Okay, so in my previous post, looking at only the spoiler-free changes between the novel Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (Mo Dao Zu Shi) and its live-action adaptation, The Untamed, I mentioned that I felt like I had more to say on the subject, but I couldn't remember what it was. Well, I've remembered what it was now. 😅
So, as I mentioned before, both novel and show begin with the death of the lead, Wei Wuxian (WWX), and then immediately jump to his revival 13 years later (or 16 years in the Netflix subtitles). His revival is actually rather grim: a mentally disturbed young man, Mo Xuanyu (MXY), sacrifices his own life to bring WWX back from the dead, in order to have WWX kill the people who have made MXY's life a living hell. In the novel, MXY specifically extinguishes his own soul in order that WWX's soul can inhabit his body: an early part of the experience for WWX is finding a mirror so he can see what his new face looks like. (Fortunately for him, MXY is very pretty, even if he's a bit more petite than WWX was.) In the show, it's a little less clear what happened (though some of the dialog about MXY sacrificing his soul remains in place), because WWX wakes up in the Mo household, on the floor inside a spell circle drawn in blood, and then he's suddenly confronted by this ragged figure with his face wrapped in bandages, saying that WWX has to kill his enemies, then the figure just sort of vanishes, because it was MXY, but the implication is that MXY had sacrificed not just his soul but also his body in order to restore WWX's entire body, not just his soul. Since they obviously didn't want to replace their gorgeous leading actor, this seems like a change that makes sense, right?
Unfortunately, wrong.
I mean, okay, yes, not replacing the lead actor 100% makes sense. But the way they did it is inconsistent, and kind of feels like they changed their minds a few times in filming and then forgot to fix things in post, or something.
Obviously, the simplest way to film the story of the novel live action would require Quantum Leap-ing it: periodically show the revived WWX's reflection, and it's not his reflection but that of MXY, and we're just seeing WWX because the show is still largely in his POV (we do sometimes hear his thoughts), and at first it seems like maybe that's what's happening, since MXY's aunt sees WWX and recognizes him as MXY.
But then later on there are scenes where WWX has to wear a mask to hide his face to prevent people from recognizing him. And it's not as MXY that they'd be recognizing him (most of said people wouldn't know MXY and/or wouldn't care about his presence) but as WWX. So, as the show stands, it's like people who knew MXY see MXY when they look at WWX, but people who knew WWX see WWX. (Not sure who they see if they knew both parties. Still WWX, I guess?) Which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if there was at least some kind of explanation for that, but there really isn't: it kinda feels like they expect that by the time you're done with the flashback, you'll have forgotten that Madam Mo still saw MXY when she looked at WWX.
Like the river of lava thing I talked about last time and the dialog proving that at the time of filming there had been no lava planned to be there, this feels like an error that was made late enough in production that they didn't have the time to fix it, or something. Really, the problem is mostly just the others in the Mo household (and maybe Jin Ling?) recognizing him as MXY: the idea of the spell having the ability to restore his original body is fine, it's just not handled consistently, which is frustrating to someone like me who sometimes gets hung up on the little details. And, of course, it's compounded by the fact that there's no attempt to reflect the characters aging, so everyone looks the same after WWX's revival as they did before his death more than a decade earlier. (Even worse, they're all much too old in the flashback sequence: at the start of the flashback, WWX and many of the other characters are supposed to be only 15 years old! Some other characters who are actually supposed to be early 20s are played by actors who seem to be in their 30s, too. (Though I should admit that I am not good at guessing people's ages by looking at them...)) For that matter, the flashback sequence does not feel like it takes 6-7 years, and yet it does. (In fact, the subtitles on Netflix specifically negate that reality: they say "16 years later" between WWX's death and his revival and then they say "16 years earlier" as the flashback begins. Not sure if that problem is on Netflix' end or if that was on the production itself.)
So...yeah, I think now I've gotten most of the non-spoiler stuff said. I'll probably want to do a spoiler-heavy post later on, but only after rereading the novel (which I can't do until the last volume comes out, which last time I checked was scheduled for early May) and rewatching the show.
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