“Legend of Anle” Ratings Slide
Adapted from popular web novel Di Huang Shu, currently airing drama Legend of An Le tells the heartwrenching story of Ren Anle and Crown Prince Han Ye. Sadly, major changes made to the drama version has sent viewership tumbling for the series, with even the addition of liulang cast actors Dilraba Dilmurat (迪麗熱巴) and Simon Gong Jun (龔俊), and buzzworthy “nose tip” and “Palms” kissing scenes failing to reverse its tide of mediocre ratings and reviews so far.
Ren Anle – from strong female lead to lovestruck
It is understood that Legend of An Le is an S+ rated historical drama which had 500 million RMB pumped into its making. Disappointingly, the series failed to live up to its hype, with every aspect from production, special effects, filters, cinematography to imaging of characters given the thumbs-down.
Originally a female-focused story boasting a strong female protagonist, its essence has allegedly been altered by the watered-down plot. In the novel, Ren Anle was an opinionated and career-minded female with her own ideals and even fought Han Ye for the throne, with the two later joining hands as life partners. Yet, the drama painted a very different Ren Anle, as lovestruck and starry-eyed, who resorted to ways and means to win Han Ye’s love instead – the disparity making it hard for viewers to accept.
With the barrage of criticism for the drama, its lead scriptwriter even jumped out and clarified that he had “written only up to episode 11 of the drama” and did not participate in changes to later parts of the 39-episode production. However, this appeared to backfire as netizens and viewers pointed out how the storyline was so bad that even its scriptwriters wanted nothing to do with it. They added that the lack of a consistent scriptwriter led to the loss of all the original highlights of the female-focused drama, lamenting “scriptwriters nowaways can’t even do a decent job of copying!”
Source: Upmedia
I feel China is quite good at producing Young love, Uni themed, First love dramas…I have watched afew really good ones… I am not huge fan of XianXia dramas as they often fail to live up to expectations. The good ones are very good but few and far of them. I do enjoy some of their historical Palace genre…
Xianxia is only works if the leads have strong chemistry lol. If they don’t, then it’ll be a 50-50. At least for me lol. Also China is just too focus on the wrong things, they should just focus on the plot and the characters but instead, they have to work around the jungle of red tapes, the jungle of CP/fandoms potential war that might put them in jeopardy.
The problem with DD is she can’t do chemistry well. It’s a hit or miss with her. With GJ, wow, these 2 are like 2 strangers reading script to each other lol, at least based on the YouTube clips I saw. Compare this to king the land, which has a very simple plot to the point non-fan of the 2 leads audiences can’t stand it, but ppl who loves romcom and the 2 leads are just squealing at every sweet moments they have together lol (including me hahahaha). I originally only know yoona, but now I’m like in love with YunHo lol xD
In its defense, I thought it was reasonable for ML to be kind of standoffish with FL, because his one true love was only meant for FL’s hidden identity. So of course he’s gonna try to keep her at arm’s length at all times. I would be mad at the direction if they had all this chemistry right off the bat. But they did slowly develop the relationship – it just took time.
However, this is where I stand with the drama without knowing the context behind the original novel. It sounds like the original plot had her OP and ready to take over the world. I wished they had kept that instead of her making her a ditzy pursuer so that she could marry the prince. I only assumed she was after revenge, but dislike the idea of ruling, so once she was done with her charade, she would quit her role. I didn’t know the novels intent was for her to be ruler overall.
I’m up to like ep 20 or something, so still a ways to go. But if you didn’t read the original novel, this is not as bad as a drama as people make it out to be – as long as your focus isn’t entirely on romance.