According to douban, director is Yang Zhen Yu. Looks like he's much more experienced behind the camera as a cinematographer... He did Minning Town which is actually a superb drama but he wasn't director there 

Yea this is the FIRST time he's ever directed. It explains ALOT. I kept trying to find more about his career and never once had he directed. He was mainly part of the camera crew/cinematography, but never the one calling the shots.

 Major:

I LOL when every member of HD Imperial team just stood there waiting to get taken out by the Moon Blade lol.

Just another bad fighting scene choreography. And in the fighting, again I see both Ning Rong Rong and Oscar defenseless. The logic of team battle in the IP is thrown to the garbage bin, I see.

About Hu Lie Na/Qian Ren Xue, the character in the drama just a bad mood entitled young lady. She is nothing like either Hu Lie Na or Qian Ren Xue. 

Thankfully this drama ended pretty quickly so I won't need to torture myself with it anymore. Now let see the final rating of this drama.

It's funny, from what I could find there he handled the steady cam a lot, but there's an awful lot of awkward shaky cam zooming into conversations in this drama.

Basically, lol. It seems like Douluo is his first time actually directing, which fine, I guess I can excuse the poor directing as the majority of my issue is with the script.

 OniBro:

It's funny, from what I could find there he handled the steady cam a lot, but there's an awful lot of awkward shaky cam zooming into conversations in this drama.

The extreme close-ups of their faces when they're talking is really weird esp since some of the dubbing is off so you can see that their mouths and voices do not match which takes away from the seriousness of the situation as well...

 OniBro:

Yea this is the FIRST time he's ever directed. It explains ALOT. I kept trying to find more about his career and never once had he directed. He was mainly part of the camera crew/cinematography, but never the one calling the shots.

I see. This explain something. I get the sense that the director just didn't have some big picture or imagination of how the scenes must be taken. 

This Wang Juan ...... I hope the original fans in China chew him out for this abomination of adaptation.

Yeah...as a cinematographer this is definitely NOT what I'd want as my first director gig LOL.  Ok this is making more sense now.

Yea, first time director plus Wang Juan writing lines for characters to say aloud in the middle of battle would explain the whole standing still thing, because they had to deliver their lines in Wang Juan's script. I say this because in script writing you write actions and emotions to coincide with what line is being delivered so that actors will know what to do and aim for. Wang Juan's inexperience in the genre plus the director basically meant they would stand still to deliver lines because they couldn't think of any other way to exemplify strategy live. The action choreographer must've been limited due to a combination of that. Plus, they also had to think on how to choreograph this heavy amount of CGI for a drama, so I doubt anyone had much experience with that.

The more I think about it, the more rag-tag this production team is that the producers somehow managed to get together. A team full of inexperienced people for this genre in some way aside from the CGI team who just did what they were told.

Kind of reflecting on the series as a whole, I think the weirdest thing is that the character arc of Tang San is unclear. The fact that they started him as a innocent youth wouldn't have been much of a problem if the rest of the story was how he became an smart strategist and unflappable fighter like in the novel. At the last he has to move SOMEWHERE. The whole point of cultivation stories is the hero's journey and it's never very clear how end of the drama TS is different from beginning of the drama TS. 


All the other seven devils (except XW) have pretty clear arcs, Mu Bai learns the importance of comrades, Zhu Qings learns love, Hong Jung family, Oscar bravery, Rong Rong friends. What did Tang San learn? Really don't know. He learned how to absorb soul rings better? 

 Singularity:
What did Tang San learn? Really don't know. He learned how to absorb soul rings better?

His mysterious identity perhaps ........ 

In the novel, up to this point, before all plot with Xiao Wu identity and Clear Sky clan, his purpose in life is to resurrect Tang sect. And the drama just change everything but never give this character a clear replacement for purpose.

Tang San's character in here has no clear direction when it comes to development. It was one of my main complaints from the main page that, ultimately, he just gets dragged around and told what to do. He has never done anything on his own volition really. Even when he took on the role of the tactitian, this was only because XG ultimately told him to. He also only cools down and becomes calmer because XG told him too. His personality also gets drowned out by the bigger and more noticeable ones of the Shrek Seven causing his personality to be even flatter than it already was becoming. His actions are for the most part always a reaction to someone or something, he is never ever the one in the initiative.

 Xien_Rue:
And the drama just change everything but never give this character a clear replacement for purpose.

Exactly.  He's basically a tool for the mystery plot but little else.

 OniBro:

Tang San's character in here has no clear direction when it comes to development. It was one of my main complaints from the main page that, ultimately, he just gets dragged around and told what to do. He has never done anything on his own volition really. Even when he took on the role of the tactitian, this was only because XG ultimately told him to. He also only cools down and becomes calmer because XG told him too. His personality also gets drowned out by the bigger and more noticeable ones of the Shrek Seven causing his personality to be even flatter than it already was becoming. His actions are for the most part always a reaction to someone or something, he is never ever the one in the initiative.

Sadly those drama/actor fans are just too blinded to see this. They are still praising this character to the sky; make me questioning whether it is Xiao Zhan or Tang San that they truly see.

One of the things that bothered me the most was the horrendous score.  I'm willing to forgive a lot of things, esp when I know the details of their limitations, but that one I could never figure out wtf they were thinking.  If none of the bgm was to match the scenes, why not just order out and buy some tracks from independent composers on YT LOL?  There's some great stuff in the epic genre--Thomas Bergerson, Mark Petrie, Jo Blankenburg, Jeremy Soule, etc.  I'd love hear that.