Sisyphus: The Myth (2021)

When saving drama is harder than saving the world.

I don't know why but before watching the drama I had a feeling that I wouldn't like it very much, and although I tried to watch it without prejudice, my suspicions were confirmed. I really like Park Shin Hye, she is one of my favorite South Korean actresses, and I adore all her work, in general, but without a doubt of all the series where she has worked and that I have seen, this is the worst. One problem is the story: a story that is not very original, in terms of the theme of the time travel of a warrior from the future to change the past and thus avoid a war that will turn the future (the present of that female warrior) into an apocalyptic hell ... If we change the sex of the warrior, does anyone know "Terminator"? Being a recurring theme, at least it had to be a very interesting and exciting story, and it honestly wasn't. It's not necessarily a bad story, but it's not interesting and gripping enough either, it doesn't really get hooked. And in the end, it gets kind of boring, with a loop that pretends to be exciting and becomes irritating.

From the point of view of the realism and the coherence of the science fiction of the story, everything was handled pretty badly and it doesn't really work if we did use a bit of logic. There are many contradictions, gaps, and unanswered questions in that chaos of changes in the past and the changes that are supposed to cause in the future (and therefore in the present). An example is a scene near the end of the last episode, in which a last-minute villain threatens the male lead with murdering the female lead in front of his eyes if he does not finish the process of creating the time machine. But at that point in the story, he could save her simply by standing idly by, refusing to finish the creation of the machine, since then it is assumed that there would have been no time travels, and thus she would have stayed safe in the future. In that case, she simply would never have been there to be shot. However, incomprehensibly the male lead gives in to blackmail in principle ... absurd things that deprive of credibility the premises of the plot.

Another big problem is the character of the male protagonist, a hateful and tedious character, without charisma, boring and unfriendly, who only manages to annoy or produce apathy. It's probably not the actor's fault, at least not totally (although maybe another actor would have worked better), but the writing. And along with this is the problem of the utter lack of chemistry between Park Shin Hye's character and the male lead character. He is undoubtedly her worst co-star in all dramas. Such a bad lead couple, I really preferred her to be alone or with almost any other man. Therefore the romance did not work out here.

What partially saves the drama is the part of the action scenes, if it weren't for the action the story would be a disaster. And the excellent work of Park Shin Hye, her great performance of a warrior from the apocalyptic future, at the same time with a funny and sweet touch (as the girl who could not live her adolescence normally due to the apocalypse and therefore is still partly an innocent female teenager despite being a killing machine). In addition to her, the actor who played her father did a great work (the chemistry between father and daughter was better than hers with her romantic interest) and there were also other characters that were funny or charismatic like the mobster who owns the store that went from being an antagonist to an ally. The villains were mediocre, irritating, and without charisma, particularly the main one of them. Ultimately, if it weren't for the action (particularly Park Shin Hye's action scenes) and a certain touch of comedy (very little) at times, the series would be totally unsuccessful. The ending was disappointing because it was not a conclusive ending, in particular, a story like this should not leave the door open to another season (although highly unlikely) and should have definitively resolved the narrative arc. Final judgment: score of 7 out of 10.

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Sisyphus: The Myth is Entertaining

Sisyphus: The Myth is A very entertaining series where every episode is packed with an piece of action and parts in the plot to get you puzzled how and what will happen. Some of the visual effects can be a bit more advantaged but it is a part that is compensated quickly by the acting and appearance of the main characters. The serie will not disappoint you and you also seeing the acting skills from the main characters in a different role. Do not over analyse the plot and get entertained!
I think in general it would be nice to have with this kind of series where many things happen to have a kind of director cut episode to get the small bits and pieces we might have missed though the serie .

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you will get to know all about time travel

there is no doubt to talk about acting as usual perfect
OMG FL DONE ACTION YOU CANT SEE ANY OTHER KOREAN DRAMA
TRP is also good in Korea but many of them give low rating only because they want to watch romantic series but in this series you will know all about time travel, paradox, warm hole for these thing to understand you need a brain so many of them not thats why they give low rating
UNPRECTABLE yes you cant predict thats make me more interesting to watch more episode
even they shows us about mental health issue also
I Love this you need focus to understand thats it
after watching I can talk about YAAA I KNOW ABOUT TIME TRAVEL
I wish there would be 2nd season also

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Confusing from start to finish

Likes
1. Really liked the first half. The premise was interesting and i loved the it was action packed. The middle dragged though and story stopped making sense.
2. Loved Taesul and Seohae's team work and Taesul always has great ideas. But later on i thought Taesul's actions started getting conflicted when he fell in love with Seohae. He kept choosing the girl vs the world.
3. Loved Seohae and her dad.
4. Park's story and the Asia Mart team.
5. Taesan and Taesul's bromance esp that part when Taesan gave him the injection.

Dislikes
So many questions and not enough answers!!
1. No explanation of how the time travel works. Writers assume we understand the rules. We don't even know when the time loop started.
2. Sigma as a villain is lame. His reasons are not enough to blow up Korea. Eddy as the last minute bad guy felt forced.
3. Taesul's final decision just wasted everyone's efforts (and our 16 hours of watching)
4. Lots of unnecessary or wasted characters like Jaesun or that guy that keeps chasing after Seohae.

Rating: 7/10

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The story is great...but the wrong male lead was selected for this role

I'm rating this show super high because the story was so masterfully done. Every single plot thread mixes into this gorgeous tapestry of mystery and suspense. The story plays like a well written sci-fi novel and it's amazing. The lead actress is incredible in this role, she does an exceptional job navigating her character and is a 100% badass. I absolutely loved her in this and loved the role they wrote her into.

That said, the male lead was not the right choice for this role I think. His performance felt awkward and out of place. It felt like his character from Stranger straining to be something grander and more extroverted and there were many times I felt like his character absolutely did not belong in the story at all. I've seen the guy in other things from before Stranger, and basically I think Stranger ruined him. Like he's 100% the right guy for Stranger and I love him so much in that role...but now every other role kind of feels like the character from Stranger. IDK how he breaks away from that, but I hope he does cause it's painfully awkward to watch the guy in some of the scenes. It's almost like he's a semi-retarded child being led around by goddess. I'm 100% the guy's fan, but I would have enjoyed this drama a lot more with a different nerdy engineer male lead.

I would, even so, watch this drama again because the story was so exceptional and it's always fun to watch a chick kick butt.

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I give up

I've been queuing this to watch every night for a couple of weeks, and I just can't make myself do it. It started strong, but by episode 10 there has been enough silly nonsense masquerading as a plot that I just cant manage more. I have been a sci-fi and time travel fan forever, but with very few exception (so few I can't think of any right now) K-drama just doesn't handle this stuff well. The best performance in the whole thing is Seong Dong Il, who always brings it. I think the writing went astray, and the direction got flatter and flatter. Well, take your chances, some people like it.

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I'm not big on sci-fi dramas but was highly impressed with Uncanny Counter. That series was truly excellent. So when I saw this on my Netflix I ignored it for a few days but decided to watch after binging on Hello Monster.

I recognized the main character from Stranger 1 & 2 and was impressed with that series so I gave it a try. The first 10 episodes had me rushing to click 'next episode' but the last six left me seething in some way.

I'm almost coming up on my 1 year anniversary of watching Kdramas and I have come to dislike the romance dramas because of how sappy and cliche they are. The last few episodes ended that way. It's always about a girl!!
I'm not too fond of Korean actresses and I have said this in just about all of my comments but there are a few that stand out for me.
I did like the main FL and I think that was because she was able to do protect a 'guy', ha! She wasn't whiney like most Korean female actresses and her combat skills was good.

The main ML was great. He couldn't fight but he did have some serious MacGyver moments in several episodes. Who knew you could take out armed military men with coke bottles with some type of special liquid that will turn into a torpedo when you spill the liquid?

My favorite character was the father. I don't do names so for those who've seen this series you know what I'm talking about.

Another aspect that had me seething was the fact that how the downloader and uploader came into existence was left dangling in the air. We know the main character made the machine but how? That subject was left dangling along with some other scenarios.

I will say that since watching Kdramas for over a year I have to now get use to the very last episode being a huge let down. Only a few dramas that I've watched ended good and this one didn't. I don't know if it was because something was too short and they needed to extend the time and just threw something in there or they didn't know how to end it or they were just too tired and just ended it way they did. Either way the last episode had no closure for me.

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Almost worked

The cast was amazing and I've always loved Park Shin Hye. She's so talented with her singing, acting and she can pull off badass stunts convincingly!! That being said it took me a while to finish the series even with quite a few characters I loved:

1. FL lead's dad
2. Asia Mart Boss
3. Agent with an obsession to kill FL
4. ML's bodyguard

What worked?
1. Cast / Acting solid from supporting characters to even the young girls that played earlier version of the FL
2. Action packed - stunts were solid (minus some CGI background)
3. interesting characters - could've been more though
4. Set - Beautiful set from the home view of the city to the bunker. High budget

What didn't work for me:
1. Story telling - somehow didn't captivate me. The never ending circles didn't really work
2. Romance - between the leads, am I the only one that felt like they didn't have much romance chemistry? Don't get me wrong ML is a great actor and I loved him in "Stranger" but I didn't feel them 2 worked.

Happy I finished it finally.

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Not bad but not good....

This drama started off strong having an intriguing plot line. However the more I watched, the more it just went downhill.
There were more cons for me than there were pros. For instance although the plot itself was a good baseline, the background concept and "rules" of time travelling set in this drama was hard to follow, unless you really concentrate and think about each scenes.
The drama's CGI and background sets were pretty good and I was quite impressed with them, as the post war environment for instance really looked like a dystopian era. However, the same could not be said for some of the stunt scenes played by the actors, like the bridge jump scene or the zip line scene. They pretty much looked very fake and you can see how unnatural their falls were.

Further criticism of this drama is that although the drama started strong, leaving viewers hooked on the plot and what would happen next, as you watched more and further into the drama, the less plot driven it became and focused more on the ML and FL's romance. The focus of the drama started with the ML's brother and his investigation on Sigma but this plot point eventually got lost and not much further development pursued. I would have much preferred to explore the plot point of the ML and his brother's relationship and brotherhood and their struggle against the villains than the romance tag. The romance in all honesty was not needed.
Speaking of, this is especially so when the ML and FL don't have that chemistry that lovers do. Watching their romance scenes didn't give me that butterfly in your stomach feeling but left me with the impression that the pairing was forced and they were then quite awkward.
The Second ML (Sun) was also a character that didn't give me much impression either and didn't need to be in the plot point. Although towards the end he played a relevant part of the ML's overall plan, but it was something a different character could have done. For instance the police guy that was seeking revenge against the FL due to his mother. His character could have had so much potential if only the drama gave his character more depth.
Throughout the drama, the romance scenes overall was very awkward for me, even the kiss scenes. Furthermore, usually in dramas that have love triangles, I normally enjoy it when the 2 ML's try to win over the FL's heart. But in this drama, although the love triangle was there, it again feels forced and both ML's are quite childish that it isn't very enjoyable to watch them try to please and win the FL. It instead looks forced and awkward.
Both the FL and ML also keep making emotionally driven decisions that it ends up being repetitive and frankly quite annoying and end up feeling frustrated at the scenes.

In all honesty Kim Byung Chul ( who played the villain) and Lee Woo Won (who played the child version of the villain) carried the whole drama and were the reason I even finished all 16 episodes. They both portrayed their characters really well especially with their expressions to bring out the mental issue and psychologically disturbed setting of the character they played, that it made watching the villain the only thing you are looking forward to each episode.

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Stellar Acting, Thrilling plot! One of the greatest dramas of this year

Story-wise, it was very unique, something that makes your mind question the possibilities of this being true in real life ; or make you confused at times what the hell is happening now? That was how I felt the whole time I was watching the drama. I have always been amazed at how these writers and directors never seem to run out of ideas and I should say, they did it again. The emotions, showed how humans react and how a simple act of kindness or rudeness towards one person can affect so many.

I really like Park Shin Hye in this action/ thriller genre because I have always watched her dramas when she was younger, and she took on a range of characters from very emotional dramas (aka Stairway to Heaven) and a lot of romantic comedies (You're Beautiful, The Heirs, Pinocchio, etc.). This drama showcased her versatility as an actress and her acting would really show years of experience and it's amazing to see her grow as an actress and taking on different roles. I'm not so familiar with Jo Seung Woo but despite that, with his acting in this drama, it shows how much effort he puts and how hard he worked to pull off his character, so I'm definitely going to look up some of his dramas. Sung Dong Il and Kim Byung Chul, just blew my mind with their acting skills. I guess it's true when they say that actors did a great job if they made you feel angry at them as well. Well, if you watched this drama, you'll probably relate to what I'm talking about.

I like the drama's OST. The vibe is new, compared to other drama's OSTs but I think the only word to describe it, is that the music production was fresh for most of the OSTs for this drama.
Overall, if you want a drama that will make you really think hard and take you to the edge of your seat all the time, you should watch this drama! If you want to cry, get mad at someone and feel so many emotions at once, you should :-)

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One of my all time favorite kdramas

I’ve been reading a few reviews regarding this kdrama and something common that I see is that people are confused about the plot and the ending and what not. But honestly I’d say that if you were actually paying attention to the kdrama you’d see that everything comes together so beautifully and trust me I was so confused as well at the beginning but I kept watching it and the stuff that I was confused about all made sense as the drama progressed. It brought out so many different emotions and I found myself wanting to keep watching and go on to the next episode. This is the first kdrama that I truly truly loved and enjoyed. Some people are saying that the ending was trashy and bad because it’s a cliffhanger but there’s plenty of kdramas, movies and all that that have cliffhangers so what’s the problem with this kdrama having in too? It kinda just leaves it up to your own imagination to make a theory on what happened or what could possibly happen. Like I said this was my first true favorite kdrama but that was until I watched The King’s Affection :)) THE BEST KDRAMA EVERR :) (in my opinion)

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