The Dark Lord (2018)

The Dark Lord, Ye Tianzi, was filmed in the burning summer of 2017, extending into the cool and rainy fall. Adapted from a historical novel by Yueguan, the story was transformed into a heart-stirring tornado on screen by the same author.
During the dynasty of Ming, Guizhou Province in the southwestern corner of China was ruled under a tribal system. The rulers in the system were hereditary, and also formally appointed by the royal court. The protagonist, Ye Xiaotian, was originally head of a prison following his father’s foot step. Due to a financial drought in the family, he decided to take a trip of more than a thousand miles to Guizhou to deliver a will of an executed official under his watch, with a promised pay. The moment he stepped out of the capital, the moment he reached the landscape of Guizhou…are the moments that changed his life. The rainy season of Guizhou did not start pouring abruptly, but it gradually turned into a thunderstorm. The storm was so brutal that Ye Xiaotian’s life was barely spared each time. One could also say that he outplayed all his competitors by his wit, his persistence, and most importantly, by his love for Xia Yingying.
The story is not your usual story about power struggles and undying love. Ye Xiaotian is also not a prince, but a nameless prison head giving up his job to earn quick cash. But after watching the whole series, you will come to understand that the story is about those encounters, the rite of passage. Beautiful or cruel, they change you, shape you, lift you up to another stage of life with no point of return.
The series is not only equipped with the wonderful cast, delicate and sometimes massive props, but also fast-pacing plots and funny lines which drive you right through Ye Xiaotian’s journey.
Xu Haiqiao has done a fascinating job in portraying the protagonist, injecting emotional energy into his performance and into the minds of the audience. The emotions will be so real that they explode in your heart.
Song Zu’er played the beautiful and innocent Xia Yingying. She is the sweetheart of Ye Xiaotian, also the sweetheart of the whole series.
Liu Guanlin played the arch-enemy of Ye Xiaotian this time. The life transformation also happened on him drastically.
There are also so many veteran actors and actresses, who are, just like what Haiqiao has commented, looking exactly the way their characters should look like.
The journey of Ye Xiaotian in Guizhou has long been over, but his adventure in Guizhou will not be stopped when the tornado is still elevating its capacity. The series comes to an interim, and one can expect even more intensive plots ahead. But Ye Xiaotian won’t stop his steps even when the tornado is over. When he looked back through the opaque veils of rain of Guizhou, how he started the trip and ended up doing everything just to marry Yingying. Like our lives, they just move on. While we will always remember how we came to be who we are, sometimes we just don’t understand why.

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The most satisfying drama I've ever seen.

One of the best, funniest comedies I've ever seen.
The action of the drama is so interesting, unpredictable and fun that it completely distracted me from the shortcomings of the production. Yes, there were a few boring episodes, but I completely forgive them in light of the whole and a few satisfying scenes that I am able to forgive a lot more. The hero is 100% badass, intelligent, clever, with a sense of humor and a sense of honor. Only dubbing bothered me a bit, but what to do is c-drama.
I've watched this drama three times and had just as much fun each time. Some may be disappointed by the ending, but I'm disappointed by the fact that we won't see season 2, because I'm honestly curious about the heroes' adventures.

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Marvelous story, wonderful cast, very good production, this drama deserve much higher rating!

I came across this drama in Feb 2022, during the pandemic, after watching a dozen or so C-drama, including Joy of Life, Evernight, Untamed, Imperial Coroner, Good Bye My Princess, World of Honor, and more recently Novoland-Pearl Eclipse & Sword Snow Stride. To my surprise, I had not seen most of the main casts in this drama, except for Hao Shuai (Hua Yun Fei) whom I had seen in Ancient Detective. Of course, I had seen most of the veteran actors in various productions, including Liu Pei Qi, whose acting in 'Nothing Gold Can Stay' was truly amazing.

Story setting and costume *****

The story started very light, in a rather comedic scene, but it gets more serious with each episode. I have to say it was very well written, well-paced, and quite different from most historical/costume C-drama I had ever seen. I read that the writer is a university professor. I really like the setting of the story with many minorities tribes, very different from the majority of C-drama. The tribal costumes were a delight, though I suspected the tribal costumes were made shorter in this drama to show more legs. I also like the beautifully embroidered costumes worn by many of the supporting characters, as well as the female lead. The costumes of the male lead are mostly simple, but I like the combination of colors and pattern, it gave a very vibrant feeling.

Cinematography & scenery ****

I like the way they do the scene transition (turning it into painting-like) and the different characters they featured in the last part of the intro (sort of foretelling us who will be the focus in the episode). This drama spares us from annoyingly repeated flashbacks. Flashbacks were mainly used to tell us something we didn't know before (which had not been shown), except for one particular very sad incident, but even for that flashback the repeated scene was not lengthy and justified the mood.

The sceneries in this drama are beautiful, too. I know some of the scenery was CGI, but they were beautifully done. After watching too many C-dramas shot in Hengdian, and getting too familiar with the same town setting, canal, etc, it is nice to see something different. They also use adequate numbers of people as extra/background/crowd, unlike in some productions where the number of people in the scene didn't correlate to the story (e.g. Untamed).

Some of the scenes, especially the dances were a bit too revealing and seductive, but I guess that was to show the decadence character of Yang Yinglong, the chieftain of Bozhou. The battle scenes can be quite gruesome, and some scenes (master & servant/maid scenes) were rather sadistic, though I understand it meant to show us the real characters of the masters. How you treat your servant/maid tells a lot about your real characters. I also find one particular scene (rape) rather disturbing, but I understand later that this scene was very important to set the mood for what is coming. It was basically the pebble that started the huge snowball.

Acting*****

All the actors were extremely excellent! I truly love all the main actors, especially the two main leads. I'm going to search for more drama where they were involved. Even the antagonist Xu Bo Yi was very well portrayed. I also love the Lady Ya character, portrayed by Chen Zi Han (Xi Sang Gui in World of Honor). One unusual thing in this drama was, almost every character has their own comedic moments, sort of making a joke of themselves. As one reviewer mentioned, the comedy part helps to balance the darkness in the later part.

Overall*****

I can relate the incidences and a lot of the conversation/dialogue in this drama with our modern life, where you meet jealous colleagues, incompetent managers, back-stabbing, framing, merger, acquisition, hostile take-over, etc.

All in all, I highly recommended this drama, perhaps to a more mature audience. It may not be suitable for teenagers or young adults looking for a light-hearted fluffy romance story.

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After sitting on this review for a while, I realized that the show is still firmly rooted in my mind. I've been watching a lot of shows, so for this show to be able to stay with me even after finishing this 1-2 months ago... it's pretty impressive.

Production value is good. I've seen better, but not by much. The acting is good. I felt attached to the characters. The supporting characters were amazing. I adore them all tbh.

I loved the main couple way more than I anticipated. The actors worked well with each other. As romance wasn't a major part in this show, the scenes were the couple could be sweet with each other were even more valuable and I appreciated the effort put into it.

This season ends with an open ending (if you're only looking for the romance part - that one is sad) and I'm happy to know that there will be a second season. There are too many plots not resolved really.

The music was good, I especially like the ending. It's on my daily rotation with other classics like Eternal Love and Bloody Romance OST.

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Unique Intelligent Story with Epic Storywrting

Here, Ye Xiaotian the main protagonist does not have any martial art skills and uses his brain to solve problems as an official and climbs high by being fair and justice at the same time. Honestly, this is the type of drama that would make the audience be more intelligent, it was written well with good plot twists. The directors have also paid respect to other cultures. Never I thought the day would come when a court official in medieval China would dance to a bollywood song. That was so entertaining.

In terms of acting Joe Xu's acting is phenomenal, he has a lot of experience in acting and he nailed it basically. So did the other characters as well. The music is also good, I really loved the outro it was amazing and gives you positive vibes. Overall, it is an amazing drama not too thrilling but was interesting, cannot wait for the second season.

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If you like Joy of Life or Snow Sword Stride, do not miss this

Never have I watched a series that kept the suspense level up as this one and not once could I even imagine what the next episode would bring. Whoever wrote the screenplay should be lauded for giving this such depth and strength. The main and support characters were drawn well although I didn’t much care for the FL, Yingying, who was nothing more than an airhead but I suppose her character was pivotal to the evolution of the ML’s character from a seemingly unperturbed good guy to one who could very well turn into an anti-hero. In all, the storytelling was outstanding and for once, I did not want the 48 episode-long drama to end.

A word of caution though, it ends on a cliffhanger and the likelihood of us getting a second season is low. Still, do not allow this to deter you since season one gave us a definitive resolution.

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Who is the Dark Lord - the hero or the villian?

I watched this drama because of Joe Xu, after encountering him in Journey of Flower and Lost Love in Times. He acted really well in all these 3 dramas, besides being good-looking. He brought out the mischievous yet scheming character of the hero in this drama. This drama was entertaining and I burst into loud laughter during the comic scenes although some were quite slapstick. It captivated me to keep 'chasing' episode after episode. Overall, as with a lot of well produced Chinese drama, acting was excellent, story was interesting and scene setting was great. It is interesting to see how the hero of the story tricked the bad guys and upheld justice. The final episode was somewhat disappointing and more of an introduction to a sequel. Until the final episode, I still could not figure out who is the dark lord - the hero or the villain - since both were cunning and underhanded.

To give some feedback to the production team if they were to read this, some areas could be improved. Music was not that great - the attempt to reproduce music of the south was dismal - it was neither opera nor folk music.

The tricks of the hero were quite underhanded and somewhat brutal. For example, he killed the five serial rapists - while I agree that since they were so unrepentant and arrogant, they might as well be dead - it is a little harsh by western standards - even though I am not a fan of western standards. I am highlighting this out of concern about the influence of such dramas on the moral values of young impressionable generations. Working in a university, I have seen some bad behaviours and questionable moral values. Themes of successful dramas tend to be emulated by later dramas and the consistent re-enforcement of this value is not necessarily good. I can tolerate the occasional drama for entertainment value, I am not keen on seeing a perpetuation of such production.

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Un drama troppo sottovalutato

Non so per quale motivo la valutazione generale non sia più elevata. Le recensioni sono tutte entusiastiche... lo sarà anche la mia.
Avviso immediatamente che esiste una scena che mi ha molto stupito: ad un certo punto si assiste ad uno stupro, di gruppo. Ora, per essere in un drama cinese l'ho trovato fin troppo descrittivo. Ci sono un paio di inquadrature veramente pesanti e mi stupisce che abbiano passato la censura. Noi siamo abituati a ben altro, ma... ci siamo capiti.
Detto questo, sono rimasta particolarmente colpita da questa serie, che unisce una storia avvincente e coerente, con ben pochi momenti di noia, ad un cast di tutto rispetto.
Intendiamoci: se quello che cercate è un gruppo di ragazzini bellocci e fighetti, non è qui che lo troverete. Il protagonista, nel panorama degli attori cinesi, non è sicuramente né tra i più alti, né tra i più belli, né tra i più aitanti. Però sta tranquillamente fra i più bravi. Xu Hai Qiao è il vero mattatore che fa da filo conduttore all'intero drama e riesce ad interpretare benissimo tutte le diverse sfumature di un personaggio complesso come quello che gli è stato affidato. Un antieroe, scaltro e navigato, innamorato, ma anche vendicativo, che non esita a prendere nelle proprie mani una giustizia che giudica carente. Non è un buono, certamente. Diciamo che è un meno cattivo.
Ma anche tutti gli altri attori, dai comprimari, alle spalle, fino ai personaggi secondari, tutti hanno fatto un lavoro egregio.
I costumi sono veramente molto belli, ricchi senza essere eccessivamente sfarzosi, le ambientazioni splendide e le coreografie dei combattimenti più che accettabili. La colonna sonora non è proprio stellare, ma si difende più che dignitosamente.
Ma attori, costumi e compagnia cantando nulla potrebbero se non avessero alle spalle una storia. E qui di storia ce n'è, eccome!
Una storia densa di avvenimenti, in diverse ambientazioni, interessante e fluida, dove le cose accadono per un motivo anche quando, verso la fine, ci si domanda perché una certa persona si comporti in maniera così poco furba. La lunga, intensa cavalcata ci lascia alla fine di un arco, con la promessa di nuovi intrighi, lotte e avventure. Intanto, ci siamo molto divertiti: abbiamo riso e pianto, siamo stati sulle spine, abbiamo provato rabbia e disperazione, gioia e speranza.
Come piccolo minus, si può rimarcare come i dignitari di un paese straniero siano stati descritti in maniera quasi offensiva. E sorvoliamo pietosamente sul balletto Bollywood...
Certo, apparentemente non c'è un lietissimo fine. Dico apparentemente perché, guardando gli interpreti della seconda serie (ancora in lavorazione) qualche dubbio uno se lo potrebbe anche porre. Ma la promessa di una nuova stagione tiene viva l'attesa. Non vedo l'ora.

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The beginning left me wanting something more, but I decided to stick with it. At episode 5, though there are some things lost in translation, I'm loving the fact Ye Xiao Tian (Joe Xu) is showing that while he lacks any real, physical fighting skills (lol) he has a big heart and he's determined to ensure that justice is served & dealt out. Even though he's mischievous, he's still brave enough to face threats when it affects the lives of others. I even love that he admitted he was scared. A truly brave man acknowledges that... I look forward to seeing what else this series has to offer. :)

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