Fansub of the new Three Kingdom TV series (Ep 1-95 released)

[QilinStar]

I watched the series and I am not fond of how certain characters were portrayed like Sima Yi, Lu Meng, Zhou Yu and Zhang Fei. Sima Yi is very bland and he always managed to look and sound so bored. I didn't care much about his scenes with Jingshu either and I'm not sure what's the point of putting her in there in the first place. Zhang Fei seems childish, and his voice is so exaggerated at times. I mean sure, Zhang Fei is always portrayed as a brute but he was also quite intelligent in history apparently. The portrayal in the drama really dumbed him down so much. Another similar one would be Ma Chao. Full on brute with no brains.

As for Zhou Yu, they made him too jealous and somewhat insubordinate. Why? To make Zhuge Liang, Sun Quan and Lu Su look good? And why was Lu Meng such a loyal lapdog? I could bear it at first but then it became annoying.

But this series did portray a number of characters well. I really appreciate the acting for Wei Yan, Zhang Song, Xun Yu, Fa Zheng, Sun Quan, and Lu Su. I never cared much about Wei Yan, Sun Quan and Lu Su before watching this TV series. The 1994 version of said characters were weak or one dimensional.

Many other characters could have been done better in terms of acting like Zhuge Liang and Liu Bei, who is also bland at times and speaks in monotone, considering they are the main characters. For instance in the scene where ZGL was sick and near dying. I had to stop myself from laughing when I saw that scene as well as the one where Wang Lang died though I'm pretty sure it was the background music that made me laugh in the latter scene.

[Valvatorez]

Sima Yi is very bland and he always managed to look and sound so bored. I didn't care much about his scenes with Jingshu either and I'm not sure what's the point of putting her in there in the first place.

Actually if you think about it, the people that are really smart could be pretty bored with the world, since they are so much smarter than everyone else and things just seem less interesting, I wonder if that's what they were trying to do with him. And was Jingshu an actual person? I can't remember ever hearing about her at all until watching this. Either way the thing I remember most about Sima Yi is his complete shocked face and face flop when she gave birth in the last episode

I do agree with the other stuff you said though, I didn't really like how they portrayed Wu, it seems like they were obsessed over Jing province, then just kinda faded away once they had it.

[DragonAtma]

Actually if you think about it, the people that are really smart could be pretty bored with the world, since they are so much smarter than everyone else and things just seem less interesting, I wonder if that's what they were trying to do with him.

Unfortunately, that's probably what happened. People are generally able to relate with others whose IQ is within one standard deviation, but not with those two deviations away -- which means that someone with 150 IQ* could relate with someone who had 134 IQ, but not those who 118 IQ. And while they didn't have IQ tests in ancient China, people like Zhuge Liang, Cao Cao, Lu Xun, and Sima Yi could easily have 150+ IQ.

For reference, the cutoff for Mensa (that famous top 2% of IQ society) is 132.

* All these IQ scores are based on the Stanford-Binet test (16-point standard deviation).

[Valvatorez]

Actually if you think about it, the people that are really smart could be pretty bored with the world, since they are so much smarter than everyone else and things just seem less interesting, I wonder if that's what they were trying to do with him.

Unfortunately, that's probably what happened. People are generally able to relate with others whose IQ is within one standard deviation, but not with those two deviations away -- which means that someone with 150 IQ* could relate with someone who had 134 IQ, but not those who 118 IQ. And while they didn't have IQ tests in ancient China, people like Zhuge Liang, Cao Cao, Lu Xun, and Sima Yi could easily have 150+ IQ.

I was going off of my own personal feelings when dealing with most of the people I know in person and how I end up feeling, so was wondering if that's the way Sima Yi was intentionally written when she said he came off as seeming bored, since I get accused of that myself a lot, and end up having a very hard time relating to most of the people I hang around with, so maybe I need to follow your example and hang around smarter people

Do you really think those you listed would score that high? In some ways I think people would be a lot smarter overall now than back then, but then again we have so much more ways to do things with technology to make things easier that people back then couldn't even dream of. Then in other ways I see how a lot of the people now do the absolute dumbest things or just how a lot of people act in general and think people are dumber than ever before overall. And again using the technology example, its so much easier to do things, which requires less effort and less thinking or planning, which then makes me think people could've been even smarter back then than it would initially seem. One of my favorite time periods was Ancient Egypt, and so many things that they made are remarkable considering how little they had to work with compared to now. So I'm not really sure what to think.

[Lezard Valeth]

I've watched the first ten episodes and I was wondering how though Li Jue and Guo Si are supposed to be.

When Hua Xiong started killing generals of the alliance it was said that he was the 4th most stalwart general of Zhuo, behind these two and Lu Bu only. Everyone was impressed and fearful.

Ok, but where did this came from? They were loyal and had some success fighting alongside Dong Zhuo, but they doesn't seem to be regarded as good martial artists (like Hua Xiong) by most people (and games).

This scene makes them look equivalent to Yuan Shao's Wen Chou and Yan Liang, whose presence was missed by Shao.

Is "stalwart" a good translation? It's ambiguous in this context (means loyal? strong? both?).

[rsetiawan]

I watched the series and I am not fond of how certain characters were portrayed like Sima Yi, Lu Meng, Zhou Yu and Zhang Fei. Sima Yi is very bland and he always managed to look and sound so bored. I didn't care much about his scenes with Jingshu either and I'm not sure what's the point of putting her in there in the first place. Zhang Fei seems childish, and his voice is so exaggerated at times. I mean sure, Zhang Fei is always portrayed as a brute but he was also quite intelligent in history apparently. The portrayal in the drama really dumbed him down so much. Another similar one would be Ma Chao. Full on brute with no brains.

As for Zhou Yu, they made him too jealous and somewhat insubordinate. Why? To make Zhuge Liang, Sun Quan and Lu Su look good? And why was Lu Meng such a loyal lapdog? I could bear it at first but then it became annoying.

Many other characters could have been done better in terms of acting like Zhuge Liang and Liu Bei, who is also bland at times and speaks in monotone, considering they are the main characters. For instance in the scene where ZGL was sick and near dying. I had to stop myself from laughing when I saw that scene as well as the one where Wang Lang died though I'm pretty sure it was the background music that made me laugh in the latter scene.

it is follow the novel....
in the novel zhou yu is also jealous (they just make it more jealous) and zhang fei in the novel is pretty much brainless bully drunkard....

[rsetiawan]

I've watched the first ten episodes and I was wondering how though Li Jue and Guo Si are supposed to be.

When Hua Xiong started killing generals of the alliance it was said that he was the 4th most stalwart general of Zhuo, behind these two and Lu Bu only. Everyone was impressed and fearful.

Ok, but where did this came from? They were loyal and had some success fighting alongside Dong Zhuo, but they doesn't seem to be regarded as good martial artists (like Hua Xiong) by most people (and games).

This scene makes them look equivalent to Yuan Shao's Wen Chou and Yan Liang, whose presence was missed by Shao.

Is "stalwart" a good translation? It's ambiguous in this context (means loyal? strong? both?).

not sure about guo si and li jue historically, either they are good fighter or have large army as lu bu seems to be powerless to save wang yun or recapture changan against them

[DragonAtma]

Do you really think those you listed would score that high? In some ways I think people would be a lot smarter overall now than back then, but then again we have so much more ways to do things with technology to make things easier that people back then couldn't even dream of. Then in other ways I see how a lot of the people now do the absolute dumbest things or just how a lot of people act in general and think people are dumber than ever before overall. And again using the technology example, its so much easier to do things, which requires less effort and less thinking or planning, which then makes me think people could've been even smarter back then than it would initially seem. One of my favorite time periods was Ancient Egypt, and so many things that they made are remarkable considering how little they had to work with compared to now. So I'm not really sure what to think.

We're talking about the absolute smartest of a nation of tens of millions of people. It's not like we can give them IQ tests, but I think it's safe to say that all four of them are smart enough to be 150+. For reference, the Prometheus society (1 in 30,000 people) has a cutoff of around 160 IQ -- and I'd say that all four count as "top one in 30,000" in intelligence.

I've watched the first ten episodes and I was wondering how though Li Jue and Guo Si are supposed to be.

When Hua Xiong started killing generals of the alliance it was said that he was the 4th most stalwart general of Zhuo, behind these two and Lu Bu only. Everyone was impressed and fearful.

Ok, but where did this came from? They were loyal and had some success fighting alongside Dong Zhuo, but they doesn't seem to be regarded as good martial artists (like Hua Xiong) by most people (and games).

This scene makes them look equivalent to Yuan Shao's Wen Chou and Yan Liang, whose presence was missed by Shao.

Is "stalwart" a good translation? It's ambiguous in this context (means loyal? strong? both?).

I'd blame the novel; historically it was Hu Zhen and Lu Bu's army, with Hua Xiong a minor officer.

[QilinStar]

Valvatorez:

Ah, now that you put it that way, I do see the point. Actually, I have similar problems too. I usually end up alone because I don't know how to relate to people around me and they don't know what to say to me anyway. Even if I do mix around, it's usually with older people like 20 or so years my senior. Jingshu isn't a real person by the way but some people think she could have been based on Zhang Chunhua, Sima Yi's wife. Still, I'm not a fan of the idea.


rsetiawan:

The series does not fully follow the novel unlike the 1994 series. Most notable example would be Sun Quan, who was supposed to have red hair and a beard by the time he takes over Wu but you don't see that in the 2010 series. Instead, we get a young and fairly conventional looking ruler. I also doubt Lu Meng was reduced to a loyal dog in the novel as well. I understand they took some pages out of the novel but was it necessary to make Zhou Yu's jealousy so extreme to the point of insubordination? Even in the novel, Zhang Fei showed that he had brains. He used the fact that he was an alcoholic to his advantage when he was scheming to capture the city Yan Yan was guarding. My point is they could have toned down the extremeness. Interestingly, this series subtly threw in historical facts that we won't read about in the novel but it also made up a handful of stuff.

[rsetiawan]

@qilinstar
yes it is not following novel but no, I found the series not throw history instead it ad more or different kind of fiction

cao chong as example, in the series is poisoned, historically he dies because of natural illness
cao cao never have affair with diao chan like in the series...
sun jian historically died in the mount xian, just like in the novel, but in the series it dies on a ship so the series add more fiction instead more history....