Hunter2022

Yang Yang lost his pretty boy look in the currently airing Zhan Zhao Adventures (I never seen the man look more "commoner" or "average" than this drama). So I'm a little hopeful for S2 of Immortal Ascension.

Han Li is NOT supposed to be the pretty boy as portrayed in the S1 by Yang Yang. Crossing fingers Yang Yang became a little uglier between the filming of S1 and S2...

I just finished watching Pegasus 1-3. I watched each movie twice before going on to the next. Pegasus 1, I had to manually source ENG subs. And the video was only 1080p. Pegasus 2+3 had ENG and Chinese subs harcoded into the movie. This made sense for 3 as they are participating in an international race. So maybe they want people from all over the world to watch this movie. Pegasus 2+3 I watched in 4K.

My only two gripes with Pegasus trilogy... The guy who impersonated Sun Wukong in Part 2, did he even come back for Part 3? They recycled the same soundtrack, except part 3 now has vocals added into the same original soundtrack. Not that this same soundtrack wasn't good, it's a signature of the series. But I wish they got a female vocal instead for the next movie!

Anyways the movie trilogy definitely deserves their high box office undertakings. I'm gonna pirate Blades of the Guardians in 4K. But you'll be hard-pressed to get me to glimpse even 5 minutes of it. Some movies I pirate and keep them just so I don't ever have to watch them!

Oh yeah, I forgot one last gripe of Pegasus trilogy. In the end credits of Part 2, there were sections where the animated car path diverged (split into two), but then recombined later in into one path again. This gave away the plot of Part 3. But I don't see anything in the end credits of Part 3 that gave away the plot of a future Part 4...

Nothing was ruined. This is just how the entertainment industry operates, backed by investment money. You're given a set budget and try your best to produce results based on that budget. Replacement of the FL and ML alone tell you budget for S2 wasn't too high to begin with.

But that's how the entertainment industry works. No one ever gonna invest more or same amount of money for a sequel, because statistics show most dramas lose viewership retention beyond the first season.

Plus can you imagine bringing Li Qin back to play the role of someone who had been raped and became mentally deranged? That was Ok when she was just starting out, but this kind of role no longer suits her career or she's outgrown that kind of role.

I didn't remember hearing the words Zhuge anything/anyone from the original Princess Agents. Can someone shed some lights on this?

It's about time!! I tired of watching hanfu costume dramas. Call me clueless, but when was the last high profile Sci-Fi drama besides 3 Body?

Since this CNY champ was Pegasus 3 and NOT a Wu Jing movie, let's talk about that.

When you think about it Pegasus 1/2/3 defied all odds. Most racing car movies flop becoz you know from the get go the protagonist always wins the race at the end. Since you know how it ends, why even bother watch it?

Pegasus 1/2/3 made so much box office despite this genre traditionally having a predictable ending. That's nothing short of a miracle!

Nah mate. Legend of Shenli sux. It's done under Tencent label. Those guys/that company writes terrible scripts. Their SFX sux, looks like they trying to cut corners at every turn.

You can tell right away most of Tencent drama scenes were green screened. But in Rebirth, it was done so naturally you really believe they did it in front of real sceneries.

Whenever you see a bird flapping its wings while flying in a Tencent drama. It looked so bad like they got a kid to animate it's wing movements.

The only thing I liked from Shen Li was at the end how they tricked that guy to confess his love for the girl...

I still like Lin Geng Xin and ZLY portrayals of the main characters. Their replacements seemed like forced second/third choices.

In the last episode on the battle field, Zhao Che saw Huan Huan kill some guys with her double blades before disappearing into the back drop. At that point Huan Huan was already dead, so Zhao Che either saw her ghost or it was all in his mind.

I think the director made that scene so you would connect it forward to the scene where Zhuge Yue rushes on a horse to save Chu Qiao, but it was too late for her. That scene, she may we witnessing Zhuge Yue's ghost or it was all in her mind.

So, Zhuge Yue and Chu Qiao are both dead in the official tragic ending.

(But then, Zhuge Yue's grandfather's body was not found in his coffin when Zhuge Yue opened it, so there is that possibility...)

The last episode is just like Season 1. You were tricked into thinking Zhuge Yue died in season 1, now they are using Chu Qiao's "death" to trick you in Season 2 to keep you in suspense mode for a possible Season 3.

No I meant they were intending to follow the novel in Season 3, but they decided to come up with a plot twist where Chu Qiao supposed "died" at the end of Season 2 so they could hook viewers into watching Season 3. Of course this gimmick only works on people who never read the books.

To make their plot twist almost fool proof, they added the what-if scenes for a bunch of secondary characters to trick you into thinking the scene with Chu Qiao's kids ain't real because all other characters happy ending (or any happy ending for that matter) were only what-if reimaginings!

It's a pretty decent drama. I just finished all 40 episodes and thought it was worth my time. I agree with the low rating, but drama certainly was NOT a waste of my time!

The one thing that stuck out to me the most. There were a few scenes where a main character was riding their horse thru a river bank that had water up to knee high. The water was being splashed everywhere maybe even into the rider's face.

Then I recall the same scenes in works by Director Zhang Jizhong. His version had water that almost looked like human sewage being splashed into the actor's face as they are riding thru knee-deep water. Ew gross! So in terms of looking hygenic and better aesthetics, Rebirth is an improvement overall!

I don't think Chu Qiao died at the end. It was more like she passed out in Zhuge Yue's arms, and then they showed you a bunch of "what-if" happy alternate scenes (to trick you into thinking any sort of happy ending for any pairing in the drama is fake occurring only in the fantasy alternate universe)

Part 1 ended with cliffhanger where Zhuge Yue supposedly died in the ice lake. Now part 2 is Chu Qiao's turn to fake her death to the viewers. You notice in both instances either ML or FL "perished" on the battlefield, so THAT smells pretty fake to me. Anyways, if Fan Xian (Joy of Life S1 can be killed then brought back to life in S2, why couldn't THIS Chu Qiao?)

I wouldn't be surprised they plan on making Season 3 where Chu Qiao wakes up on the bed of a hut after being nursed back to health by Zhuge Yue. Then the story proceeds where both ML and FL have publicly "died" so now they are free to roam the world incognito...

But other dangers lurk in the backdrop that require their heroic intervention of course!

IMO the creators and producers of DIGIMON didn't do it becoz they love POKEMON. On the contrary, they did it out of greed and attempt to steal fanbase.

Same as Wu Jing picking to star in a movie where he raises a nonbiological child like in Pegasus 1. Anyways, I could be wrong, but I think Wu Jing ranks lower now on the list of highest grossing actors in China becoz of the smashing success of PEGASUS 3!

BTW I don't know why my post got deleted, but I asked Deepseek to explain the ending and it did a way better job than any of you here! I posted its response in a forum thread above not in this comments section below

Nah, Tencent is only the richest production company in China becoz of revenue from mobile games, Wechat, etc. So if they make more dramas (becoz they have more money) so of course they will have more hit dramas than other companies. But the AVERAGE Tencent drama is like I'm dropping them at EP5 whereas I usually don't do that with Youku nor iQiyi...

So these days, I usually don't even bother watching EP1 of a drama if I know Tencent made it, unless I heard good things about it.

That's not true Tencent produces 1 good drama for every 9 bads. What u just listed is cherry picking. These days I tend to avoid Tencent dramas like the plague unless it's something like adapting a majorly popular work like Three Body, or I read good stuff about how it performed well on NetFlix (ie. Pursuit of Jade)

WARNING SPOILERS:

I wasn't convinced with any explanations of the last episode amongst the comments.

So I got Deepseek to explain it to me, which I think is the best explanation so far:

https://mydramalist.com/766289-frozen-awakening/discussions/150814-how-did-the-drama-end-spoilers

Some people are still stuck in the past where China used manual labor sweat and toil to produce goods. Wuxia thrived becoz it was a time when China was backwards in cinema technology, so they could only entertain people with Kung Fu which is the most primitive way you could entertain someone when you're still developing.