In line with the first warning of high temperature + heavy rain to minimize going out since the beginning of summer, I found this American drama "Marco Polo" at home over the weekend to pass the time. I have to say that I knew very little about Marco Polo before. In my eyes, he was limited to traveling from Italy to many places in China in the thirteenth century, and exaggerating the wealth of the East with a book "Marco Polo Travels" caused a wave of China in the West. Hot, and to a certain extent, the famous historical figures who promoted the great nautical discoveries. However, I really don't know much about the specific travel process of this historical figure, the social environment and background of the Yuan Dynasty at that time, and the more detailed historical details after the historical skeleton. Therefore, this drama is still very necessary and valuable in the eyes of a Chinese.
As an ambitious work launched by Netflix in 2015 after the success of "House of Cards" and "Orange Is the New Black", this show can really see its "ambition" everywhere - based on the global vision of its domestic market share bottleneck period, it has invested heavily in the history of The most expensive is 90 million US dollars, choosing the exotic theme of ancient Chinese stories of the 13th century, and wanting to create a series that can compete with HBO's "Game of Thrones", but unfortunately it is a lot of thunder and little rain. Yu's previous high-profile publicity and expectations were full. After the release, both professional film critics and ordinary audiences saw it as bad, and the reputation and word of mouth were one-sided. Even if it wasn't for Xingzhiqi, I would not even know there would be a second season. To put it simply, this drama is completely unflattering to both sides. For foreign audiences, the symbolic Chinese elements or Chinese impressions are becoming more and more symbolic. For Chinese audiences, the obvious historical errors are really unbearable. After all, no matter how much a director loves Chinese culture, if he does not have a thorough understanding of Chinese culture, but only processes and interprets oriental legends based on his Western perspective, it will only be a historical drama after all. The self-inflicted obscenity of the alternate history, not to mention the content and structure of the story that is not acclimatized to the environment, is really not a little bit worse than "Rome" and "Game of Thrones" of similar themes.
However, for someone like me who is not so demanding and can watch as long as the story is good, the characters are beautiful, and the details are attentive, this drama can also be one of the choices to kill time when you are bored (off topic, I like it very much. Ink painting and music at the beginning of the film), I have already watched the first season in the past few years, but the wind has gone through the water without a trace, and I have no impression at all, so I have to go through it again from the beginning, putting aside the history of loopholes, Aside from the scenes that are not grand enough, it is actually not useless, at least the main story is still clear, and the love story interspersed in it is also my favorite one - limited by the environment or other, never love but not, bring a little It's tragic and full of tension. As for the rest, I'll just laugh. I turned on fast-forward mode all the way, and finished two seasons in a hurry.
To be honest, I've never been against anything related to China, whether it's "Marco Polo", which has a huge contrast between expectations and results before and after its broadcast, or "The Wasteland", which is not so under the banner of "Journey to the West". I welcome and am happy to see such Chinese elements and culture being valued and disseminated in the American drama world where cultural awareness is the mainstream. However, through this mediocre series, I hope that Netflix and director John Fusk can reflect on how to make a good and innovative story, instead of leaving only "ambition" in the end.
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