Not dead
It's been awhile since I updated because I've been so crazily busy at work! Today is actually the first day in a long time that I've caught up to things and it's only because I worked Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday morning. So now I can finally talk about a drama we finished watching weeks ago but never got around to talking about!
We picked Candle in the Tomb for our drama watching since we both like Joe Chen and the genre of Tomb Raid-ing/Indiana Jones-ing/Uncharted-ness.
I always think about the Elton John song "Candle in the Wind" when I think of this drama's title. But the drama isn't about someone snuffed out before their time (or whatever the song is actually about). It's about tomb raiders!
Cast and Characters
The drama stars Jin Dong (Nirvana in Fire) as Hu Baiyi. Fans of this guy might think I'm nuts, but I think Jin Dong reminds me of William Feng, but less dead in the eyes.
Hu Baiyi is an ex-soldier and a tomb raider from a long line of tomb raiders. Kind of like Indiana Jones or Nathan Drake (maybe...I never played Uncharted). After some war or the other (not a historian), he goes back to Beijing (based on their slurry accent) and tries to lead a normal life until his degenerate bro friend drags him into the tomb raiding business.
Said bro friend, Wang Kaixuan, is played by Zhao Da, of which Chinese Wikipedia can't tell me anything about him.
Wang Kaixuan, or as he is fondly called "Fatty" by Hu Biayi, is a money-grubbing bro. There's really not much to be said about the guy and his character besides: bro who loves money.
Hiring the two of them to go on an archaeological expedition as their guides is Joe Chen's (Fated to Love You, Swordsman) Shirley Yang
Shirley Yang is like Lara Croft: rich dad, tomb raider, and good with guns. She's funding an expedition to find the tomb of some ancient kingdom because her father had gone on the same expedition and disappeared. So she's hoping to find him/find out what happened to him.
Along for the ride are a bunch of cannon fodder archaeologists who are too unimportant/irritating to mention. Just know that they're there are they're useless and no one cares what happened to them.
The Good
One of the best parts of the drama is how short it is. It's 21 half hour episodes so not a long commitment at all. Other than that, there's also:
Tomb Raiding
This is a drama that is somewhat fun and amusing in many various ways. The plot unfolds like, well, Tomb Raider or Uncharted and many other video games. You're introduced to the main playable characters and go on some sort of sidequest. When you come back to your home base, a guy offers to give you more sidequests if you come back and see him later. There are notebooks to consult to solve puzzles, escort missions, and dead bodies to loot for guns, ammos, and quest items. All in all, good time was had while watching this.
The part of the game where people sit and talk about the plot and I go off to the kitchen to grab a snack.
So China Does Have Eyes!
This drama uses CGI as obviously there are supernatural elements and sometimes natural elements that the drama couldn't reproduce in real life. But what's great about it is that it's like the director is able to see that CGI looks bad and therefore either cuts away from them fast or only uses them in dim light so it's not glaringly obvious.
And the drama also uses practical effects when they can, like this tall zombie dude is just a tall guy with lots of makeup.
Surrealness and Creepiness
I'm not easily spooked by horror movies and shows. I would say this drama actually does a fairly good job with creating an atmosphere of creepiness. Part of the title of the drama in Chinese is literally "ghost blows out candle" and it's something I'm familiar with from horror stories from my childhood. So I thought they created good atmosphere when they brought out the candle in the first tomb they raided and were waiting to see if it would go out,
There was also a pretty good scene towards the end when five of them were trapped in a tomb. Then Baiyu finds a clue from a dead prophet that they will find a way out when there are four people in the tomb. Another clue indicates that only four of them are human, indicating that one of them is a ghost. I had a good amount of chills from that scene.
At the end, there's a scene that made the main leads question if they had imagined the whole ending. I thought that was actually fairly well done and the drama would have been pretty excellent had it ended around there.
Which gets us to The Bad:
Trying to Set Up a Sequel
Like everything these days, the ending just has to be open-ended. Throughout the drama, there's a question of whether Shirley Yang is who she says she is. Instead of settling that question within the plot of the drama, they had to set up an end scene where Shirley is seen talking to her dad on the phone about how things had gone as they planned. It seems very unnecessary and tacked on. The drama, based on books, already have a few other drama spin-offs so there's really no need to try and hint at a sequel.
Dubbing (or China Doesn't Have Ears)
It sounds like they didn't dub anyone else except for Joe Chen. I'm glad they didn't dub for the most part, but it makes it super obvious when one person is dubbed. And to make the matter worse, they voice actor they hired to dub Joe Chen doesn't speak fluent English like Shirley Yang supposedly can. So they had to find a second voice actor to dub her when English is needed. Which brings us to:
Weird Writing
In the story, Shirley Yang is an American born Chinese. It's a good story element because it adds to Baiyu and Fatty's mistrust of her. She's an "other" and a "foreigner" even though she has the ability to communicate with them. Except this can be achieved in many ways.
For one, the drama is set in the 1980s, when China has just started opening up relationship with Taiwan. If they're going to hire a Taiwanese actress in the first place, why not just make Shirley Taiwanese? It keeps the sense of "other"-ness and there's just as much of a likelihood that people in mainland China wouldn't trust her intentions. And that way, they wouldn't have to dub Joe Chen or hire an actress fluent in English to dub her.
And if for odd reasons they don't want to use Taiwan, why not use Korea or Japan? And if they must use America, it seems like there are many ways they could write around having to use English. In the beginning when Shirley introduces herself, she asked that everyone speak Mandarin. They could have just kept that up for the whole drama. For a director that seems very good at shooting around bad CGI, they couldn't write around having to use English.
The End
I feel like I half-assed this review mostly because of work and that I've put off writing this for a long time. There are many good points that I'm probably leaving out. But I actually did enjoy watching this a good amount and would recommend it, especially since it's so short.
We picked Candle in the Tomb for our drama watching since we both like Joe Chen and the genre of Tomb Raid-ing/Indiana Jones-ing/Uncharted-ness.
I always think about the Elton John song "Candle in the Wind" when I think of this drama's title. But the drama isn't about someone snuffed out before their time (or whatever the song is actually about). It's about tomb raiders!
Cast and Characters
The drama stars Jin Dong (Nirvana in Fire) as Hu Baiyi. Fans of this guy might think I'm nuts, but I think Jin Dong reminds me of William Feng, but less dead in the eyes.
Hu Baiyi is an ex-soldier and a tomb raider from a long line of tomb raiders. Kind of like Indiana Jones or Nathan Drake (maybe...I never played Uncharted). After some war or the other (not a historian), he goes back to Beijing (based on their slurry accent) and tries to lead a normal life until his degenerate bro friend drags him into the tomb raiding business.
Said bro friend, Wang Kaixuan, is played by Zhao Da, of which Chinese Wikipedia can't tell me anything about him.
Wang Kaixuan, or as he is fondly called "Fatty" by Hu Biayi, is a money-grubbing bro. There's really not much to be said about the guy and his character besides: bro who loves money.
Hiring the two of them to go on an archaeological expedition as their guides is Joe Chen's (Fated to Love You, Swordsman) Shirley Yang
Shirley Yang is like Lara Croft: rich dad, tomb raider, and good with guns. She's funding an expedition to find the tomb of some ancient kingdom because her father had gone on the same expedition and disappeared. So she's hoping to find him/find out what happened to him.
Along for the ride are a bunch of cannon fodder archaeologists who are too unimportant/irritating to mention. Just know that they're there are they're useless and no one cares what happened to them.
The Good
One of the best parts of the drama is how short it is. It's 21 half hour episodes so not a long commitment at all. Other than that, there's also:
Tomb Raiding
This is a drama that is somewhat fun and amusing in many various ways. The plot unfolds like, well, Tomb Raider or Uncharted and many other video games. You're introduced to the main playable characters and go on some sort of sidequest. When you come back to your home base, a guy offers to give you more sidequests if you come back and see him later. There are notebooks to consult to solve puzzles, escort missions, and dead bodies to loot for guns, ammos, and quest items. All in all, good time was had while watching this.
The part of the game where people sit and talk about the plot and I go off to the kitchen to grab a snack.
So China Does Have Eyes!
This drama uses CGI as obviously there are supernatural elements and sometimes natural elements that the drama couldn't reproduce in real life. But what's great about it is that it's like the director is able to see that CGI looks bad and therefore either cuts away from them fast or only uses them in dim light so it's not glaringly obvious.
And the drama also uses practical effects when they can, like this tall zombie dude is just a tall guy with lots of makeup.
Surrealness and Creepiness
I'm not easily spooked by horror movies and shows. I would say this drama actually does a fairly good job with creating an atmosphere of creepiness. Part of the title of the drama in Chinese is literally "ghost blows out candle" and it's something I'm familiar with from horror stories from my childhood. So I thought they created good atmosphere when they brought out the candle in the first tomb they raided and were waiting to see if it would go out,
There was also a pretty good scene towards the end when five of them were trapped in a tomb. Then Baiyu finds a clue from a dead prophet that they will find a way out when there are four people in the tomb. Another clue indicates that only four of them are human, indicating that one of them is a ghost. I had a good amount of chills from that scene.
At the end, there's a scene that made the main leads question if they had imagined the whole ending. I thought that was actually fairly well done and the drama would have been pretty excellent had it ended around there.
Which gets us to The Bad:
Trying to Set Up a Sequel
Like everything these days, the ending just has to be open-ended. Throughout the drama, there's a question of whether Shirley Yang is who she says she is. Instead of settling that question within the plot of the drama, they had to set up an end scene where Shirley is seen talking to her dad on the phone about how things had gone as they planned. It seems very unnecessary and tacked on. The drama, based on books, already have a few other drama spin-offs so there's really no need to try and hint at a sequel.
Dubbing (or China Doesn't Have Ears)
It sounds like they didn't dub anyone else except for Joe Chen. I'm glad they didn't dub for the most part, but it makes it super obvious when one person is dubbed. And to make the matter worse, they voice actor they hired to dub Joe Chen doesn't speak fluent English like Shirley Yang supposedly can. So they had to find a second voice actor to dub her when English is needed. Which brings us to:
Weird Writing
In the story, Shirley Yang is an American born Chinese. It's a good story element because it adds to Baiyu and Fatty's mistrust of her. She's an "other" and a "foreigner" even though she has the ability to communicate with them. Except this can be achieved in many ways.
For one, the drama is set in the 1980s, when China has just started opening up relationship with Taiwan. If they're going to hire a Taiwanese actress in the first place, why not just make Shirley Taiwanese? It keeps the sense of "other"-ness and there's just as much of a likelihood that people in mainland China wouldn't trust her intentions. And that way, they wouldn't have to dub Joe Chen or hire an actress fluent in English to dub her.
And if for odd reasons they don't want to use Taiwan, why not use Korea or Japan? And if they must use America, it seems like there are many ways they could write around having to use English. In the beginning when Shirley introduces herself, she asked that everyone speak Mandarin. They could have just kept that up for the whole drama. For a director that seems very good at shooting around bad CGI, they couldn't write around having to use English.
The End
I feel like I half-assed this review mostly because of work and that I've put off writing this for a long time. There are many good points that I'm probably leaving out. But I actually did enjoy watching this a good amount and would recommend it, especially since it's so short.