Ice Fantasy had the biggest hype before its release, and I was in the middle of it because I'm a huge fantasy fan.
The drama has gorgeous posters and interesting description, with overall wonderful themes to work with (family, the burden of royal duties, betrayal, brotherhood, forbidden love) but I guess the team of directors, writers and producers just weren't ready do right with something of this scale.
In hindsight, it would never become the chinese Game Of Thrones as everyone was expecting. Not that I like Game of Thrones that much (I dropped at the fourth season), but I really think that the hype was the worst thing that could have happened to this drama, because:
1) this is more similar to tolkien than george martin.
2) this is a drama for children/early teens
3) the huge budget spent was most for the CGI (and itsn't good)
4) it has too many episodes for the poor paced plot
Firstly, about the FANTASY aspect: it was difficult to believe in the world they were trying to portray when everything was so fake - from their pointed ears that at some camera angles you could see weren't even glued right (they were slipping!!), the scenery with bad paper-maché, the world that didn't follow its own rules except when it was convenient and the powers that didn't make sense. All in all, they could have worked on the worldbuilding more than the CGI (that failed horribly).
PLOTWISE, the story could have been great but it was just dull and childish. There were many moments when the silence was awkward, or the conversation was dumb, or the character's action almost made me cry (and not for good reasons). The events were poor paced and I had to reread the description over and over again to remember myself why I chose this drama. Their worst mistake was going for so many chapters and bad writers - I dropped at the 20th episode because the writers were still "lost" at that point!
The ACTING, well, as in every fantasy the characters are sterotyped but the director took it a little bit too far. Honestly tho, I can't fault them much because they were clearly following the director's orders, and the script they were given wasn't the best to work with. I think it's worth mentioning that the impression might have been bad because the editing was a whole new level of incompetent (I honestly thought that c-dramas had overcame this).
The OST was good!
All in all, I'm afraid I sound too disappointed but I suppose I wasn't really the audience they were aiming for (I'm 20yo). If you are younger than that, _NEW TO FANTASY_ in general or just don't care too much about... uh, pace... I hope it can be a good drama for you. The main actors, at least, are wonderful eye-candy! And it wasn't all bad, there were moments that really grab your attention.
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