Treasure of Destiny (2023)

So far great fun to watch!

Up to Episode 14:

I loved the original Duke of Mount Deer, so this show that brings back all the old characters into a modern day setting was just great! The characters are… let’s say reincarnations of the characters from the old show and the premise is really weird, like how some people get struck by lightning and it reignites memories of their past, but I dig it! It makes no sense but I’m game! i’ve only watched it up to episode 14, but thought I would get some thoughts in.

The show revolves around the 42 chapters, a key to finding the buried treasure that the original series also brought up, but the hunt is still on in the modern day world. I found it quite refreshing to see some gender benders in here, like Siu Bo and Obai being girls in the modern age. Making Katy Kung constantly shave due to being Obai is hilarious and completely makes no sense but I don’t care! It’s just fun!

What I do find very annoying is Kaman King as Siu Bo. It is not the actor I don’t like, but the character she plays. I mean, as a guy it was okay watching Siu Bo be this perverted idiot, but when it is now a girl running around pining for a guy it just feels really cheap for some reason. It kinda got on my nerves a little bit, but luckily the rest of the cast manages to stave off the cringe. Also, the guy she is pining over is Kalok Chow, and his character has serious issues. He constantly scolds and beats Kaman that it becomes essentially domestic abuse. I know they make it out as him being a partial reincarnation of Princess Kin Ning, but man some scenes were a bit too much for my liking.

The biggest cringe moments were the terrible rap scenes. I have not finished this series yet but I hope they stop doing those. They are awful! But so far, most of it is pretty great, especially the scenes with His Majesty, Moses Chan.

Update:

I just completed this drama and yes, it suffers from typical TVB pacing issues where the ending is rushed and some things really do not make a lot of sense so it dragged the overall score down from 8 to 6 for me, but some things I do find quite humorous so I'll leave it at a 6.

It turns out that the guys were not really after the buried treasure, but amongst the treasure were these super medicine pills that could grant great healing and rejuvenation capabilities, even raising the dead back to life. Once I heard this I wondered.... why didn't the Emperors of old just keep these tablets and use them to stay alive longer and rule longer? Why hide this in a treasure vault? Better yet, why not make more? An explanation for this was never given, we just have to accept yes, they exist and they are in the vault.

So the gang finally find where the treasure is and despite having the huge country of China where to find it, the treasure just happens to be found in Hong Kong. Yes, of all places, the legendary buried treasure is in Hong Kong and it happens to conveniently be in the sticks. Zoie Tam and her crew of evil bad guys in white military soldier fatigues - yes they are dressed in white in Hong Kong - tried to blow up the entrance to the treasure but apparently ancient Ching dynasty technology is blast proof. Best part? The entrance was under 2 inches of dirt, so I am amazed that normal rain and wind erosion did not expose it to the world sooner.

Later, the protagonists find the key needed to open the entrance, which reveals a short staircase down into the main vault. All the gold and jewels are there, but the magical medicine of longevity? Oh, that's a long a series of passageways fraught with traps and dangers. Cue the low-budget Indiana Jones tropes and bad CGI, but I found it so bad it was funny so I forgave it.

They finally get the medicine after a few minor characters die and gasp, there are only 3 pills left! A lot of drama later and we get the next treasure hunting trope of escaping from a collapsing chamber because the main treasure has been removed. Everybody gets out and the vault is completely caved in. The vault is never brought up again, but I kept thinking with all the gold and jewels there, why is nobody organising a digging expedition to get down there and remove the treasures? I mean the treasures are a t most 5 metres deep from what we could see. There is millions if not billions of HKD worth of valuables in there!

But there is a plot twist! Kandy Wong was revealed earlier in the drama to be the reincarnation of Chan Gun Nam, Siu Bo's martial arts teacher in their previous life, but it seems in this life they have turned evil and was 150 years old. In the past they managed to take one of the super pills and gained longevity, but the efficacy of the pill was running out and she started turning old, so she needed the medicine in the vault to regain her youthful appearance. The pill also happened to increase her fighting powers as well, so that was two birds with one pill! She manages to fool everybody and steal the pills, taking of of them to heal her affliction and then perform a massive heel turn to become the main antagonist right near the end of the drama. I did not see that coming.

The final battle was pretty cool, with lots of martial arts and fighting, and Kandy being nigh-on upstoppable, but somehow she gets shot to death and forced into the river with the remaining 2 pills. Luckily, Moses managed to grab one of them, but the other dropped into the river. Oh no! Here is where I got quite upset with the ending because it was so rushed. Moses Chan and Katy Kung had no chance to have any real romantic moments in the drama, so at the last episode Moses was going take the pill he grabbed and travel with it to the USA to heal a girl called Ruby (JW) with it. Katy says she would go with him to protect him, and the show does a sudden 2 months fast forward where they are back in Hong Kong and are suddenly a couple. Were we expected to imagine their 2 month developing romance? What the heck? Terrible TVB, just terrible. If you were going to make them a couple, build their relationship earlier in the show, don't just slap it at the end and have the good parts occur offscreen.

But the worst part is final scene. Lisa-Marie Tse appears briefly in this show, probably because it was a contractual obligation as her acting and cantonese is truly awful, and right at the end she brings up the immortal bird to Moses to discuss, which looks like a phoenix. We then cut back to the river where Kandy Wong was killed and where one of the pills fell into the river. A pigeon, yes one of those flying rats, flew into the river using bad CGI and ate the pill. It then flew away and suddenly turned into a giant phoenix shaped bird the size of multiple buildings and then flies over Hong Kong ending the show. Now, that pill fell into the river and was eaten immediately, meaning it was 2 months ago, and yet in that time nobody in Hong Kong saw it or reported on it, and Moses never mentions that it was discussed anywhere in Hong Kong so clearly nobody saw it. Dude, if a bird the size of a football stadium flew overhead, especially in a place with many skyscrapers like Hong Kong, you are going to see it, and then news outlets and social media would have a lot of news about it. Lazy lazy TVB here.

The best thing to come out of this is that the actors that usually play side characters had the chance to shine here as they had a lot more to do than in other dramas. It was great seeing Sunny Dai and Cheng Ka Sang get more screentime to shine here.

Read More