Hello, you're watching AvenueX and this is my first end of the year's summary video of 2023 Chinese dramaland Exciting! And today we're gonna talk about THE WORST previously different years I do it differently. Sometimes I talk about the worst dramas, sometimes I talk about worst moments this year I decide to give out worst awards to different departments of drama making. Sometimes it's attributed to a specific person, sometimes to a whole department, because the actual making of each drama is different. And sometimes it's impossible to know who should actually be responsible for terrible end results. And I want to emphasize at the beginning of this video, every video I make on my channel is just AvenueX's personal opinion. Welcome to disagree with me, although don't try to convince me otherwise, because it's not gonna work. I will only pick out the categories that I have the strongest impression and I think worth talking about. Let's first start with Worst Cinematography and we're gonna attribute that to specific dramas but not cinematographer because in chinese dramaland, often the cinematographer is just the person who is manipulating the camera exactly what gets shot is up to the director for this particular award I have four different candidates. First earlier this year, Starry Love, Xing Luo Ning Cheng Tang A drama that features four very good looking leads, but they all look worse than what they could look like. And if you compare their other works existing previously in dramaland you can tell the clear difference, the color, the lighting does not flatter the actors, the choices of focal length, the choices angles wow it just makes everybody look 10 times worse. We have that director who's known for using big light and spinning the camera and shooting people up their nostrils. And the next one, since we're already talking about drama directed by the director Zhu Ruibin would be Ning An Ru Meng,The story of Kunning Palace still him directing, still has a lot of spinning, also big light. The only thing it did better than Starry Love probably is, it's not so bleached out. and it doesn't have that many shooting up the nostril angles, but then it has a lot of zombie angles that also does not make sense. oh and it has a lot of slow motion that the male lead actor should hate for the rest of his life moving on to the next one. Chun Gui Meng Li Ren (Romance of A Twin Flower) ffrom Tencent, not that many people have watched that drama. I did watch parts of it. It has some absolutely baffling camera work. It zooms in within the shot very quickly punching in and out. It also has very baffling sequences of somebody doing a stir fry. And although this drama hardly gets watched by anybody, it's terrible camera work does get noticed by dramaland. Then the last one comes in at the end of the year and shocks everybody with its most epic invention of how to use a camera, how to use a drone, how to spin, how to use weird angles, how to crack an egg in audiences' aces, how to light somebody up so that all details on their face completely disappears and melts away It also manages to squeeze an extra axis in the spinning possibilities so that now, officially in Chinese dramaland all options are exhausted. We've had spinning in this way. We've have spinning in this way often happens to a lot of dramas. Finally, the drama decided to spin around the actors. So now all three dimensions have been covered and just that one shot puts this drama on the winning platform Only forLove, Yi Ai Wei Ying, and for its great contribution to the bottom line of Chinese drama camera work possibilities rightly so it deserves this award from AvenueX Nex let's move on to the worst director. You don't quite know sometimes terrible things how it happens, whether it's actually the director saying or other people influencing the result of the production. I actually have multiple directors on my candidate list, but I don't have proof of whether they are actually solely responsible for the end result. Yet for this unfortunate guy, he did get caught on camera. He has hard proof. so I have no other choice, but give this worst director award to director Guo hu, who directed Yi Ai Wei Ying, this director has unfortunately been caught on camera while shooting thisd drama Goblin is outdated and his decisions of camera work and how to shoot the scene will be far superior. and it's a total embarrassment to the entirety of chinese drama making industry. It's been quite a few years since Goblin's airing It was super popular, it was super successful and rightly so because it has done a lot of right things in the category of having epic romantic dramas and the fantasy element. with very good actors, let's be honest, they are really,really good everybody, the leading panel, even though it's not my favorite Korean drama, I can recognize it's a good one. So having the audacity to criticize that drama and saying he's so much better, well then boomerang and backfiring, he's just really unlucky that he got caught on camera and there's hard evidence, right? Otherwise I will have more choices. But this time it's Guo Hu And another reason I picked him is because other bad directors are very consistent with their badness. They are bad all the way through, and every drama they make, bad in the same way, whereas this director is extremely unstable and volatile. He's done works that are watchable such as Mysterious Lotus Case book this year. He's done even very popular ones previously, such as One and Only and then he shows up with things such as Only for Love that just shock everybody's socks off, who knows what lies in the future for his future work. In case you don't know, the may never see daylight, may get re shot, Golden Hairpin was directed by him and that drama that I happened to walk onto its set during the summer when I visited Heng Dian, Nian Wu Shuang Liu Xuyi and Tang Yan led fantasy drama also was directed by him um people who are looking forward to that and also looking forward to Zheng Yecheng guest starring showing up in that drama being Fu Jiuyun again you should start worrying. And suddenly changing camera setup, let's cut in and talk about a specific drama that gets a specific award. There really is only one candidate in this category and I literally created this category for this drama, the Worst Remake of a classic Chinese drama and you already know when I say that yes, the remake of Shang Cuo Hua Jiao Jia Dui Lang, Hua Jiao Xi Shi, 2023 version of the classic Wrong Carriage Right Groom although most of the time copies the original version line by line, made all the wrong decisions of adaptation, cutting the good things out of the original, adding things that are complete crap and not making sense with very very mediocre performances and and often wrong casting of the characters, terrible fallen standard of productions, such as sets and lighting costumes, even music, and overall made a completely not engaging story that doesn't contain any of the spirit of the original. This is the worst way you can make a remake of any drama. And this drama just fails in every department imaginable. The only good thing it has contributed to dominant is that during its airing, it made the original version that is also online you can watch get a lot more clicks than usual moving on to the next AvenueX's big award for 2023 worst dramas. And it's a very specific one. It's not the worst drama. It is the most fraud heavy drama pretending it is one thing, but being another is gonna go to Till the End of the Moon first, when it was shooting, if you still remember back in 2022, when they released the first set of posters, how impressed everybody was, how hopeful everybody was, because it looked different from everything that was was happening at the same time. Even supporting roles are being styled in such impressively, pretty way that different from most of the other Xian Xia/Xian Ou dramas, you've seen it successfully gave us false hope of how good the drama is gonna turn out to be and when we actually get it during spring this year, what the heck are we looking at? The color, the lighting, the terrible terrible eye makeup on every human being And if that doesn't count for being fraud, I don't know what it is on a deeper level, it is a fraud drama because after you've seen all the leaked out special footages of when they were actually filming the drama, what happened on set. It is pretty clear to somebody who can understand basic human interaction that this is actually fan service drama or or self service drama made by the lead actor, because he's the main investor and the role and the looks and all the things he does on camera that's unnecessary like turn turning multiple circles to do something that is not helping the story is because he thinks it makes him look good. and his fans will love it, from the olden days when that drama aired as the supporting role he got so loved by general audiences and becomes almost a symbol of good at wire work in period dramas and a good looking guy in period dramas. He is the master of all the Bilibili fan cuts of this particular genre and everybody when they make a fan cut, saying how you should hold yourself and do wire work in period dramas uses him as an example. And I think he gets so influenced by this idea that people just want to see more of him doing those particular shots that can be made into a cut that he made this drama his private playground, to constantly put out this type of shots and moments that he thinks will make him look good and make his fan happy and make a lot of more people spontaneously make cut for him as a story that doesn't really make sense, narratively, it's all over the place agitating for anybody to watch if you have a normal sense of what constitutes human moral and justice. It is a drama that made people believe it's just a fantasy idol drama, but actually, it's a self service drama. and honestly, I don't have a problem.If you have money, you have resources, you can do that whatever you like, okay fine. But if you're doing that, let people know. This is my playground drama. This is my fan service drama. If you are my fan you know what you're coming in for pay money for it, that's fine, but you put it on a platform such as Youku which is a subscription based drama platform that people pay money to actually watching dramas. They don't know that it's actually made for this purpose and when they come in, like I do and I look at the story that is like what the heck am I looking at? I feel cheated on multiple levels. Therefore, it gets this award, to me, it means from day one of the conception of this drama, its ultimate goal and its reason for being made is very impure and very questionable. I really cannot think of another drama that has done this so blatantly in your face and created so much of ~~~ during the time it was airing on internet, therefore, the award goes to Till the End of the Moon oh and also this drama for one thing I think nobody can argue is it provides the worst mouthful of blood shots of any period drama in chinese dramaland Usually when your main characters in a period drama ~~~ it's the emotional part. It's the part that tortures the audiences. It gives you that psychopathic pleasure. Yet this drama makes those moments look absolutely funny, embarrassing, ugly, literally ugly on the actors. There's no beauty in that. There's no emotional tuck in that. It's just let's see how much cherry syrup we can hold in our mouth and in close up how bad it looks on your teeth. So if that's a specific award, this drama will get that too. and I almost forgot to mention there should be a category called the Worst Special Effects. First An Le Zhuan, Legend of An Le and that whole sequence of Pirates of Caribbean, of our female lead holding a rope and dangling between boats, even when we disregard the possibilities of physics, whether she can actually make that happen realistically on planet earth. If you just look at the green screen, the terrible ocean, it wins a place on my list as one of the worst special effected sequences during this year. Next one would be during the drama, Snow Eagle Lord, Xue Ying Ling Zhu where everybody when they use magic has Chinese characters jumping out on screen that are very ugly, very illegible fonts that just hits you in your face. And particularly during this particular magic, where people can jump between spaces, they cut, open, the shot, cut, cut, go through. Literally, that's how it's done. And that's the first time i've seen anything being done like that in drama land, every drama land. Please don't use that ever again. Next one will be another Tencent period drama and it gets on the list because it has that terrible special effects that everybody laughs at. It's one of the higher rating higher viewing count drama we've had this year during the summer, Lost You Forever, Chang Xiang Si, and you already know which shot it is. Xiang Liu taking the blood out of his heart as if it's tap water where is the beauty of period fantasy drama? I mean you managed to actually CG a really pretty mask. He has that's magical and twinkling and shows up like a butterfly sometimes. So you actually have money and you actually build a freaking village to shoot the first 6 episodes or something like I went there, okay So why don't you just pay a little bit more money and just get it sorted out in a more acceptable way? It is an motional moment. It's a very important moment for the relationship between this character snd the female character and also for xiang liu generally and Tan Jianci is using his heart and soul to act that moment and you just put that hole, the bloody hole in his chest and completely breaks the magic. When you see that happen on the screen, there's no way as a human you don't laugh. I will give the award to Xue Ying Ling Zhu, Snow Eagle Lord It did invent something that is so bad that nobody believed it could happen in 2023 in Special Effects land of how you articulate the magic of jumping through space with literally cutting open the frame moving on to our last category today from AvenueX the Worst Male Lead Role and the Worst Female Lead Role Here I wanna emphasize not the actor or the actress the ROLE For the worst male lead role, my candidates are Song Yan from Fireworks of My Heart Shi Yan from Only for Love and Tantai Jin from Till the End of the Moon. And that's a really, really hard to decide category. Eventually I decide the award is gonna go to Song Yan, because compared to the other 2 roles in a way he is more believable and realistic and can be more triggering Wang Hedi's Shi Yan yin Only For Love, is so cartoon like two dimensional that he is actually completely unbelievable. It's like a joke that you don't take it seriously as for Tantaijin, He's a Mo He's somebody who does not exist in real 3d ontemporary life. He has that natural barrier, the distance from reality that you don't have to in any way believe the functioning and the psyche of this character. Yet for Song Yan he's just a lot more believable. And we actually probably, if you live long enough in this world, have met similar people who somehow has this unbelievably stable belief of he's better. Than all the other people, he's a character who angrily belittles somebody he claims he loves all the time. and he's completely double standard that every bad thing he's done is somehow reasonable. And for a good purpose, he is the hero who tries to save the girl from her repressive life where she gets treated with respect and has all the resources she needs and being loved by the whole valley. um ~ makes a lot of sense. It was during summer when I was traveling that this drama was airing. So I didn't have much time to go into details about all the things that's wrong within and without that drama. well Let's just condense that down to this character as a male lead that happened in 2023 is so behind time and behind audience's understanding of human relationships of what constitutes a healthy and normal and proper contemporary person. It is a very epic and very great case of when creators have fallen far behind the general audiences that is worth noted down in the history of the development of drama making in China. Song Yan for that reason needs to get this award as the worst male character in 2023 Chinese dramaland As for the worst female lead character. I also have three candidates on my list and they also happen to overlap with the drama choices of the male character MHM that would be Zheng Shuyi from Only for Love Xu Qin from Fireworks of My Heart, and Li Susu from Till the End of the Moon, sorry, Bai Lu, double kill, but I didn't make it happen. It just happened by itself the three dramas. You lead this year and they're all crappy, and it's also very hard for me to decide which character should get the award. Honestly, I think any of the three can get it and it's a pretty close call, but if I have to force it. It would be to Zheng Shuyi from Only for Love. Although Xu Qin also is somebody who lives in contemporary world on the same level, they both have the problem of their roles, actually don't do justice to the particular profession they depict doctor or journalist. But Zheng Shuyi's case probably is worse, because she completely internalize is the objectification from all the men in the world and happily happily accepts that she wins everything, because she's pretty and with association with powerful men and that's all fair and good. Both characters are ungrateful people, but I'd say Zheng Shuyi even shallower than Xu Qin and one extra minus point that this character Zhegn Shuyi gets that Xu Qin pretty much doesn't have. Is that either she herself constantly thinks of herself as the most beautiful woman, or everybody voluntarily reminds her that she is as such, and it carries through the whole drama constantly reminding the audiences that being pretty is the biggest value that a woman has. And then she fully internalizes that yeah we're just like comparing a rotten apple with a rotten peach you know like they're both rotten. So like really, how different could it be? But I have three candidates and I picked one. So worst male role, worst female role, not gonna change much. If you pick a different person to play it. We don't have all the awards in this world, right? We haven't talked about supporting roles, haven't talked about sound. We haven't talked but many other aspects of drama making. And because this video needs to end, and I think those are the most relevant things that I can think of. Therefore, that is my worst awards to Chinese drama of 2023. At the end of this video, I just wanna say have fun with it and don't take it seriously. If you believe I have something personal against these people, fine, believe whatever you want. Honestly, they wouldn't care about that either. They get a shit ton of money paid to them. So that would be the end of the first summary video of Chinese dramaland of 2023 from me. And next week, we will be talking about the good thing. Thank you for watching AvenueX I'll see you in my next video, meanwhile, live long and happy drama watching.
