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cesare-and-raistlin · 5 years

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The Untamed/MDZS Spoiler Review

Book rating: 3.5/5 Drama rating: 8.5/10

This is going to be a comparative review of the novel and the live-action drama. I started with the drama, and watched about 25 episodes (all that were available at the time) before I started reading the book. I finished the book at around the time episode 38 came out.

So both my viewing and reading experiences were directly impacted by me consuming both versions at the same time, which is why I don’t think I can write a review that isn’t about comparing the two.

Overall, I’d say I like the drama better. The main actors’ performances, Xiao Zhan’s in particular, played a large role in that. But neither work was perfect, and each had their respective strong points.

First off, I think I have to make it clear that Wei Wuxian is my favourite character (which is good, since he’s the main character). This is important for this review, as I will take into great consideration how each version treated him, his story and his arc.

I usually separate my drama rating into two: I give a maximum of 5 points for objective quality and 5 points for personal appreciation. But I had to cheat here. The most The Untamed could have gotten with that system is a generous 7.5/10, and that feels somewhat wrong for a drama that made me feel so much.

The Untamed is probably the first longer Chinese drama that I watched where I never felt like there were too many episodes. Even The Rise of Phoenixes and Guardian, which I both love, had filler that could easily have been cut. But this drama was almost never boring and mostly stayed focused on the main characters, and with 50 episodes, that’s really impressive.

Dark Wuxian

The best thing about the novel for me was probably how delectably gruesome it was. The drama was only PG-13—and I’m being generous—, but the book was R-rated in every aspect. And while the sex scenes weren’t especially my thing (more on that later, unfortunately), the violence was unrestrained in the best possible way.

I love villains. I really do. And while Wuxian wasn’t exactly a villain, every single one of his villainous scenes was just marvellous. I think he has a body count of about 6,000 in this book. Six. Thousand. His Sunshot Campaign moments were some of my favourite, especially the scene where Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng finally find him after searching for him for three months. The way Wuxian dealt with Wen Chao was extremely gruesome (after all, he made him eat his own legs), but it was sooo satisfying.

(Please don’t come out of this review thinking that I’m a sadist. This kind of events in real life would absolutely horrify me. But this is fiction. And I enjoy my fiction best when it’s ruthless.)

Dark Wuxian, as I’ve been calling him, is definitely my favourite aspect of the book. We don’t get enough of him, but what we get is amazing. Wuxian is a morally gray character. On a D&D spectrum, over the course of this story, he goes from chaotic good to chaotic evil to chaotic neutral. He does good things, he does bad things, he does selfish things, he does selfless things. He’s a complex character.

But it seems that the drama decided that no, Wei Wuxian wouldn’t be a bad person. At all. The only really reprehensible thing we see him do (and even that is debatable) is killing a few dozen Wens and torturing Wen Chao (in a much less gory way than in the book, but I can live with that). From the moment after he comes back to Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng, he is somewhat… muzzled. The book has him digging out corpses and using zombies to fight in the war, while the drama opted for the much less morally ambiguous “smoke ghosts” that aren’t ever really explained. There were no giggling zombie girls serving him tea either, which I also feel is a shame.

But, then again, I can live with that.

What annoyed me the most, and something for which I cannot forgive the drama, is the Nightless City battle. Forget how poorly executed the whole thing was—I’d given up on this drama’s technical quality long ago. I can accept bad CGI. I can accept incompetent editing. I can even accept odious music. What I will not accept, however, is Wuxian to be absolved of his every fault by making someone else the author of the massacre and the reason for Jiang Yanli’s death. The greatest thing about Wei Wuxian is that is he not blameless. But that’s what the drama made him, and I’m absolutely bitter about it. The drama’s Wuxian doesn’t lose control: control is taken away from him. He doesn’t pay the price for his overconfidence. Jin Zixuan dies at Qionqi Path, not because Wuxian’s instincts and PTSD get the better of him and make him lash out like a cornered dog, but because someone intervenes. His sister dies, but it’s not his fault. And this is really frustrating me.

The book asks this question: Can someone who does bad things be a good person?

But the drama doesn’t, because the drama doesn’t allow Wuxian to be bad.

Also, we’re supposed to accept that Su She was talented enough to overpower Wuxian at the technique that he himself invented? And without owning the Tiger Seal? You’re kidding me, right?

Storytelling and Authenticity

One of the major changes in adapting the novel to live action was the decision to spend 60% of the story in the past storyline, something the novel was very concise about. The events presented in both versions are generally the same, but the drama greatly expanded on the material that it had, and let me say, this was the best thing they could have done. Making most major characters meet at the Cloud Recesses? Genius move. The characters had time to build relationships, something they didn’t always have in the book. It was necessary, notably, to establish a connection between Wei Wuxian and Wen Ning and Wen Qing before the YunmengJiang massacre, so that the rescue wouldn’t come out of nowhere, something it kind of did in the novel. The relationship between the three Yunmeng siblings was explored in detail, making their later tragedy several times stronger and more painful. Though Wuxian stayed the main character the entire time, the drama also gave a POV to other characters, most notably to Lan Wangji, which was a great improvement to the book, where Wangji is a POV characters for maybe two scenes. While I’m never a fan of not having Wuxian’s prettiness on my screen, we do needed to see scenes like the attack on the Cloud Recesses or Wangji’s punishment with our own eyes. Getting these moments through exposition only would have made for weaker storytelling.

And weaker storytelling was what we unfortunately got with the novel. This is not the right story for a one protagonist only third person limited point of view. Especially when that one protagonist is dead for 13 years, 13 years during which many things happen. Wuxian gets reincarnated, and now needs to know what has been going on when he was dead. Being limited by the narrative style that she set herself, the author was forced to deliver the exposition in huge chunks through the Empathy spell, occupying several chapters each time and thoroughly boring me in the process. This could have been delivered organically with additional POV characters, but the book went the route of the exposition dump.

To be fair, similar exposition dumps are also there in the drama. But they do not feel as much out of place, as the drama made a point to show us scenes with and about the concerned characters beforehand, Jin Guangyao in particular. He was an already well-established character long before he became a major player in the story. Which certainly wasn’t the case in the book.

Something that is easier to do on screen than on paper is the everyday gestures of the characters. Things like Jiang Cheng rolling his eyes at everything that Wuxian does, Wuxian holding his flute Chenqing the same way one would do a sword, the Yunmeng bros playfully hitting each other at any given time, Wen Ning looking at everything with puppy eyes, the ducklings junior disciples using exaggerated fighting stances, Wuxian and Wangji’s eyes crossing every time one of them decides to do something.

You can, technically, put all of these, every instance, in a book. But by writing something, you draw attention to it. You not only make it important, you also make your main character notice it. Which is why writers don’t include every single move their characters make in their book, since most aren’t necessary to the story, would feel repetitive and would distract the reader, or would make the protagonist more observant than they should be. The beauty of film, however, is that you can include these details, as much as you want, without directly drawing the viewer’s attention to them. There are many ways to do this; wide or crowded shots are some examples. These seemingly unimportant details were extremely useful in accomplishing what seemed to be one of the drama’s main objectives: they made the whole thing feel sincere. Character quirks and background interactions work wonders at making you feel like the people on your screen are real and not just played by actors. The relationships between the characters felt so much more real and made me feel so many things that the book didn’t. While I wouldn’t go so far as saying that the book characters felt stale or artificial, the drama definitely added another layer of authenticity.

The drama was better at portraying Wuxian’s conflicted emotional state in the events from his return from the Burial Mounds to the Nightless City battle. Of course, it’s to be expected, as the drama spent way more time in the past storyline than the novel did. But by deciding to spend more time with the Jiang siblings, it was also able to depict the way Wuxian’s behaviour changed and how his new physical weakness affected him in a way that wasn’t present in the book. Wuxian doesn’t possess a golden core any longer, and he doesn’t want anyone to know about it. But there are things he cannot fake. Two scenes in particular come to mind. In the first, Wangji attacks Wuxian suddenly, and after barely blocking a few blows, a shocked Wuxian just closes his eyes and waits for the sword to kill him. He used to be one of the best swordsmen, but without any spiritual energy, he now knows that he cannot win a sword fight against Lan Wangji. So he closes his eyes and accepts his imminent death with a painful expression on his face. In the second scene, Wuxian tries to reconcile with Jiang Cheng after an argument, but his brother shoves him the second he touches him. Wuxian falls on the ground, and stays there. The look on his face is a combination of shock and hurt, as he comes to the realization that even playful fighting with his brother is now out of his grasp.

These scenes were a great addition by the drama. Not only did they succeed in adding tension to the characters’ relationships, they also successfully teased Wuxian’s lack of golden core. In the book, this reveal doesn’t entirely come out of nowhere, but you also really needed to pay attention to every detail to guess it. The drama plays a different game: while it is still perfectly possible for less attentive viewers to be surprised by the later reveal, the real emotional pull of the subplot has now become “When will the people who love Wuxian discover the sacrifices that he made?” The fact that the mystery is easier to guess for viewers simply manages to make them more invested in the eventual reveal and how it will affect the characters. And the reveal itself is… *kisses fingers* delicious.

Adaptations Are Hard

In adapting the book, the drama succeeded in many things, several of which I’ve already mentioned. But too many times to count, it also failed to stand on its own.

This isn’t a drama that was ever going to be 100% faithful to its source material. Because of China’s censorship laws, it had to change a lot of things to be able to air. Of course, the gay romance was turned into a bromance (although it didn’t dupe anybody). All the R-rated content was turned into PG-13 appropriate. Undead Wen Ning was made kind of alive in the drama (reminding me of how Chu Shuzhi was a zombie in the Guardian novel but a perfectly alive dude in the drama). Most walking corpses were replaced by black shadows, and were only used by villains. (China really doesn’t like undead characters, guys.) It has been brought to my attention that Wuxian’s toned down evilness may also be a result of adapting to censorship, and if that’s the case, it makes me both more annoyed and more understanding of what the drama did.

However.

When you change something from the source material, whatever the reason is, you have to think about what the implications of your changes are. Which the scriptwriters of The Untamed clearly didn’t.

“Wei Wuxian has been killing indiscriminately since the Sunshot Campaign!” No he hasn’t.

“I’ve fought 3,000 people before, I can take 3,000 of you now.” No you didn’t.

“Sect Leader Jiang, don’t forget that one of the main powers that surrounded the Burial Mounds was you.” That siege never even happened.

Over and over, the drama changes things from the book but doesn’t adapt its later scenes to fit those changes. This results in a succession of lines that feel out of place and incongruous.

In a similar way, they have Wuxian be reincarnated into his old body instead of into Mo Xuanyu’s body. And I get it. I understand why. Your lead actor may very well be the best thing about your show, and giving him up midway through would be a pain for several reasons. BUT. They kept the whole thing about people not being able to recognize Wuxian until the Koi Tower sequence when he unsheathes Suibian. Even though he has the same jaw, the same hair, the same clothes, the same voice, the same basically everything that he had before his death. I guess the drama realized that pushing this farce with Wangji wouldn’t work, so they dropped the whole series of scenes where Wuxian tries to make Wangji believe that he’s Mo Xuanyu. It still doesn’t redeem how senseless other scenes are. In the book, Jin Ling frees Wuxian after Jiang Cheng caught him because he genuinely thinks that Wuxian is Mo Xuanyu, whom he knows personally and probably doesn’t want to see get tortured. But in the drama, he frees Wuxian because…? Jiang Cheng has seen Wuxian’s face and has stated that it’s him, so Jin Ling shouldn’t have any reason to doubt his uncle.

It’s an adaptation. It’s alright to change things. But guys, the changes have to make sense!

Did anybody proofread the script? Nobody?

The Technical Stuff, or Me Shitting on This Drama for 700 Words Straight

If what you’re looking for is competent filmmaking, then I would suggest you look elsewhere.

But if you want an interesting story, sympathetic characters, poignant relationships, and themes of what is right and what is wrong and all the gray areas in between, then go ahead!

— Me, August 15

So.

This is not well-made television.

Like, at all.

Ok, so the costumes are pretty great. The different clans are easy to distinguish while never seeming cartoonish, the details of each garment are exquisite, and, let’s face it, Wuxian black robes simply stole the show. The weapons were really pretty. Some of the tracks from the soundtrack are actually quite nice. There are a few beautiful visuals. The main leads’ acting was good.

But I’m sorry, I have no more nice things to say.

The cinematographer obviously didn’t know how to frame a shot. Camera angles were often awkward or downright useless. The camera moved amateurishly, enough to bring the production values down by itself. Chinese drama reviewer Avenue X has dedicated a significant part of her Untamed review to the problems with this drama’s photography, and since she knows what she’s talking about way more than I do, I’ll leave a link to her video here: X

The editor didn’t know how to edit a scene. It was mostly apparent during fight scenes, with their weird cuts and incessant fading to black for no reason, although I don’t think that I could call any scene of this 50-episode drama “well edited.” Even my favourites. The best ones are just passable.

The editing and cinematography aren’t necessarily bad because of a lack of budget, which we know was a problem with this drama. You can make simple but great content with a small budget. No, they’re bad because the people responsible were not competent.

The two directors themselves don’t have the best track record. The Legends and The Plough Department of Song Dynasty are not well-made dramas in any way. Even Secrets of the Three Kingdoms, on which director Cheng Wai Man worked, was great because of its script and its characters but was brought down by its underwhelmingly average technical craftsmanship.

The sound mixer didn’t know how to juggle the diegetic music and the soundtrack. You know, when you have a main character who fights with a flute, maybe, just maybe, don’t use the tracks from the soundtracks that have flute in them in his scenes. There are many points during the drama where I could hear flute music but had no way of knowing whether that music was diegetic or not, if Wuxian was really playing or if it was part of the soundtrack. Wen Chao: “The flute! The flute! Is it the flute?” Wen Zhuliu: “It’s not. It’s the sound of the wind.” [Meanwhile in the background: flute music.] At this point of the story, Wen Chao is clearly deranged and Wen Zhuliu acts as the voice of reason. However, as the audience, we can hear the sound of a flute. Is it part of the soundtrack? Is Wen Zhuliu in denial or lying to Wen Chao? Is Wuxian playing for Wen Chao’s ears only? There was no need for this scene and others like it to be so confusing.

Most of the secondary actors didn’t know how to act. Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo were mostly great, particularly once they got used to each other better, and I can name a few actors whom I think did a really good job (Xuan Lu who played Jiang Yanli and Liu Haikuan who played Lan Xichen) but most others were passable at best and horrible at worst.

The VFX artists were just lost all the time. Though I will say that the black shadows created by Wuxian usually looked pretty cool. But they had neither the time nor budget to make this CGI-heavy show seem realistic in any way. Is this a surprise? No. I’m used to Chinese web-drama CGI by now. And I actually appreciate that The Untamed made some efforts to have practical effects when possible. They still looked bad (that giant dog was absolutely terrible), but they could have been so much worse if they had been computer animated. At least they tried.

We Need to Talk About Wangxian, I Guess

The drama’s version of Wangxian is amazing. It’s soft and romantic and heartfelt and authentic. And the fact that it’s technically supposed to be a bromance doesn’t take anything away from it. Nobody in their right mind watches this show and thinks, “They’re just friends.” Where Guardian still tried to (unsuccessfully) pass Weilan as bros, the people who made The Untamed were all *wink wink* with the entire relationship: having Wuxian and Wangji call each other “soulmates” and gaze at each other like the two idiots in love that they are, holding hands, being overprotective, and even including a damn montage of them falling in love. (How this drama still hasn’t been cancelled in China is an absolute mystery to me.)

Book Wangxian is… something else.

In the drama, Wuxian and Wangji become friends rather fast. And while Wuxian still has some moments when he believes that Wangji is there to put him down (“Lan Zhan, I’ve always known that we’d end up in a fight to the death”), he mostly understands that they’re friends. Book Wuxian, on the contrary, still believes that Wangji is out to get him well into the present storyline. And let me be clear: both versions work. They carry very different emotions, but they work. Until we get to the romance.

Because in the book, Wangxian kinds of happens out of nowhere.

In the novel, Wuxian suddenly goes from “Lan Wangji hates me and I need to get away from him” to “Is homosexuality contagious” to “I really wanted to sleep with you!” (in front of his damn nephew, may I add), and that’s fine, in theory. But the transitions in between those changes of heart aren’t really there. 99% of the story is told from Wuxian’s point of view, and I still came out of the book not really knowing why he likes Wangji. That’s kind of a problem.

And then there’s the sex scenes. Oh, the sex scenes.

It would be an exaggeration to say that they sex scenes of the book ruined Wangxian for me, but they certainly did nothing good for the ship in my heart.

It’s not really on brand of me to talk about these things in detail, so I’ll be brief: there is a consent issue with pretty much every single sex scene. In the very first, Wangji is inebriated and cannot consent. The very worst one, which is part of the extras, is clearly a rape. A dream rape, sure, but a rape nonetheless. And the book treats it like something, I don’t know, exciting? So yeah, after finishing the book, Wangxian was making me uncomfortable. The show’s absolute sweetness made it better, but I still have a sour taste in my mouth.

Conclusion

After this review, you may be thinking, “Wow, she really doesn’t like either the book or the drama that much.” But this is just harsh love. I have an eternal soft spot in my heart for this story. To quote my own tweets:

“I have to hit pause every 30 seconds because I love Wuxian so much my heart hurts.”

“it's so good

i wanna cry”

#the untamed #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #wei wuxian #chen qing ling #lan wangji #that demonic fluffball

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