Sunday, December 09, 2007

TWSSG - Ideal vs Reality

TWSSG is by all means a grand work. It is made with nice combination of myths and historical facts. It is also an exemplified combination of ideal and reality. One needs to hold a balanced attitude to deal with the ideal and reality.

Ideally as director Kim planned, the drama would only be aired after the shootings are completed. The reality is, the script was modified and delayed, accidents and injuries happened to the director and main actors, the script was not available to the actors/actresses a week before the shooting for the ending episode, and the last episode shooting was completed only 3 days before it was aired.

Ideally HRH will complete his Taewang project safely. In reality, he got injured with broken finger, neck injury, knee injury.

Ideally the drama will be produced with meticulous quality since both the director and the main actor BYJ are perfectionists. The reality is, both of them got severely injured, the last episode broadcasted had a feeling of being rushed. Here is a snapshot of Kiha in the air. She was supposed to be on fire, but at this shot, the fire was diminished, leaving the safty wire shown too obviously. I hope this is corrected in the final version going out to the world.

Ideally Damdeok should learn from Kiha or Hogae (the only two who knew the truth) that Kiha did not kill his father. That would make more sense when Damdeok apologize to Kiha for not trusting her. The reality is, the viewer has to lean on one’s own imagination to connect the dot. Who told him and how and what was his reaction, this is an important section not to be omitted. I hope there is an updated version with this part added.

I like the way Damdeok forgave Kiha. After all she was his first love, and his son’s mother. It makes sense that he would forgive her especially after he learned that she did not murder his father. But what about his love to Sujini? Ideally, after he broke the heaven’s bow, before he turned around and going towards the glowing megalith, Damdeok would give more time to look at Sujini and his son with more passion and affection, even a hug would be better. In reality, he only passed her a glimpse, director Kim, I think only 3 more seconds will do the justice to her years of loyalty and love to the king and his son.

Ideally all four gods’ symbols would wake up for the sake of the Jyooshin king’s life. In reality, the long awaited Joojak did not get time to wake up to save the king’s life. According to the scriptwriter, the four scared symbols not only have the roles of assisting the Jyooshin King, but also represent the four essential qualities that a great king should possess. Turtle Snake represents Wrath to darkness. Blue Dragon represents Mercy. White Tiger represents Pure Courage and Phoenix Heart represents Passionate Love. The first 3 sacred symbols woke up and saved Jyooshin king’s life in the corresponding crisis. It also demonstrated that Damdeok possessed the qualities of justice, mercy and courage. However, in order to become a real king, Damdeok must also acquire the ability to love. At the beginning of the episode 24, Damdeok revealed his passionate love to Sujini, at the end of this episode, Damdeok forgave Kiha, these are all proof that he has completed his trial as a real Jyooshin King. The only regret was the scence of Joojak waking up was not shown to complete the Jyooshin King and Four Gods journey. This may become a biggest regret of this drama for rushing at the ending, and it may be difficult fix to the current cut.

Ideally I would like to see Julno elder Heukgae died from a more glorious cause, rather than falling off the horse and killed by a regular Hwachuan nimja. Ideally I wish General Kao did not get killed either. In reality, the current ending lead me to think that Heukgae was too old to fight this fierce war, that he fell off the horse caused by fatigue, killed by “nimja”, m dear poor Heukgae, he is so adorable. As for General Kao, I guess he has to die before Damdeok to fulfill the conversation between the two in episode 14. In there Damdeok promised General Kao that he would not die before the general, in order that the general can fulfill his promise to the late king to protect the life of Damdeok. So here goes our beloved General Kao.

Ideally even if all the four symbols were destroyed, none of the four guardians lost their lives, neither did Taewang die at the breaking of the heaven’s bow. After all these years of fellowship, loyalty and fighting for the king between life and death, they don't deserve to die just because the symbols were destroyed. In reality, the ending did an excellent job of making it ambiguous, only if in the previous episode, it was not explained too clearly that the guardians and the king himself would die at the breaking of the heaven’s bow. And if between the scenes of Taewang entering the glowing megalith and the scene of real life Taewang’s monument, it would be ideal to show the green sacred tree symbolizing peace is back on earth, after years of war. This will also dismiss the interpretation that Taewang died at that moment of merging into the megalith and the megalith turned into a grave stone.






Ideally more clips of ordinary people, (may or may not including the ex-guardians of the four symbols), living a peaceful life in the city or on a green pasture, be shown during the narrator announcing the chronological achievements of Taewang. In reality? A few clips of quiet city and pasture were shown to suit the intention but can be more lively with showing some of our familiar faces such as Dalbe’s twins playing with Joomuchi and that street performer telling glorious stories of Taewang to the folks on the street.



Peace on earth, that's Taewang's ideal, isn't it?

Read in TWSSG special 2, YJ said TWSSG was a great work with a few discontents. This is exactly the reflection of the ideal and the reality. I would say YJ ssi and the TWSSG crew, you did a fantastic job, especially under unexpected difficult conditions. There may be dissatisfactions to this grand project, but this is the nature of the reality. I am all satisfied to see that you achieved your goal with determination and your health is recovering day by day. Cheers!


11 comments:

jaime said...

dearest h,

I wish KJH and BYJ have consulted you before wrapping up this episode 24 so hastily. Your scene by scene, frame by frame suggestions are just so logical and convincing. No wonder Yong Joon said he has many regrets, so many parts can be improved.

gosijo said...

Hi dear H,

I now see, in retrospect, that I followed your advice to the best of my ability re: the ordering. As you said in your previous post, it paid off in the sense that the ending made sense to me and I liked it.

I also like your detailed analysis here. All these points are very valid. I hope they are able to follow at least the easiest ones for the other releases.

HeippieH said...

haha you are my dearest sister jaime, you know what i wanted the best, won't be a good consultant to TWSSG ending, but will be a good visitor of HRH if i do get a chance to "cousult" him ... hehe...

HeippieH said...

dear gosijo,

good to know you like the ending too. do you know there is another release? wonder if they can do more touching to the final episode for taiwan and japan release, like what we do in our project, tag it with version numbers, release1.0, releaes 2.0, release 2.1, won't that be good that we will be busy watching different releases, how about making it an multiple choice ending so we can have one TWSSG and can branch off to different endings by clicking on the ending we like, happiest ending, happier ending, happy ending ... philosophical ending ... heeheehee the more the better, i am giving myself to reverie ...

gosijo said...

LOL, dear H, with your suggestions for various endings and the possibility of choosing.

Sorry I didn't make myself clear about "other releases". I meant the ones in Japan, Taiwan and the upcoming DVDs.

Since they'll be consulting you or, at the very least, directed to this blog, I might as well point out another continuity error. This was in E18 when Sujini was at the temple fighting it out with Kiha. After she was injured, she kept on fighting and, most of the time, her right sleeve was appropriately stained (with blood) but for one of the stunts, it miraculously reverted to being unstained.

HeippieH said...

OMG my dear gosijo, you have two very sharp eyes. I completely missed this detail. Time to go back and watch it again and I'll pay more attention to this scene. Honestly there are many other little caveats like this in this drama, my solution is, please keep one of your eyes closed, and the other one wide open to feast only on HRH, knowing that this is a drama rather than a movie, and we got to see more of HRH than in a movie, although the quality of the drama can never match a movie.

I do hope the releases to Taiwan and Japan and upcoming official DVDs are improved.

Love...
-H.

Anonymous said...

Hi H, gosijo and jaime!

Wowow, I am so impressed with your detailed analysis, as the others called it. I'm afraid I just watched the drama, without reading too much into it or thinking that much about it. I was content to understand the basic storyline and watch our amazing HRHH at work, in all his spendor and beauty!

I did maintain the "order" very consciously, I didn't read any posts about the ending, even tho I sometimes felt I was "out of the loop"....

Now that I've seen the ending, I still have some really mixed feelings about it -- but regardless of that, I enjoyed TWSSG soooooo much!!!

Pretty soon it will be time for my annual WLS viewing, hahaha!

love to all,
coco

HeippieH said...

Dear Coco,

I can understand you have mixed feelings, so do I. I am sure most of us felt the same way, this to me means the ending is "not happy", "not natural", we HRH fans are people who appreciates natural, beauty, happiness and peace. So the consensus seems to be, we are confused with the ending, but we all love HRH so much, and we all appreciate his excellent performance and amazing images in this drama, we support him completely.

I am with you 1000% on rewatching the WLS, that's exactly what I wanted to do after watching this fierce bloody drama. My heart really needs some sweet and warm comfort from the timeless, ever-lastingly beautiful Winter Sonata.

With much love and hugs ... stay well and happy!

Anonymous said...

Thank you for your analysis. I love TWSGG but I really do not like the ending at all. I did not understand why DD apologize to Kiha for not believing in her. I don't know why he left Sujini in the heartless way. At the begining of ep.24, I think everything is good b/t DD and Sujini, then suddenly, he left without a blink. The ONLY "affective" action toward Sujini is him running up covering her with his son. Then that is it, he is gone! I kept thinking about this movie, maybe DD did not consider Sujini as his lover at all :(

Unknown said...

I totally agree with you about the Phoenix not awakened must the biggest regret and disappointment to this drama. For me when I first watched the ending I was disappointed because I waited for the phoenix to be awakened and acknowledge its guarduan but sadly the drama ended without it. I also agree with you about the awakening of the phoenix must be shown to complete the drama, especially that the drama started with Lord hwanwoong created the last symbol(Phoenix heart symbol) and chose its guardian therefore it must be ended with the awakening of it right?. In my opinion the awakening of phoenix was the most awaited scene in the drama but since it did not shown many were disappointed and confused about the ending.

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