, not notice that, but for that 1% people who do notice easter egg that's definitely a thumb up for the entire production crew then there's another thing that this drama I think did very well that made this drama very well accepted too that is to do with the character arc of the mainly lead character.
Li Nansheng played by Zhu Yilong in many previous espionage dramas set in that particular time and historical background.
You inevitably have to come across the type of plot where often a nationalist party member character eventually turn on to the communist party side.
This plot pretty much happens in every espionage drama at some point, ok?
But often it happens because for convenience's sake, it has to happen. Dramas do not put energy, and also they're not very good at convincingly.
Showing you about this particular character, all the stages.
They have to go through all the challenges, all the doubt, they had all the obstacles to run into that eventually lead them to just gradually shift their direction and decided to take the other way this type of big choice in your life that's life and death important is not something that can be taken lightly.
If you say a character falls in love with another character who is on the other side and immediately shifts their allegiance which happens so many times in this type of dramas
It just is not convincing at all whereas in this drama, Lin Nansheng as the main character, you see the full arc of where he started, all the stages, all the things that he had to experience and the pains, and the doubt and losing people along the way people who are important to him.
You see that entire arc being so carefully presented to you. And at every important turning point, something knocks on it and turns it a little bit knocks on.
It, turns on a little bit So eventually when he got to the point that he's so disappointed in guo min dang that he's like, Fxxx it you people are ridiculous when the country is under threat of invasion, when everybody is like struggling to survive, you only care about internal fights and money and how to climb up the ladder.
You don't care about the people who are suffering all the time. I've had enough, I decide i'm gonna take the other approach by the time he makes that decision.
It is so sold it has been fully explained and I think it's very rare in this type of drama cannot think of another drama that has actually done this.
So well for that one thing, it deserves a thumb up, also as the main actor Zhu Yilong I said in the first impression that it depends on how he act in later episode that I can form a full opinion.
And after I made the first impression immediately, actually the plot got to the point where his first stage ended.
And he got a little bit promotion within his organization. And it's now full on japanese invasion war And we see him again as the team leader.
And immediately when that time gap happened, I feel so much more comfortable with his acting because he has started to become a much more assured person of what he wants and what he can do, the way he walks, the way he talks to other people.
The way he looks at other people is no longer the timid Newly the acting immediately feels much better because honestly, ZYL is how old 33 now and playing a very, very young, new bie is quite actually off from his aura because he is the through line character.
So he does have the majority of screen time, particularly in the later stage of the drama you do see more space for the actor to play things.
And there are definitely certain scenes that he did really well.
So overall, very happy about The Rebel because this year is 100year anniversary of communist party founding in china.
So there are many different types of stuff that is about this theme, dramas, films, all kinds of smaller, bigger productions here and there.
We haven't seen all of them yet. And there are a couple of films that are ongoing in china.
I can't watch because i'm not in china. So it is still too early to conclude which particular say work is the best.
I know. There is a drama that is very well received in china called Jue Xing Nian Dai (Age of Awakening) probably will take the first place, but I have the high hope that this drama probably will take the second place Within this package of all the cultural creations for this particular purpose and theme.
So that should conclude this final review on the drama,
The Rebel, Pan Ni Zhe
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