Because it's necessary for me to rewatch this, too, since I need a better grip (regrip?) on the Nie brothers and their ages and their relationship. Also because I used the character Nie Zonghui, who was invented for the spin-off movie, because there aren't actually that many characters in the original story who aren't clan leaders and clan heirs, so why in the world would I pass up on a character I didn't have to invent myself?
I am going to try to limit my notes to things actually useful for the editing of my fic this time, because otherwise this would end up a mile long.
So, anyway, nothing but more rambling nonsense and spoilers below the read more tag.
I'm not good with ages, but Nie Zonghui does appear to be a good bit older than Nie Huaisang. Probably more like Nie Mingjue's age. Can't recall off-hand if I said anywhere how old he was in my fic (typically I try to avoid actually using ages and just having the POV character reflect that someone is about their own age or younger/older than they are) but it's good to know in case I did.
It's not clear if Nie Zonghui uses twin sabers or if he's just carrying Nie Huaisang's saber for him. He's got two of them on his back and in the combat formation against the man-eating vines (😅) he was wielding both of them, but then Nie Huaisang took one from him; I'm not sure if that was because one of them was actually his or if he just didn't bring his. (Knowing NHS, not having brought his despite everything seems like a very real possibility...)
Hmm.
My inability to guess the ages of children is again hamstringing my ability to guess how much of an age difference there is between Nie Huaisang and Nie Mingjue. 😣
There's definitely a much bigger age gap there than between the two other sets of siblings we saw in flashback to childhood in the actual show. Young Nie Mingjue in this flashback looks like he's probably twelve or thirteen? Maybe? I don't know. I suck at this. But young Nie Huaisang is definitely much younger than that. Though my initial guess looking at the adult actors--about ten years' age gap--would seem to be off the mark. There's a big gap here, but not that big. Seven years, maybe, though? That would make Nie Mingjue about...huh...if I'm saying that Nie Huaisang is the same age as Wei Wuxian, who I decided was probably about eighteen at the start of the Cloud Recesses arc on the drama, then that would make Nie Mingjue about twenty-five or twenty-six at that time?
I guess that's plausible? He's definnitely older than that, but then again Xiao Zhan is clearly in his twenties, not a teenager, but the story makes no sense if Wei Wuxian is already over twenty when the flashback starts, so...gotta just try to go with what's at least mildly plausible. 😰
Looking at them, I think the two sabers on Nie Zonghui's back are slightly smaller than those being wielded by the random Nie Clan cannon fodder extras, so it probably is that he just dual-wields, and that Nie Huaisang managed to go on this expedition without his own saber. (He probably never got it back again after the indoctrination camp, actually...)
Hmm. It looks like sheathes are not particularly a thing for sabers. At least not in the CQL-verse. So I may need to rework some lines about Nie Mingjue sheathing Baxia...
OMG, machine translation, man. Okay, so there's a screen of text that the subtitles are not translating. (Youtube is not the best spot for this, but it's not on Netflix, so where else was I gonna watch it?) So I tried the Google Translate app on my phone. And since it's white text on a black background with nothing to interfere with it (unlike various signs on the show) it worked and I'm pretty sure it isn't misreading the characters, or not significantly so anyway. But the...uh...the phrasing is...well...this is what the app spat out:
After returning from the Battle of Ji Dao Tang, Nie Mingjue was deeply troubled by the sword spirit and his temper became increasingly irritable. Even though Lianfangzun Jin Guangyao used the music of the piano to clear his mind and calm his mind, he was still powerless. In the end, Nie Ming lost his mind and exploded to death in full view of the public.
So, setting aside that guqin =/= piano, and that they got Nie Mingjue's name wrong on that last one, um..."exploded to death"? Really? That's...ugh, it's not funny and yet I can't stop myself from laughing.
Admittedly, when we saw his death in CQL, it was kinda explosive--he had those squibs on him like they usually use to show someone being hit with gunfire, and they were just going off so "blood" was spurting out for no reason--but also very much not "exploded to death." And also in CQL's version he staggered out of Lanling still barely alive and no one saw him die except Jin Guangyao and Xue Yang, since technically...well, things got weird.
(Also, I have no idea what the Battle of Ji Dao Tang is. Is that what happened here? Or is this screen of text indicating what the general people think of Nie Mingjue's death, and therefore it refers to either the Nightless City Massacre or what little "Siege of the Burial Mounds" there was? (Not that we saw him at what little of that there was.) I don't even know how to find out, short of asking someone who speaks Chinese. 😅)
That closing, though, when Nie Huaisang puts together what happened, and that look of "you took my brother away and I am going to make you suffer!" Wow, that is powerful; I don't think it's a coincidence that the funeral and post-funeral have the highest "rewatch" indicator. (Not sure when Youtube started showing which parts of a video get rewatched the most, nor how accurate it genuinely is, but it's interesting.) Too bad Youtube is blocking the song over the ending credits, though. 😫 It's probably the Nie brothers' image song, which there was an instrumental version of a couple of times during the movie itself.
So, for the most part I probably didn't need to bother rewatching that, since Nie Zonghui is not particularly developed as a character in the film, though the fact that he dual-wields slightly smaller sabers is something I should make sure to correct in my fic. Also since I wasn't able to tell much about the age difference between the Nie brothers. And, more importantly, since I cannot possibly take the movie as being fully part of CQL's canon, considering pretty much everything about the saber tomb contradicts what's in the show. The interior doesn't even look like the one from the show. (The exterior is about the same, though.)
Anyway, the important thing is that I am now free to start my rewrite (joy?) though I still have some question marks in my mind about how to deal with certain problem spots.
Also, no more of these rewatch notes posts! 😁
No comments:
Post a Comment