This review may contain spoilers
I must say that I dont usually watch this kind of dramas. This is pure action/adventure with a bit of mysticism. However I just finished Eternal Love of Dream and I desperately needed to watch another drama by Vengo. I looked up the list in this website and this one was the one that stood out the most. BEST CHOICE EVER!I watched the 21 episodes in one day. It's not 5:18am and I am writing this review instead of going off to sleep. That's how good this series is. It's a mix of The Mummy and Idiana Jones, but using Chinese mythology. The characters are awesome, both main and second leads. They are fully rounded and each one has a role to play. You will come to love them, hate them or pity them... but they won't leave you indifferent. Nobody is cartoonist or one-dimensional and even the "villains", if you can call them that, are very human and there will be moments when you empathize with them.
The series takes place during the Republican Era. I knew nothing about it but fortunately you don't really need to know anything about that era to understand what's going on. The drama is self-explanatory. Costumes and music are great. The plot is intriguing, it will make you hold your breath in the right moments. It starts slow. In fact, I skipped most of the first and second episodes. But once Vengo's characters joins the main expedition group and they go down the mountain, that's when shits gets real. I wasn't able to stop, I just had to know what happen next!!!
The acting is fantastic. I began to watch it because of Vengo but everyone acts their roles incredible well. Vengo is awesome, though. He is super handsome and his character is so different from DH Dijun, but he nails it in every scene. He looks so tan in this series!!! He was so pale as DH, but here he has a tan and he also has freckles! He is a pleasure to look at, but what really makes him stand out is his acting. I felt his pain and my heart broke for him.
About the ending. If you are like me and love spoilers, I will tell you that it is a sad ending BUT Vengo's character survives. So there is that.
As I said, this is not your typical romance drama. This is full of adventure, mystery, danger, human emotions and a little bit of flirting. It' fairly short, just 21 episodes, so the pace after the first 2 eps is great and you won't get bored. Please, if you love Vengo and enjoy movies like The Mummy, please watch it. You'll love it. It's in YT fully sub in English.
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Seriously, by far the best season of "Candle in the Tomb", which is kinda sad considering it's a barely related prequel.
At long last the cinematography was competent, the script somewhat tight and solid, things were set up and later paid off.
Only 21 episodes 30 minutes each made me sad at first, but actually I think it might've been a great thing for the show. Nothing dragged, the pace was good from start to finish.
The characters have clear motivations and feel like people for once. (vastly superior, as everything about the show btw, to the movie adaptation of the same story, which has awful cartoony caricatures)
Really really good
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This review may contain spoilers
Must Watch - Indiana Jones meets Game of Thrones in Republican Era China
I was told The Lost Caverns is an archaeological drama, and after doing some research Candle In the Tomb : The Wrath of Time is the first in the series, chronologically, so I started watching it with zero expectations, and was instantly hooked. I was surprised at how good the sets, scenery, production, action and acting were. The sets and scenery, in particular, are breath-taking. The death toll has to be seen to be believed.This show pretty much has everything entertainment wise:-
* History of 4 "Tomb Robbing" Clans in the Opening Credits
* Each clan's specialty - geomancy, traps, lock picking, animal affinity
* Super Expensive Sets for the Tombs. They look realistic!
* Traps. Lots of Traps! All Kinds! Poor Stunt Guys must have worked HARD.
* Dangerous bug critters. Numerous small ones and one Giant One. * Special "mythical" animals including "Super Chicken Phoenix" and Dig Dug Pangolins
* Zombies and a Zombie King
* Excessive dynamite use, including in "suicide vests" (not in a terrorist way).
* Michael Bay level of indiscriminate blowing up stuff before using brains and considering maybe don't blow up stuff before getting your own people out first?
* Brotherhood, followed by Game of Thrones level Betrayals, Backstabbing and lots of Death ... and viewers rooting for some people to die because we're bloodthirsty by nature, we hate them and we want them dead like mob spectators.
What I learned from the characters:-
* Handsome ML (*swoon* Vengo as Zhe Gu Shao) with skills and a tragic backstory, will eventually, slowly and surely, win over Xin Zhi Lei (Hua Ling) who is supposed to be the fierce man hater.
* Chen Yu Lou (Pan Yue Ming) acted brilliantly as the Xieling Sect leader who's trying to do the best he can for his men and his "people", yet nothing is good enough for his daddy until loads of blood has been shed.
* Luo Lao Wai (Cao Wei Yu) wow I HATED his character and was actively hoping this paragon of creating a hostile work environment and #1 sexual harasser would die so I could stop hearing his "laugh acting". Except, when he did ... I felt kind of sad.
* I won't name the other characters because it was like Game of Thrones, as SOON as I got attached to them, BAM out of nowhere, they die!! If this were a Korean drama they might have mysteriously survived but no, those types of wounds should be fatal, and the realism is appreciated.
Moral of the story: Tomb raiding is lucrative, BUT dangerous as all heck. Over 200 people must have died to the traps, the critters, the wildlife, the curse(s), the undead and the backstabbing humans infected by the deadly selfishness "treasure fever" who lose all sense of conscience and think killing other humans means a bigger share. Personally I don't think it's worth it, and maybe the high risk is WHY those tomb robbing clans are going extinct.
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This review may contain spoilers
Absolutely enjoy this piece of adventure, you will feel the excitement, anticipation and anxiety as if you are part of the team. Story and acting is superb. There is no perfect heroes in here, they each have strengths and also weakness and made mistakes just like any human being. The action choreography is well directed and for an Asian drama, i felt the CGI is pretty awesome too. Some interesting animal characters were introduced that were related to mythical creatures such as phoenix & yeti. My fav is the Nuqing rooster, that is 1 non human character that i sure missed a lot, such a fighter. Romance is not the main focal point but kudos to Venga Gao & Xin Zhi Lei, they both exuded such a strong chemistry & sexual tension that as a viewer you just wish they would kiss , roll on the bed & produce some beautiful babies haha. Pan Yue Ming deserves some credit for bringing to life as the flawed chief Chen, he might not be prefect but he sure care for his men & i genuinely believes why his follower has such deep respects and loyalty to him. The Xieling brotherhood touched my heart. This author sure is brutal as he just like killing off characters but probably that is to show how dangerous the life of a treasure hunter is. The only minor grip i have was the unsatisfactory ending, i know it follows the novel but why can't the director just tweak a bit to make it happier thus i cut out 0.5 stars for this. Was this review helpful to you?
This review may contain spoilers
I would have given it a 10 if not for the depressing ending commentary
Very well produced drama - no drag, paced along very well and keep you glued to the screen. Gao WeiGuang is tall and very handsome - he looked good with this rugged look just as he was in the Pillow Book with his scholarly look. The acting and screenplay were great. But the ending was a let down and the ending commentary was lame - about Hong dying in an epidemic, ZheGu failing in his mission, losing his arm and leaving for America. What's so great about leaving for America - place for the disillusioned? Someone explained on YouTube that there is a sequel in the story but there is not even a sequel announced - and who cares if his granddaughter eventually found the magic orb to save his tribe in the next sequel. It would be better to just leave the story with Hong promising to wait for Shao's return and the parting - better still if she left with him to accompany him on his quests. The script writer is sadistic.Chinese writers still have not got it - tragic endings take points off audience rating because it leaves a bad feeling.
The introduction was repeated over and over again 21 times - should just stop after the second episode.
I thought I was going to post a recommendation on Facebook and I changed my mind after the commentary. I am not going to make my friends more depressed in this Covid-19 pandemic.
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Huh... okay.
My journey backwards in time with this franchise has been quite the ride, and thankfully, the next moves things forward again with The Lost Caverns. This entry was a real mixed bag, to be honest. It features some unbelievably cool action scenes (episode 7 is tops), and beautiful filming locations that kept me hooked.The story itself was a little disappointing. It felt a little bit aimless throughout, and I think the biggest problem for me was that the characters weren't very interesting. A couple of them were downright murderous bastards, which was odd that we were meant to cheer for them. I was hoping we would have Hu Ba Yi at least narrate, the whole thing is so distantly related to the main series it's odd that it even kept the title (unlike The Weasel Grave, which is a much more related prequel). It's a little mindboggling. We don't even find out about Mojin and how it comes into play until the end, and it's juts kind of brushed off as an "oh, by the way" moment. Speaking of that ending... the 2 minute narration should have been its own episode to actual dramatize those crucial events. It would have made for a much more interesting finale.
The acting is fine, from what I could tell. The production values are much higher than previous titles in the series, although the quality varies from episode to episode. Th sets and costumes were excellent as well.
It's a good show, but it doesn't feel connected enough to the main series for me. The only character I liked died fairly early on too, which was disappointing. In the end, I'm kind of just left with a feeling of... meh? It's good for what it is, but I'm more excited to finally get back to the main story, with characters I actually cared about.
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so much effort to say so little
watched for tiantian, stuck around for both him and xin zhilei. not a big fan of the tomb raiding genre so i was not emotionally moved by even the more brutal deaths in this show. the way that hong-guniang was written at the beginning was frustrating. you could tell her character was conceived of by a man lol. zhegu shao was a wonderful character, and i think this was gao weiguang's best performance to date. i always get nervous when a heartbreaking scene happens in movies and dramas that i'm detached from bc i automatically wonder if the acting will save it for me. sometimes it didn't (nirvana in fire 2 with huang xiaoming...i don't think he knows how to cry lol) but in this drama, yes, it did. my heart broke with zhegu shao and gao weiguang's performance made me love him. xin zhilei did wonderfully with what she had; an incredible actress for sure. she deserved to shine more.as for the writing, if you've seen movies that torture their characters for fun and have no actual message being conveyed whatsoever, then this is precisely that. if you don't mind it, perhaps you'll find something to love in this drama, but i certainly didn't. random displays of misogyny and killing characters for shock value while writing off-screen deaths for others is not good storytelling for me and it never will be. production value is great. i can't complain about the makeup, sets, and cgi. makes me feel sad that so much money and work was put into a story that was so insipid and dull.
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I had High Expectation....
I watched this series with an expectation that it would be great but for some reason I find it underwhelming and quite disappointing...The story started great and it was doing well, not until you reach the latter half of it and realizes how would it end? Usually I get really ecstatic over it but it was different this time, It's more of worries and confusion that I had while reaching the end.
I felt like there's a lot of things going on in this series that made it less appealing to me. I even got bored at times but thank god they got good action scenes and that saved and redeem the story a little bit for me.
Story - 7.5, The story has become sooo dragging at one point and I felt like it has so much plot twist that made it lose it's color and excitement. They should've focus more on building the story itself and creating more relevant progress.
Acting/Cast - 9.5, Acting wise they all did exceptionally good! I felt the emotions they are trying to portray and deliver and that's a good indication of great acting and casting for me.
Music - 7, They used less music for this drama but it's quite understandable since the drama was set for suspense and action scenes. Anyways, I enjoyed the moment they used the LP Player. Such a mood and a game changer.
Rewatch Value - 7, Honestly, I'm lucky to know that this is part of a series cause if not I might need to watch it again just incase I started to watch the other Candle in the Tomb Series. That saved me some time.
Overall - 8, Nonetheless, it was a decent drama. Aside from the fact that they have to improve something on their story bulding department the rest are really well created!
Let me know if you find my review helpful.
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