This year’s summer season competition started earlier than in the past.
Since June, each platform has come up with its own "special masterpiece": iQiyi's " Fox Demon Little Matchmaker ", Youku's " Mo Yuyunjian ", Tencent's " Rose" The story of ""...
After a lot of competition, iQiyi unconsciously fell behind, and the several new dramas it produced did not meet expectations. "Fox Fairy Matchmaker" only received a measly 5.6 Douban score, and viewers expressed their disappointment in their expectations. Although "The Boy Who Can't See a Shadow" received a Douban score of 7.1, its overall popularity did not keep up with word-of-mouth.
Therefore, in order to reverse the decline, iQiyi launched a new drama full of highlights - "Yan Xin Ji" .
"Yan Xin Ji" has zero publicity and zero pre-heating. It has been firmly ranked "No. 1 on the platform's hot list" since its launch. The results may seem promising, but in fact the situation is weak. The number of views on the first day was 1.375 million, and the average number of effective views for each episode during the first 6 episodes was only 229,000. Although the number of broadcasts increased in the later period due to the support of fans of the actors, it was a drop in the bucket and could not be compared with other popular dramas during the period.
However, as an ancient puppet, "Yan Xin Ji" itself has many highlights. In terms of starring roles, Luo Yunxi , Song Yi , Chen Yao, Cheng Lei and others are all regular players in the field of ancient puppets, and their appearance is online; in terms of supporting roles, the series has a large number of familiar faces from celebrities, including He Many old, middle-aged and young actors including Zhonghua, Yue Yueli, Yuan Qiongdan, Wen Zhengrong, Huang Xiaolei, and Wang Chengsi made a surprise appearance, and the lineup was luxurious.
"Yan Xin Ji" is also called "Chinese version of "Inner Beauty"" . The core setting is based on the Korean drama " Inner Beauty ". According to some fans, the drama bought the copyright, but the drama company did not respond.
, a creative method of adapting and remaking overseas IPs, has reached a climax in recent years. Last year alone, there were " please don't believe her " and " I love you!" ", " Rescue the Suspect ", " Lighting Store " and many other mainland movies adapted from Korean IP. For film and television creators, this kind of adaptation and remake is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, the original work can guarantee the basic quality of the work; on the other hand, an adaptation that only scratches the surface and misses the point will fall into the "ruin" The stereotype of "classic" and "ruining the original".
"Yan Xin Ji" belongs to the latter. Hu Rong, the screenwriter of the play, is a "careerist". She not only adapted the modern background of the original IP to ancient China, grafted the "transformation" and "face blindness" settings of the original work, but also added many popular ancient puppets. Elements: Detective, suspense, three marriages and three divorces...
The story in the play takes place in an imaginary background, but judging from the settings such as "Jinwu Guard" and "Twelve Bands", it borrows the background of the Tang Dynasty . The biggest highlight of the play is its design and setting. From the Chinese-style wedding of riding on a horse's saddle, scattering grains, and crossing the Hundred Sons Picture, to the small makeup, costumes, and jade railings, they all create a simple, elegant, romantic and joyful wedding. The real-life shooting raised the quality of the entire drama to a new level. In the 16th episode, the male protagonist looks at the female protagonist from a high place, and the female protagonist is thinking about the male protagonist at the same time. The plot is stunning at first sight, and the emotional concentration is overwhelming. It is obvious that the composition and artistic conception have been worked hard.
In sharp contrast to the pleasing art production, there are frequent omissions in its content - compared with the original work, "only has its shape but not its core" .
The opening chapter of "Yan Xin Ji" mainly revolves around an ancient anti-drug case. The male protagonist Jiang Xinbai (played by Luo Yunxi) is the chief arrester of the Capital Chief Yamen Division, and is ordered to investigate the "Kui Draft". Sunflower grass is a highly profitable drug that is harmful to the country and the people. It can make people hallucinogenic and addictive. In order to investigate the case, Jiang Xinbai came to Heman City and suspected that the local General Nan Jifeng was the real culprit behind Kui Draft. But because there is no evidence, Jiang Xinbai can only take steps to lure the real murderer into taking the bait. During the investigation of the case, Jiang Xinbai and the visiting doctor Yan Nanxing (played by Song Yi) did not know each other. Yan Nanxing has superb medical skills, but there is an unspeakable secret, that is, he will transform every full moon night, and his transformation appearance is unknown. He can be male or female, old or young.It just so happened that Jiang Xinbai hit her head when she was young, leaving behind the sequelae of "face blindness". She sees people with a "mosaic" and cannot identify people's faces.
As a result, one of the male and female protagonists can transform, and the other cannot recognize people. When they meet together, they develop "concave and convex" character traits, and the disease "goes in both directions."
Except for the "transformation" and "face blindness" settings of the male and female protagonists, which are taken from the original work, other stories in the play are all original. This leads to a problem, that is, plot is a setting service, and is not prioritized. Under normal circumstances, script creation should put the story first, and the characters should serve the story. But "Yan Xin Ji" is completely the opposite. The setting takes over the show and overwhelms the interest of the story. This is why viewers generally report that the show looks "slow and boring".
In the play, the male and female protagonists are assigned different action goals. The male protagonist is responsible for the detective line, which extends from the detective line to revenge for his father and the righteousness of his family and country, elevating the narrative concept of the whole play; the female protagonist is mainly responsible for the comedy line, while creating misunderstandings and jokes through "identity misplacement" during the transformation. While looking for elixir to cure his strange "transformation" disease.
While the two were acting, they developed a good feeling, completing the conventional emotional construction of an ancient puppet show. Since the two of them have different missions, occasionally getting together to "distribute sweets" seems overly deliberate. For example, they have known each other for less than two episodes, and the relationship has not yet taken shape, and the male protagonist takes advantage of the alcohol to touch the female protagonist's eyebrows and lips, while the female protagonist looks shy; or some clichéd puppet love jokes appear. : The male and female protagonists have been in love since childhood, and they kissed each other when they were in danger underwater.
Although the heroine seems to "love this trick", in the eyes of the audience, these presumptuous and ambiguous little actions can easily arouse disgust, and have an industrial saccharine feel of sprinkling sugar for the sake of sprinkling sugar. Due to the hasty emotional construction in the play, the sense of cp between the male and female protagonists is greatly reduced, making it difficult for people to be attracted to it.
The acting skills of the two leading actors are only barely passable and cannot achieve the icing on the cake effect. Luo Yunxi often appears in some routine "ancient puppet performance paradigms". For example, when the relationship between the male and female protagonists has not yet broken through in the early stage, he suddenly and dotingly smiles at the female protagonist many times; The level of flying around is superficial, and when a character is raped, he will only howl to express his inner grievances.
The plot of the whole drama seems to be laid out by suspense cases, but in fact it does not pay attention to the suspense part. There is no breakthrough-style crime solving, and there are very few scenes where the villain fights back, resulting in no sense of tension and oppression of the battle between good and evil. This drama also has a common problem with other suspense dramas, which is that its plot advancement relies too much on accidental elements. For example, the male and female protagonists were washed up on the shore after being in danger underwater, and then discovered a large area of Gui grass and villagers who grew Gui grass, and then ignored it. He burned all the Guicao without caring about whether it would harm the lives of the villagers.
As an adapted drama, the drama also has the problem that the theme of deviates from . For the IP "Inner Beauty", South Korea has launched two works, one was a movie released in 2015, and the other was a TV series broadcast in 2018. Judging from the setting, "Yan Xin Ji" is adapted from the drama version.
In fact, both the movie version and the drama version of "Inner Beauty" are exploring one issue: how should we get rid of external restrictions, transcend appearance anxiety, age anxiety, body anxiety and even gender anxiety, to start from the heart and truly love Previous person.
In the drama version "Inner Beauty" , the heroine Han Shijie, who often transforms, is a star with outstanding beauty. Because she often runs away in public places (before the transformation), she is involved in many scandals, and she cannot fall in love. Until the severely face-blind male protagonist appears.
The two get closer and closer after meeting unexpectedly. The way the male protagonist recognizes each other is not the beauty and dazzling halo of a star, but the inner beauty radiating from the female protagonist that does not need to be identified with the eyes. These delicate observations and judgments constitute an important way of expressing the emotional tension between the male and female protagonists of the play, and also show that the essence of love is a relationship that accumulates over time.
But when it comes to "Yan Xin Ji", the theme of the original work has been greatly weakened.The most obvious point is that Yan Nanxing only transformed once in the first 6 episodes, and it did not have much impact on the main plot line and the relationship between the characters. In the later period, no matter how Yan Nanxing transformed, the one who really formed an emotional bond with Jiang Xinbai was the original Yan Nanxing, Song Yi's version of Yan Nanxing. The so-called "transformation" in the play is more like a gimmick to create laughter. , nothing else.
Overall, apart from the beautiful visuals and costumes, "Yan Xin Ji" is a mediocre adaptation in other aspects. Although it has a novel setting, it seems to be weak in execution and fails to reasonably embed the Korean drama DNA into the ancient puppet drama. Perhaps the greatest significance of its existence is to once again tell us with action: For film and television dramas, telling good stories is the foundation of everything.
Gang Zan'er
Editor Chai Yingrui
