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Post by ajk on Apr 9, 2016 1:40:13 GMT -5
Okay, anybody who has anything to say about the series, loved it, hated it, whatever, here's your chance. Have at it!
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Post by sageuk on Apr 9, 2016 8:33:13 GMT -5
At best, this series was alright. I mentioned before that the show is at its best when it focuses on the science and I still think so. Unfortunately its held back by the whole anti-science scholars plot. To be fair to the series, they give a somewhat plausible explanation as to why they're like this, saying interest in science leads them astray from the Confucian classics not to mention giving the artisan class more power, but I could never take these people seriously because of how much of an overreaction it was. Even though I've seen these kind of characters (perhaps because of it), having to sit and watch those snooty one dimensional scholars became something of a chore. I guess it could be argued it was neccessary to add material in television since just the science wouldn't be enoght content for twenty four episodes, but the added content feels meaningless if it takes you out of the viewing. The few times the plots against Jang Yeong-shil feels justified was the fear of repurcussions from Ming and when the carriage breaks, and those feel like it flows naturally.
A reviewer on Hancinema wrote "As the epilogue demonstrates, Yeong-sil invented lots of objects besides clocks that no doubt had very interesting scientific and practical explanations and yet...time and again writers Lee Myeong-hee and Ma Chang-joon found ways to steer the story into the same persecution complex again and again." It's a legitimate complaint IMO. I can't help but wonder if the series were shorter thus removing some of the excess this would improvve things.
ANother thing to point out is the Princess. Early on when the cast was announced, I pointed out it would be pointless to have a love interest of JYS since the friendship between him and Sejong would be the heart of the story anyway. Turns out I was correct since her role was incredibly superfluous.
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Post by mikey on Apr 11, 2016 21:49:50 GMT -5
Lots of good and bad in this series.
The GOOD:
Loved seeing so many of my favorite actors back at work again, especially in the early episodes. I especially enjoyed seeing the same actor again playing the role of King Taejong.
Though, as I recall, ajk didn’t think he was being malevolent enough. Fair enough, but I still loved the actor’s portrayal, even if he wasn’t out there beheading as many people as he should have. Maybe I just have a fondness for the actor himself (I’ve always liked him in other roles as well).
The scientific devices illustrated in the show were simply gorgeous. I wonder if they were borrowed from a museum somewhere. It’s hard to imagine the KBS set designers having to create each and every one of those things by hand.
Sure made me wince, though, seeing those beautiful machines with their stark, naked wood fully exposed to the worst elements a Korean winter could deliver. There’s no way those beautiful machines would have survived even a few months outdoors in real life.
Never hurts to have a few good-looking women on display, either. That Chinese gal was hot, indeed, but even Taejong’s daughter was such a beautiful young woman (of course, in the end, the Princess didn’t have a role of much significance anyway).
And, yes, the final episode was remarkable. I absolutely loved it.
The NOT-SO-GOOD:
There was a bit of questionable scientific accuracy here and there. Just as one spoiled apple ruins the entire barrel, catching the show playing free and loose with even one piece of scientific trivia can’t help but lead one to doubt the veracity of the entire show. And, for a show of this type, that’s not good, at all.
I was a little surprised by the portrayal of JYS as a kind of an idiot savant: brilliant on scientific matters, but a bit of a dolt when it came to the realities of politics. Honestly, a more well-rounded interpretation of JYS’s character might have appealed to me more.
While Song Il Guk has a reputation as such a superior actor, I just didn’t see it here. He did an okay job, but it was nothing that really blew me away.
So, overall, this show gets a passing grade. I’m glad I watched it … but I’m not sure I’d bother to watch it a second time.
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Post by truth on Apr 11, 2016 22:34:48 GMT -5
Lots of good and bad in this series. The GOOD: Never hurts to have a few good-looking women on display, either. That Chinese gal was hot, indeed, but even Taejong’s daughter was such a beautiful young woman (of course, in the end, the Princess didn’t have a role of much significance anyway). I guess it depends on one's definition of "young", but the actress playing Taejong's daughter is not exactly a "young woman," as she is turning 40 this year.
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Post by mikey on Apr 12, 2016 20:30:57 GMT -5
I guess Asian women age gracefully???
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Post by truth on Apr 12, 2016 20:50:44 GMT -5
I guess Asian women age gracefully??? Well, she's not your average Asian woman. You have to take into account the fact that she's an actress.
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Post by ajk on Apr 22, 2016 22:24:23 GMT -5
Didn't have any enthusiasm for this series when it was announced. We already got the JYS story in GKS, and because nothing much beyond what we saw in GKS is known about the guy anyway, anything more was going to be pretty much total fiction. But I watched it anyway, 24 episodes, no big deal, what's the risk. Was it worth it?
On one hand it was very nicely produced. Visually it looked great, right down to small details like those eye-popping room-divider screens. Excellent soundtrack and a good cast. And no question there were some good episodes and storylines. On the other hand, huge chunks of the story were far-fetched and annoying. The evil astronomer trying to restore Goryeo; that weirdness about a secret message in the stone star chart; the anger over giving the official clock to the people, whatever that meant; and the over-the-top furious anti-science Confucian scholars led by the weird old guy who just suddenly showed up. And there were sequences that were just plain boring or fell back on tired old clichés.
Some additional positives worth mentioning:
--We agreed pretty early on that the best part of the series was the science. Considering the series was never pitched as a hardcore historical, I sure never expected it to get into any of the details behind the science in JYS's life. But give the producers credit, they gave us some depth that went beyond what most viewers probably had any interest in. Excellent animations and illustrations to explain inventions or theories, and great reproductions of old clocks and astronomical instruments.
--We also got other subject matter that GKS didn't have room for. The public sundials and the currency introduction, and of course the story about the musical instruments. Interesting stuff.
--The lead actor, sort of. He's so well-known and there was so much buzz about him, I had feared the whole thing turning into an actor-feature and the JYS story getting overshadowed. But that didn't happen, and actually I liked the understated kind of character we got. Very appropriate for someone with that kind of mathematical-genius mind. mikey didn't think he was anything wildly special and fair enough, you could look at it that way too...but either way, at least this version of JYS was much better than what we got in GKS. In that series the JYS character was totally stiff and lifeless, to the point of being one of the few negatives in the whole series.
--I liked the women characters. Yes, the only reason the fictional princess and the fictional Ming daughter were in there were to give the series a female presence since there were no real-world females in the real story. But at least they were normal people and were kind of interesting. They weren't implausibly all-knowing like the consort Kim character in Jingbirok, but they both were very bright, so nobody could fault them for being weak token characters. Would like to have seen more of them. (But okay, yeah, I thought the daughter was hot, full disclosure.)
--It was fun to see the returning kings again. They weren't good fits in parts of the story age-wise, but they're both very good actors in those roles, and they had a scene together in Episode 7 that was wonderful so the age-inappropriateness can be forgiven.
--The final episode. Where the heck did THAT come from? Anybody who says they saw that thing coming after the previous 23, liar liar pants on fire! Won't repeat what's already in the episode thread; just adding it to the list of positives because wow what a wonderful surprise it was.
Other negatives:
--Too much forced melodrama in the early episodes. It was cheap and manipulative and not at all the kind of thing that a good historical resorts to. The one that bugged me the most was the half-episode long near-execution before the meteor shower started, when we all knew he wasn't going to be executed.
--Jang Huije. The character didn't work. And I'm sorry to say so, because that kind of character, who's torn between competing interests, those can be the most interesting characters in these historicals. But this one, he was just getting in the way of the story being better. I think the problem was that he was introduced as the little rich brat who bullied JYS, and then later was the snotty teenager who had his goon bully JYS. By that point we pretty much hated him and couldn't muster up much gratitude for the more honorable things he did (sometimes) as an adult. Plus, in those middle episodes there was way too much of him. For a while it felt like the Jang Huije story instead of the JYS story. Maybe other people found him an interesting character, fair enough; I just didn't.
--The hyperfast eclipses and the meteor showers falling as fast as snow showers. Okay, it's TV and slow things don't play well on TV. But a creative enough team could have found a better way to present those sequences without making them look as silly as they looked. It became a distraction that took away from some nice scenes, particularly the eclipse scene in Episode 20.
--Just as in GKS, still no good explanation of how a Joseon-specific calendar would help the farmers. That's a critical justification for the pursuit of the calendar but we weren't told why it would make such a big difference.
--And then there's this business about giving JYS and the Joseonese credit for scientific discoveries not made until centuries later in the West, and then writing convenient excuses into the story that supposedly wiped those discoveries out. I found this very disappointing and frankly a little disturbing. The final episode told us about how amazingly successful Joseon was in the 15th century in scientific achievement. Why embellish that with fiction? Millions of people who watched the series are now under the impression that JYS was so much more talented than Copernicus, Kepler, Huygens and maybe even Newton that he beat them to their major discoveries by hundreds of years. What's the point of this? Is it pandering to some sort of hyper-nationalistic pride? It certainly didn't add anything useful to the story. If you guys have any insight on this I'd love to hear it. (By the way, I've since looked into it and yes, it had already been known for centuries that meteor showers occur predictably by the calendar. So the whole storyline about nobody having known it before JYS spotted it, it's a complete crock.)
So...I guess I'd say overall that too much of the series was unsatisfying but it did have plenty of good parts. Could have been much better with some more creative storylines or else by shortening it to 20 episodes and sparing us the sillier twists. But I did learn some interesting things, both about science and about other issues in Sejong's reign that we didn't get to see in GKS. That was totally unexpected so if only for that reason I'm glad I watched it. And for the final episode, which was incredibly good.
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Post by simisteve on May 1, 2016 12:16:37 GMT -5
Question: Maybe Truth can fill this in... This series is predicated on Ming allowing Joseon to study its own skies, and presumably develop its own calendar. Did this actually happen?
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Post by truth on May 1, 2016 15:22:04 GMT -5
Question: Maybe Truth can fill this in... This series is predicated on Ming allowing Joseon to study its own skies, and presumably develop its own calendar. Did this actually happen? They never had to get a permission from Ming in the first place.
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