I think, it’s a two parts movie. Has anyone seen it? By watching just the trailer, it seems to be more fateful to the novel than the one with Jet Li?
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It’s getting a lot of hype for the star-studded cast. I plan to watch it. Saw glimpses of the trailer but I personally avoid trailers because they often spoil movies for me. Look forward to sitting down to enjoy it one of these days.
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Just finished part 1. It is not too bad, but the storyline is not really following Jin Yong’s. They have to make it a lot shorter and it is not possible to do it without changing the storyline. As a new storyline it is not bad, however, the changes are really eliminating several characters and changing some characters into somebody else. To me this is going too much.
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I haven’t watched this new adaptation, but I thought I’d share some thoughts about the differences between books and movie/TV series.
I do a fair bit of video production and I appreciate how it is very difficult to follow the books exactly. We are talking about different media here. With books, we read at our own pace, put them down and pick them up when we have the time.
With video, we finish a movie or an episode of a TV series in one sitting. During that period of time, the screenwriter has to make you invested in the story, root for the characters, and conclude with a resolution. Or in the case of TV series, end with a cliffhanger so you’ll come back for the next episode. All these while making sure the pacing is done right so that viewers don’t get bored.
An engaging storytelling usually employs the three act structure. With writing, it spans the whole book. With video, each movie or episode will have to more or less cover the three acts or lose viewer interest.
Also, authors can dive into descriptions of characters or use certain techniques to let us get to know the characters. In videos, it is a lot harder to do so. When there are too many characters, it gets confusing to identify them, at least for people new to the story. And there would be too many subplots to explore while having to advance the main plot.
A good example is The Game of Thrones. I love the books, but I appreciate the creative choices the screenwriters took to make the series accessible for people new to the series. They kind of lost their way when the plot went beyond what’s published in A Song of Ice and Fire though.
Another example is Dune. I grew up with Frank Herbert’s books and his omniscient point of view is difficult to bring over to video. Just look at David Lynch’s Dune movie. I do appreciate the recent Dennis Villeneuve movie’s attempt to interpret the novel for cinema.
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I have no issues about screenwriter’s difficult choices in making changes of the original storylines to fit in long stories into a 2 hours timelines, it’s just the changes made on this adaptation was too deliberate to my liking. It’s a personal preference.
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I prefer the novel to any adaptations, but I am a sucker for the Trilogy, specially HSDS. I would watch them, then made thousand of complains, particularly about not faithful to the novel.
I still haven’t watched this one beside the preview, I already have lot of complains about the actors.
The actor who played Zhang Wuji was too old, his look is as old as the actor who played Yang Xiao and Zhang SanFeng. From what I perceived when I read the novel, Zhang Wuji should be about 18-20 years, his look showed his carefree and innocent.
In my mind, Zhou Zhiruo should be much more beautiful (my imagination from reading) than the actress who played her.
From the wedding scene which was in the preview, I haven’t had yet any complain about Zhao Min who was my favorite character. I fell in love with her when I first read the novel. 
Anyway, how can one watch it? Was it supposed to be in theater?
psksvp
Yeah it should be in the theatres and some video streaming services have them as pay-to-watch videos.
Would you say Zhou Zhiruo looks more beautiful than Zhao Min? 
Zhao Min is portrayed as the more likeable character, so I think it is natural to imagine her to be better-looking than Zhou Zhiruo. But it makes more sense plot-wise if Zhao Min doesn’t look as pretty but has the better personality and character.
That said, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I’ll reserve my comments on this until I’ve watched the movies.
The male lead looks old. Shouldn’t Zhang Wuji be someone a lot younger. That said, the rest of the cast looks even older. I mean look at Donnie hahaha. So that makes Zhang Wuji relatively young then?
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