A bit on The Untamed
May. 11th, 2022 03:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mnemeSo, we've been watching the Chinese Wuxia drama "The Untamed" (aka "Grand Master of Demonic Cultivation", and oh, boy is it a bit of a complicated linguistic discussion explaining how the (English) title of the source web novel was changed to the (English) title of the live-action drama). There are apparently a whole bunch of ways to watch it, each with a subtly different translation from the others (presuming you aren't fluent in Mandarin, and we are, in fact, not), but we're watching it on Netflix.
It's ~50 chapters long, each ~45 minutes. We have watched through episode 24. It's really fun, not withstanding that the death of the main character is announced at the beginning of the first episode (he gets better; this, too, is not a spoiler). Well recommended, for those who might enjoy full-on magical wuxia fantasy where dark magic is indicated with a (probably CGI) smokey effect and the characters fly around standing on their swords).
But naturally, what I actually want to write about involves plot-level spoilers through episode #23 (I don't think knowing this would hurt your enjoyment of the show, but use your own judgement).
So, the basic structure of the show is that we start with the death of the main character as a horrible villain who everyone wants to kill. Then we get around two episodes to get to know him after he's somehow come back from the dead (these things apparently happen in this mythical China, not that China outside of the world of Martial Arts (the "Wu Lin") seems to substantially exist in this particular drama). After that, we get some number of episodes establishing how our protagonist goes from a somewhat unconventional hero to, I presume, the universally hated enemy of the martial arts world (well, sort of). I expect that eventually we'll jump back into the present day...but we haven't done so as of the end of episode #23.
What we have done, however, is walk through the rise and fall of an evil force, the Wen clan (this also isn't a spoiler; we're basically introduced to the Wen clan as "this is an evil clan that's doing evil things"). Naturally, our hero, along with a force headed by the other four major marital arts clans, are responsible for said "fall". But I'm not here to talk about how the good guys (ish) triumph. I'm here to talk about Wen Chao.
Wen Chao is a general and high-ranking member of the Wen clan, and basically the series's first big foil, the one leading Wen forces to do nearly everything bad that we see happen to the "good guys" throughout, oh, 20 episodes or so.
He's also almost single-handedly responsible for the downfall of the Wen Clan.
So, the Wen Clan's plan is to raise an army of powerful zombie slaves, who can convert enemy martial artists into more of their number and are also individually amazingly powerful, and use them to take over the world.
As part of why they think they can get away with this, they also have an army of loyal and ruthless martial artists who are far more powerful than any one clan -- in fact, powerful enough that they can launch successful attacks on the strongholds of three of the other clans simultaneously and win all three engagements commandingly. Since the fourth clan is morally flexible and historically allied to the Wen clan, they have good reason to believe that they can intimidate the other clans into leaving them alone until Plan Zombies is complete. And if not, well, they have a big powerful army and plausible reason to expect that they can win an open battle with the other three likely opposing clans even if they do join forces.
More, given their commanding power, they come up with the strategy of forcing the all other clans to send their heirs to be educated (actually held hostage). And succeed! All the other clans are, in fact, induced to send their heirs to Camp Indocrination, willingly or (mostly) not, while the head of the Wen clan works on the final stages of Plan Kung Fu Zombies.
And, it basically works. The heirs are arguably in the best position to work against the plan (as Camp Indocrination is in the Wen main castle), but surrounded by powerful martial artist soldiers they're not really in a position to do anything about it. The other clans know about Plan Zombie (or at least three of them do), but they're not unified or motivated to get into a costly war they're likely to lose, especially with their heirs held hostage. And while the Wen clan is short one Macguffin to complete Plan Zombie, they can pretty easily hold out until it turns up; it's functionally an unlosable situation.
Enter ourhero villain, Wen Chao. Wen Chao has been placed in charge of Camp Indocrination, and in the course of trying to prove himself, manages to ruin everything.
First, he decides to cow thenew students hostages. This does run into some trouble from the main protagonist (the mischievous scamp) and the unexpectedly rebellious Jin heir, but through the application of brute force, he does eventually get everyone in line, dejectedly reading the rules of the Wen Clan and, functionally, not plotting anything.
Then, Wen Chao gets bored. After all, he has nothing to do other than cuddle his girlfriend and listen to the heirs of all the other clans repeat the same boring words over, and over, and over.
So, he gets a clever plan. All he has to do is to go into a very dangerous place with a very dangerous and deadly monster, which is reputed to guard a fabulous treasure, but kill anyone who goes near. Of course, his real responsibility is to guard thestudents hostages, but he has a clever plan to deal with this:
Use thestudents hostages as shock troops to distract the monster, deal with the monster while it's distracted killing the students hostages, and take home the fabulous treasure. Boring duty discharged, renown won.
It is, of course, a plan that cannot but go wrong.
Instead, surprising nobody except Wen Chao (and his girlfriend, who is basically an opportunity for a Chinese actress to play a slightly modified, lower stakes Lady Macbeth) the end result is the escape of the hostages (while Wen Chao and his soldiers think they're in a situation Nobody Can Survive, so they can scatter and easily evade recapture), not to mention Our Hero ending up with the treasure.
You might think this was enough, but happily, Wen Chao isn't done. After all, we already established that the Wen Clan was stronger than any three of the other clans. So all he has to do (he thinks) is to openly attack the other clans, retake the treasure Our Hero ended up with, and no problem, maybe they won't even need to use Plan Zombie to take over the world. It's not like there are any flaws in this plan, like, say, a complete lack of hostages.
The result, of course, is all four of the other major clans forming an alliance.
But what about Plan Zombies, you might ask? Well, in fact, Plan Zombies would in fact, have resulted in the Wen Clan successfully defeating the entire rest of the martial arts world, except for one thing.
After openly attacking another major martial arts clan, Wen Chao isn't done. No, he has to take revenge on Our Hero by...murdering him?
No, actually, that would have worked, and despite all his other mistakes resulted in ultimate victory for the evil Wen Clan. Instead, he has a much better plan. Not finding the Great Treasure on our hero, he decides to drop him into a place of great evil power, so great that Nobody can Survive it.
I mean, nobody except, oh, someone who has somehow managed to attain and keep hidden some kind of magical great treasure. I mean, they've never dropped someone like that into the Necromantic Place Nobody Comes Back From. But it can't possibly go wrong, right?
So yeah, as a result of his experiences in the Horrible Place of Darkness, surprise, our hero (ok, protagonist) gains the power to do what, again? Right, right, the power to defeat the otherwise undefeatable zombies.
Because Wen Chao took him to a place where he could get a McGuffin.
Because Wen Chao abandoned him in the place where the McGuffin was and left him for dead.
Because Wen Chao then captured him and put him into the place that somehow activated his Mcguffin and allowed him to harness its power.
In conclusion, it's all Wen Chao's fault.
It's ~50 chapters long, each ~45 minutes. We have watched through episode 24. It's really fun, not withstanding that the death of the main character is announced at the beginning of the first episode (he gets better; this, too, is not a spoiler). Well recommended, for those who might enjoy full-on magical wuxia fantasy where dark magic is indicated with a (probably CGI) smokey effect and the characters fly around standing on their swords).
But naturally, what I actually want to write about involves plot-level spoilers through episode #23 (I don't think knowing this would hurt your enjoyment of the show, but use your own judgement).
So, the basic structure of the show is that we start with the death of the main character as a horrible villain who everyone wants to kill. Then we get around two episodes to get to know him after he's somehow come back from the dead (these things apparently happen in this mythical China, not that China outside of the world of Martial Arts (the "Wu Lin") seems to substantially exist in this particular drama). After that, we get some number of episodes establishing how our protagonist goes from a somewhat unconventional hero to, I presume, the universally hated enemy of the martial arts world (well, sort of). I expect that eventually we'll jump back into the present day...but we haven't done so as of the end of episode #23.
What we have done, however, is walk through the rise and fall of an evil force, the Wen clan (this also isn't a spoiler; we're basically introduced to the Wen clan as "this is an evil clan that's doing evil things"). Naturally, our hero, along with a force headed by the other four major marital arts clans, are responsible for said "fall". But I'm not here to talk about how the good guys (ish) triumph. I'm here to talk about Wen Chao.
Wen Chao is a general and high-ranking member of the Wen clan, and basically the series's first big foil, the one leading Wen forces to do nearly everything bad that we see happen to the "good guys" throughout, oh, 20 episodes or so.
He's also almost single-handedly responsible for the downfall of the Wen Clan.
So, the Wen Clan's plan is to raise an army of powerful zombie slaves, who can convert enemy martial artists into more of their number and are also individually amazingly powerful, and use them to take over the world.
As part of why they think they can get away with this, they also have an army of loyal and ruthless martial artists who are far more powerful than any one clan -- in fact, powerful enough that they can launch successful attacks on the strongholds of three of the other clans simultaneously and win all three engagements commandingly. Since the fourth clan is morally flexible and historically allied to the Wen clan, they have good reason to believe that they can intimidate the other clans into leaving them alone until Plan Zombies is complete. And if not, well, they have a big powerful army and plausible reason to expect that they can win an open battle with the other three likely opposing clans even if they do join forces.
More, given their commanding power, they come up with the strategy of forcing the all other clans to send their heirs to be educated (actually held hostage). And succeed! All the other clans are, in fact, induced to send their heirs to Camp Indocrination, willingly or (mostly) not, while the head of the Wen clan works on the final stages of Plan Kung Fu Zombies.
And, it basically works. The heirs are arguably in the best position to work against the plan (as Camp Indocrination is in the Wen main castle), but surrounded by powerful martial artist soldiers they're not really in a position to do anything about it. The other clans know about Plan Zombie (or at least three of them do), but they're not unified or motivated to get into a costly war they're likely to lose, especially with their heirs held hostage. And while the Wen clan is short one Macguffin to complete Plan Zombie, they can pretty easily hold out until it turns up; it's functionally an unlosable situation.
Enter our
First, he decides to cow the
Then, Wen Chao gets bored. After all, he has nothing to do other than cuddle his girlfriend and listen to the heirs of all the other clans repeat the same boring words over, and over, and over.
So, he gets a clever plan. All he has to do is to go into a very dangerous place with a very dangerous and deadly monster, which is reputed to guard a fabulous treasure, but kill anyone who goes near. Of course, his real responsibility is to guard the
Use the
It is, of course, a plan that cannot but go wrong.
Instead, surprising nobody except Wen Chao (and his girlfriend, who is basically an opportunity for a Chinese actress to play a slightly modified, lower stakes Lady Macbeth) the end result is the escape of the hostages (while Wen Chao and his soldiers think they're in a situation Nobody Can Survive, so they can scatter and easily evade recapture), not to mention Our Hero ending up with the treasure.
You might think this was enough, but happily, Wen Chao isn't done. After all, we already established that the Wen Clan was stronger than any three of the other clans. So all he has to do (he thinks) is to openly attack the other clans, retake the treasure Our Hero ended up with, and no problem, maybe they won't even need to use Plan Zombie to take over the world. It's not like there are any flaws in this plan, like, say, a complete lack of hostages.
The result, of course, is all four of the other major clans forming an alliance.
But what about Plan Zombies, you might ask? Well, in fact, Plan Zombies would in fact, have resulted in the Wen Clan successfully defeating the entire rest of the martial arts world, except for one thing.
After openly attacking another major martial arts clan, Wen Chao isn't done. No, he has to take revenge on Our Hero by...murdering him?
No, actually, that would have worked, and despite all his other mistakes resulted in ultimate victory for the evil Wen Clan. Instead, he has a much better plan. Not finding the Great Treasure on our hero, he decides to drop him into a place of great evil power, so great that Nobody can Survive it.
I mean, nobody except, oh, someone who has somehow managed to attain and keep hidden some kind of magical great treasure. I mean, they've never dropped someone like that into the Necromantic Place Nobody Comes Back From. But it can't possibly go wrong, right?
So yeah, as a result of his experiences in the Horrible Place of Darkness, surprise, our hero (ok, protagonist) gains the power to do what, again? Right, right, the power to defeat the otherwise undefeatable zombies.
Because Wen Chao took him to a place where he could get a McGuffin.
Because Wen Chao abandoned him in the place where the McGuffin was and left him for dead.
Because Wen Chao then captured him and put him into the place that somehow activated his Mcguffin and allowed him to harness its power.
In conclusion, it's all Wen Chao's fault.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-11 11:34 am (UTC)So what's the score?
Date: 2022-05-12 12:24 am (UTC)1 point for each feature mentioned in a verse
7 points for each feature mentioned in the chorus, except:
10 points for "taking over your social life";
14 points for "taking over your whole darn life".
Just curious...
Re: So what's the score?
Date: 2022-05-12 08:53 am (UTC)But it's not taking over our social life or whole life! While we do the occasional bits of blog crawling (as we did for Lin Jiang Mountain, Maiden Holmes (mystery kung fu historical C-drama), Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty (same) and Word of Honor before this), we don't have enough friends watching the same ones for it to be all we talk about.
Re: So what's the score?
Date: 2022-05-12 03:43 pm (UTC)Re: So what's the score?
Date: 2022-05-12 08:10 pm (UTC)Re: So what's the score?
Date: 2022-05-12 08:15 pm (UTC)One Upon a Time in Lingjian mountiain is...higher.
Re: So what's the score?
Date: 2022-05-12 10:29 pm (UTC)BTW, not that it sounds like you did, but I would categorize "taking over one's social life" to include passing on social opportunities in favor of staying home and watching episodes.
Re: So what's the score?
Date: 2022-05-13 02:23 am (UTC)Haven't yet for Untamed, but I feel like there should be a score for "stayed up a few extra hours becaause the finale was just a few episodes away".
Re: So what's the score?
Date: 2022-05-13 02:59 am (UTC)Re: So what's the score?
Date: 2022-05-13 03:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-14 02:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-14 07:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-15 07:59 pm (UTC)As per usual for me, I enjoyed the novel much more than either of the TV series. It's noticeably different - everything subtextual on screen is absolutely textual in print. Which is not to say I didn't enjoy the series! I did! I just get more out of novels in general.
If you're looking for more good stuff, try Legend of Fei. It's got the actor who plays Lan Zhan in a role with actual displays of emotion and he's adorable. Duoluo Continent has Wei Ying's actor in a live action xanxia that wants to be a Japanese magic high school anime.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-15 11:18 pm (UTC)And yeah, I got that the novel is -very- different than the show in a bunch of ways. Thanks for the advice!