This is not the "Cruel Romance" I was hoping for
I suppose I should have known better than to keep my hopes high for Cruel Romance, the 1930s Shanghai cdrama starring Huang Xiaoming and Chen Qiao'en that I was really excited about last year. But I mean, when you release pretty stills like this, what am I supposed to expect?
To be fair, Cruel Romance wasn't all that bad until near the end, when the entire plotline hinged on an idiotic miscommunication between the OTP (I'll rant about this later) and each episode started throwing 10 minutes worth of flashbacks at us. I was actually enjoying it a lot and had even signed on as a spot-checker/editor for the Viki subbing team (should have waited until the drama finished airing, oops). But the drama got sooo stupid at the end that I couldn't even enjoy it just to see Huang Xiaoming on the screen.
Anyway, here are some of the things I think plagued what could have been Huang Xiaoming's best and most rewatchable cdrama:
Bad editing
The editing of Cruel Romance didn't bother me until I noticed around episode 30-something that the number of episodes had been cut from 48 to 40. At first, I didn't mind so much since 40 episodes is an ideal cdrama length for me, plus the plot was starting to get unbearable and I didn't want them dragging it out for eight more episodes than was necessary.
But the editing decisions in the final ten-or-so episodes were absolutely horrendous. We got so. many. freaking. flashbacks, including flashbacks of scenes that had just happened in the very same episode! And the editing team didn't even cut the flashbacks to show only the most important interactions or dialogue -- they just played the whole scene through again.
You'd think that with eight episodes cut, they'd tighten up the drama's plot even more and cut out the unnecessary stuff. Well, you thought wrong. Makes me wonder which scenes ended up on the cutting room floor... maybe it was eight episodes worth of flashbacks? :O
Major deviation from the book
After finishing Cruel Romance, I was left wondering why I spent those two weeks going through the original novel, The Fate of Jinxiu, when the drama adaptation is pretty much nothing like it! The screenwriters essentially just took the names of the characters and their general occupations, and then ran with it.
On one hand, I can see why they changed up the plot so much. To be honest, the original novel's plot was nothing special; it was pretty much devoted to the romance between Zuo Zhen and Rong Jinxiu and that's it. Moreover, there was no "big baddie" character in the book, and a lot of the characters were only tangentially related to the plot. So in some ways, it was a smart move on the screenwriters' part to bring in the evil Japanese villains (as stereotypical as that is for a 1930s Shanghai drama) and make characters like Yin Mingzhu and Xiang Hanchuan more prominent in the plot.
One really smart move was totally changing the plotline for Mazi Liu, who is one of Zuo Zhen's underlings. In the book, he actually ends up betraying Zuo Zhen and is the closest we get to a "big baddie" character. So when he first showed up, I was all attentive, trying to spot any clues as to when he would betray Zuo Zhen. (This is after Lady & Liar turned a character into a traitor with no hints to it whatsoever.) Thus, imagine my surprise when Mazi Liu (spoiler) gets blown up by a bomb and dies. This is the only time the drama genuinely surprised me.
Despite those two good points, sometimes the focus on so many characters got too overwhelming. This ties more into the next point on stupid characters, but I got really tired of Yin Mingzhu and her pathetic life. Sure, I felt sorry for her, but I didn't really need to see her miserable life spelled out all the time. I even got tired of Xiang Yingdong, and he was acted out by Kimi Qiao! Then there was Tang Hai and his short-lived romance with Xiaolan, which may have been touching but just ended up being exasperating.
In short, there were scenes from the book that I wanted to see (acted out by Huang Xiaoming), and there were quotes from the book that I wanted to hear (from Huang Xiaoming's lips), and they never materialized. I even had a whole list of touching moments in the book that I wanted to make into photosets on Tumblr, but those scenes were never adapted.
Stupid characters
So the whole crux of the second half of Cruel Romance is that Jinxiu believes that Zuo Zhen, who is now her unofficial husband and the father of her unborn child, was the one who killed her parents x years ago. The whole reason Jinxiu went to Shanghai was to discover her parents' killer and avenge them, and when her Japanese friend gets someone from her hometown to say that it was Zuo Zhen, Jinxiu believes them both without a second thought.
Okay, yeah, she does go home to Zuo Zhen and starts asking him vague questions about what he was doing on a certain day of a certain year and whether he regrets all the bad things he's done over the years. And he answers her very earnestly, because he loves her, and says that everything he's ever done has been for her good. And instead of double- and triple- and quadruple-checking to see if he actually says "Yes, I killed your parents," Jinxiu thinks he's admitting to the crime and then runs away.
*FACEPALM*
Yes, yes, I know that dramas are meant to revolve around misunderstandings and miscommunication. But couldn't the writers have come up with something more interesting? I don't really know if it counts as a misunderstanding if the whole situation is due to the stupidity of one girl.
There are other stupid characters (e.g. Yin Mingzhu, who accepted opium-laced cigarettes from some guy who'd already drugged her drink and manipulated her; Xiang Yingdong, who throws a tantrum whenever he can't compare to his older brother, which is... all the time; and almost all the minor characters whose names I can't even remember now), but Jinxiu really takes the cake. gg.
Uneventful fight scenes
I realize I have a high standard for fight scenes after watching wuxia dramas, but it's not like I was expecting people in Cruel Romance to fly around and execute perfectly choreographed attacks. I just wanted to see some good and gritty action, y'know? And yes, it was good to see Huang Xiaoming kick butt, but a lot of it was terribly unrealistic. Especially when Xiaoming would finish an attack and hold the pose for, like, three seconds. Maybe that looks good on screen, but it doesn't make much sense.
The most disappointing part about this is that the book had a really epic fight scene between Zuo Zhen and Mazi Liu, which involves Zuo Zhen starting off the fight with a bullet-less gun. Guess what happened to this fight scene? Yep, it never happened.
But at least there was a lot of eyecandy!
Here's the one thing Cruel Romance had going for it... male eyecandy galore! I even lost count of how many shirtless Huang Xiaoming scenes they had. I'm a little disappointed that there was only one shower scene, since in the book, Zuo Zhen takes countless freezing showers to try to make himself forget about his feelings for Jinxiu (LOLOLOL). But I guess you can't have everything.
To be fair, Cruel Romance wasn't all that bad until near the end, when the entire plotline hinged on an idiotic miscommunication between the OTP (I'll rant about this later) and each episode started throwing 10 minutes worth of flashbacks at us. I was actually enjoying it a lot and had even signed on as a spot-checker/editor for the Viki subbing team (should have waited until the drama finished airing, oops). But the drama got sooo stupid at the end that I couldn't even enjoy it just to see Huang Xiaoming on the screen.
Anyway, here are some of the things I think plagued what could have been Huang Xiaoming's best and most rewatchable cdrama:
Bad editing
The editing of Cruel Romance didn't bother me until I noticed around episode 30-something that the number of episodes had been cut from 48 to 40. At first, I didn't mind so much since 40 episodes is an ideal cdrama length for me, plus the plot was starting to get unbearable and I didn't want them dragging it out for eight more episodes than was necessary.
But the editing decisions in the final ten-or-so episodes were absolutely horrendous. We got so. many. freaking. flashbacks, including flashbacks of scenes that had just happened in the very same episode! And the editing team didn't even cut the flashbacks to show only the most important interactions or dialogue -- they just played the whole scene through again.
You'd think that with eight episodes cut, they'd tighten up the drama's plot even more and cut out the unnecessary stuff. Well, you thought wrong. Makes me wonder which scenes ended up on the cutting room floor... maybe it was eight episodes worth of flashbacks? :O
Major deviation from the book
After finishing Cruel Romance, I was left wondering why I spent those two weeks going through the original novel, The Fate of Jinxiu, when the drama adaptation is pretty much nothing like it! The screenwriters essentially just took the names of the characters and their general occupations, and then ran with it.
On one hand, I can see why they changed up the plot so much. To be honest, the original novel's plot was nothing special; it was pretty much devoted to the romance between Zuo Zhen and Rong Jinxiu and that's it. Moreover, there was no "big baddie" character in the book, and a lot of the characters were only tangentially related to the plot. So in some ways, it was a smart move on the screenwriters' part to bring in the evil Japanese villains (as stereotypical as that is for a 1930s Shanghai drama) and make characters like Yin Mingzhu and Xiang Hanchuan more prominent in the plot.
One really smart move was totally changing the plotline for Mazi Liu, who is one of Zuo Zhen's underlings. In the book, he actually ends up betraying Zuo Zhen and is the closest we get to a "big baddie" character. So when he first showed up, I was all attentive, trying to spot any clues as to when he would betray Zuo Zhen. (This is after Lady & Liar turned a character into a traitor with no hints to it whatsoever.) Thus, imagine my surprise when Mazi Liu (spoiler) gets blown up by a bomb and dies. This is the only time the drama genuinely surprised me.
Despite those two good points, sometimes the focus on so many characters got too overwhelming. This ties more into the next point on stupid characters, but I got really tired of Yin Mingzhu and her pathetic life. Sure, I felt sorry for her, but I didn't really need to see her miserable life spelled out all the time. I even got tired of Xiang Yingdong, and he was acted out by Kimi Qiao! Then there was Tang Hai and his short-lived romance with Xiaolan, which may have been touching but just ended up being exasperating.
In short, there were scenes from the book that I wanted to see (acted out by Huang Xiaoming), and there were quotes from the book that I wanted to hear (from Huang Xiaoming's lips), and they never materialized. I even had a whole list of touching moments in the book that I wanted to make into photosets on Tumblr, but those scenes were never adapted.
Stupid characters
So the whole crux of the second half of Cruel Romance is that Jinxiu believes that Zuo Zhen, who is now her unofficial husband and the father of her unborn child, was the one who killed her parents x years ago. The whole reason Jinxiu went to Shanghai was to discover her parents' killer and avenge them, and when her Japanese friend gets someone from her hometown to say that it was Zuo Zhen, Jinxiu believes them both without a second thought.
Okay, yeah, she does go home to Zuo Zhen and starts asking him vague questions about what he was doing on a certain day of a certain year and whether he regrets all the bad things he's done over the years. And he answers her very earnestly, because he loves her, and says that everything he's ever done has been for her good. And instead of double- and triple- and quadruple-checking to see if he actually says "Yes, I killed your parents," Jinxiu thinks he's admitting to the crime and then runs away.
*FACEPALM*
Yes, yes, I know that dramas are meant to revolve around misunderstandings and miscommunication. But couldn't the writers have come up with something more interesting? I don't really know if it counts as a misunderstanding if the whole situation is due to the stupidity of one girl.
There are other stupid characters (e.g. Yin Mingzhu, who accepted opium-laced cigarettes from some guy who'd already drugged her drink and manipulated her; Xiang Yingdong, who throws a tantrum whenever he can't compare to his older brother, which is... all the time; and almost all the minor characters whose names I can't even remember now), but Jinxiu really takes the cake. gg.
Uneventful fight scenes
I realize I have a high standard for fight scenes after watching wuxia dramas, but it's not like I was expecting people in Cruel Romance to fly around and execute perfectly choreographed attacks. I just wanted to see some good and gritty action, y'know? And yes, it was good to see Huang Xiaoming kick butt, but a lot of it was terribly unrealistic. Especially when Xiaoming would finish an attack and hold the pose for, like, three seconds. Maybe that looks good on screen, but it doesn't make much sense.
The most disappointing part about this is that the book had a really epic fight scene between Zuo Zhen and Mazi Liu, which involves Zuo Zhen starting off the fight with a bullet-less gun. Guess what happened to this fight scene? Yep, it never happened.
But at least there was a lot of eyecandy!
Here's the one thing Cruel Romance had going for it... male eyecandy galore! I even lost count of how many shirtless Huang Xiaoming scenes they had. I'm a little disappointed that there was only one shower scene, since in the book, Zuo Zhen takes countless freezing showers to try to make himself forget about his feelings for Jinxiu (LOLOLOL). But I guess you can't have everything.