After binge-watching the TV series and reading the english translation of the book, I thought my 3L3W experience could only come to an end after watching the movie. I have been anxiously waiting for an opportunity to watch it (even after reading so many bad reviews) with the hope that fans were being a little too critic after watching the beautifully executed tv drama. Unfortunately, I have to agree with the majority of them: I didn't enjoy the movie.

STORY
After watching the movie, I could only conclude the 3L3W complex and intricate story cannot be told in a simple movie. There are too many important plot-points and the character's relationships are too complicated. I think that the movie writers would have to make too many changes to the story for it to be able to fit in a movie format. While I think they had some good ideas in terms of plot changes, which were able to simplify the story to a certain extent, I still think they tried to cover too much of the original plot. I was actually relatively satisfied with the first part of the movie, but when it got to the Mo Yuan/Si Yin part of the story, I couldn't help but think: It would be impossible for anyone who didn't know the story already to understand this. Maybe they should have made a narration in the beginning to give the viewer a bit more context instead of letting us get familiar with the plot through the character's lines... To me, that was the biggest mistake: to tell the whole context + Mo Yuan/Si Yin story through the character's conversations. Too much information, way too fast.
Sometimes it was even hard to understand why certain characters were behaving like this and that. It seemed all out of nowhere...
As for the ending, I now understand why other fans were saying it was confusing. Again, the viewer wasn't elucidated enough about what was happening. And yes, I think they made a big plot change in the very end. But to be completely honest, at least they cut down one character that would only add to the confusion (not really happy about it, but oh well).

ACTING/CAST
I have to say I quite liked Liu Crystal as Bai Qian. I particularly liked the way she delivered Bai Qian's prideful personality, even if the emotional scenes failed to impress me. Overall, I think she did a fairly good job.
I can't say the same about Yang Yang as Ye Hua. Still, I have to admit that after Mark Chao's Ye Hua, it would probably be impossible for me to be pleased about a new Ye Hua. In the movie, I could never feel Ye Hua's despair, the longing, the bittersweetness he was supposed to feel about Bai Qian remembering the past... It felt like he was just a prince trying to conquer the heart of his princess.
But to me, the biggest issue was the script. I wasn't expecting to live the character's reunion as I lived it in the TV series. After all, the movie begins with the reunion, so it wasn't supposed to be a huge deal to the viewer. In the TV series the story was told in chronological order, so it was only natural for us to vibrate with their reunion. This was't the case here, and I don't think that's necessarily bad. It just different. However, we were supposed to feel something as their love story proceeds. And honestly, I don't really blame the acting. I blame the script. Bai Qian's and Ye Hua's relationship was poorly developed. Some scenes didn't even make sense to me when I felt they were basically strangers to each other. And that's why I gave the highest score to the acting: the problem was the terrible, TERRIBLE script.
As for the other actors & supporting characters, I think they were given too little time to show any acting. And if some of their actions felt a bit out of nowhere and their motives hard to comprehend, I would have to blame (once again), the script.

MUSIC
Honestly I didn't care much about the soundtrack when I was watching the movie. But I have to say the official ost (by Na Ying) is reeeeally good. I've been listening to it non-stop lately.

REWATCH VALUE
I don't really rewatch movies or dramas, but I don't think I'll even rewatch the main scenes.

Read More