wickedwords

(Look away now if you watched it and remain a fan, because I have barred no holds.)

REBIRTH

The Chinese costume drama every fan had been awaiting for years. The sequel to Princess Agents. Woohoo! (Woo-oh dear!)

What a mess. Even had I not been coming to this series straight after finishing the relative masterpiece that was Pursuit of Jade, I believe I would have been disappointed with this one.

Rebirth seems to be a series of two halves. I believe only one person is credited with the script but, to me, it felt more assembled by a committee. Episodes one to twenty focussed on relationships. Episodes twenty-one to thirty-nine focussed more on political events. (Episode forty was just odd.) Frankly, I found the second half confusing. But I always find the Chinese drama political stories confusing so, to be fair, I can't lay all blame on the series. I soon lost track of how many warring factions we had, who was in charge of each, and why they were fighting. That we also had factions within each warring faction just left me reeling.

Initially, I think the most frustrating thing for me was the acting. Some actors were hamming it up way too much. The Empress and her Eunuch (Was he actually a Eunuch?) were so intense they were in danger of combusting, and not in a good way. Others were the opposite. Our female lead, Huangyang Tian Tian, was way too inexperienced for such an important role. She had the emotional range of a sloth. (There. I said it. Shoot me.) She is still very young, so there's plenty of time for her to improve, but this was not the project for her. The male lead, Li Yun Rui, is usually a reasonable actor. I have enjoyed other stuff he has done. Here, for some reason, he seemed to have forgotten every acting lesson or previous experience he ever had. Although his character was supposed to play emotions very close to his chest, I would have appreciated some expressions, however micro, to give me a clue about what was going on in his mind. As for chemistry between the lead couple...maybe it was an age difference thing, but I saw zero sparks. It would have been more believable if the script writer(s) treated it as a teacher, student relationship, rather than a romance. I am usually OK with any kind of relationship, but this supposed romance felt uncomfortable.

I'm willing to put some of the blame for the actor's non or over acting down to a poor director and the disaster of a script. The first half of the series featured a larger than average assortment of characters, most of whom were deranged (more so, than even for most Chinese costume drama) to one degree or another. The series in general offered enough such aberrant behaviour that it could keep a therapist in work for a lifetime. By the time we reached episode twenty most of them were mercifully dead, by their own hand or someone else's, which could have resulted in a reduction of income for our therapist, were it not for the fact that those characters were then replaced by a whole new set, ready and willing to be wiped out by episode thirty-nine. By the final episode our therapist would probably have needed a therapist, and there wasn't a graveyard big enough for the corpses.

No major spoilers. The story revolves around a female lead, being chased by every available male she meets. Some women work hard on their 'Siren' status, but she attracted an unreasonable amount of attention, for someone who was not working at it. In the first half of the series she spends much of the plot being kidnapped and rescued, one by one, by said bevy of admittedly very handsome men. When she finally settles on our male lead, the two of them spend the rest of the series riding off in opposite directions, and only coming back together briefly...albeit over, and over, and over again.

The male lead, when he isn't rescuing the female lead (incidentally, said female is supposed to be an army general), spends most of that same period either unconscious, spitting blood, or collapsing. Don't get me wrong. I love me some handsome male lead suffering, but this produced very little in the way of female lead comforting. In my book, there should be no pain without payoff. Once he finished with that trope he spent the last twenty episodes riding around, disappearing, for no logical reason, then swooping back in on a white charger, (a la Dream Within A Dream) at the last minute, to save the female lead (again). As for the final episode...why? Just...why?

Credit where it is due. The camera person resisted the temptation to soft filter every single face. We saw pores. We saw scars. We saw bleeding lipstick. But they at least did not look like anime or AI characters. The lighting person, however, seemed to over expose many outdoor shots. (Maybe they were trying to do something artsy?) So the result was almost the same in some scenes. I've seen better lighting in Instagram shorts, filmed on a hand held phone.

I will also give credit to the costume department. The characters who needed to look grand, did so without resorting to tinsel thread, miles of nylon georgette, and/or buckets of fake pearls. Yes, there were silks and brocades, but also wools and linens. The costumes worked. Also, hair ornaments were held to a minimum, or at least what passes for 'minimum' in a Chinese costume drama.

By the time I was less than half way through I was already gritting my teeth at the music. I don't have a good enough ear to be able to tell for certain, but I suspect all that swelling orchestral incidental music was synthesised. I hope it was. I hate to think of some poor orchestra having to play such banality. Once written/recorded it was used at every available opportunity. Every time we had a lovers clinch, it was accompanied by an orchestral crescendo. Every time we had a battle they played the same orchestral crescendo. Sick? Crescendo. Declaration to abolish slavery? Crescendo. Reciting your general political agenda? Crescendo. Rescue...crescendo. Death...crescendo. By episode ten I was all crescendoed out, with thirty episodes still to go.

So. What was my main takeaway from this series?

Just...Why?

Why? Because the first series left us with a cliff hanger. Why? Because the studio saw dollar signs. Why was it so bad, when it had so much money lavished on it? I suspect most of the budget disappeared into back pockets before it reached any set. Why did I watch it to the bitter end?

Here's my answer the last 'why'. It was rather like watching a train wreck, where you know it's a disaster but you just can't tear your eyes away. The first two or three episodes showed enough promise to reel me in. The next few episodes had me hoping that its general downturn would reverse within a couple more. After that it became a battle of wills. I had already started to compose a rant but thought it unreasonable to do so without wading through to the bitter end. After all, I have known series that did a slow build and managed to sneak up and hook me in with later episodes. The rest of the episodes in this series, however, only cemented my initial appraisal.

Now, if you're like me, a review like this will only make you more likely to try the series. If you do that, and disagree with me, I've no problem with that. I've been known to like some series that would make others click away within ten minutes. My personal advice, however, is...If you are sitting on the fence about watching Rebirth, jump off and run, as far as you can...in the opposite direction.

Sorry, but there was just no way to sugar coat this review.