For lovers of suspense and detective themes, "Lotus House" should be a series worth opening and watching this summer.
"Lotus House" poster
The TV series is adapted from Teng Ping's novel "Lianhualou with Auspicious Patterns". It tells the story of the legendary martial arts legend Li Xiangyi (played by Cheng Yi) who was seriously injured in the First World War ten years ago. Until one day a young man named Fang Sickness broke into his life and started the "Conan" life where he went and murdered wherever he went.
To be honest, I didn't like the beginning of "Lotus House". First, it used the general template of overhead costume dramas, a voice-over and animation to briefly introduce the background of the story. Although it is efficient and cost-effective, it is lazy.
Then began to show the great battle ten years ago, a martial arts scene that deviated from the laws of physics. According to my personal evaluation criteria, this kind of martial arts design with a lot of special effects cannot step into the threshold of excellent martial arts scenes.
According to my usual habits, I was already disappointed and quit at this time. Fortunately, the plot progressed relatively quickly. I have some little surprises.
First of all, it is more obvious that the pace of the plot is relatively fast, and the length of a case in the early stage is controlled at 1-2 episodes. There are two advantages to doing this. One is that it can have continuous information injection to keep it fresh, and the other is that even if the audience doesn't like it, they can quickly change their tastes with new cases, which can achieve the effect of "retaining people" in the early stage.
Let's talk about the performance of individual cases. Taking the inn scene of the "Yu Qiushuang Case" in the play as an example, it can be seen that "Lotus House" has obvious composition and mirror movement consciousness, rather than using front and back shots (both parties in the dialogue scene The fixed lens switches repeatedly) to travel the world.
The characters in the case are gathered in a remote inn, and the relationship and interaction between the characters are compressed into a limited space, presenting a scene similar to the "Blizzard Mountain Villa Mode", and then killing ghosts and killing people in secret rooms and other elements are integrated, supplemented by special effects of wind, rain, thunder and lightning, and weird background music. The overall presentation of this section is above the passing line.
After the case is solved, "Lotus House" also has caring services. It will use animation to restore the modus operandi, which is also very friendly to novice audiences of suspense and detective films.
In terms of character setting, "Lotus House" adopts the classic protagonist team, playing the dungeon while following the main line. The male protagonist Li Lianhua (played by Cheng Yi) is a slick former No. 1 in the world. He is a villain leader with a bad face all day long, but in fact, his mind is only full of fighting with the former No. 1 martial artist (comparably similar to the setting of Mo Zunlou in "Legend of Sword and Fairy 3"). When three people get along, sometimes it is a mindless and unhappy mode, and sometimes it is a mode of two parents with a baby, and the jokes often appear in their daily interactions.
Fang Duobing and Di Feisheng started fighting at the first disagreement, and almost demolished Li Lianhua's house.
Another surprise that cannot be ignored is that Li Lianhua's horsepower drives the small western-style building, and his little yellow dog named "Fox Spirit", the days when he drives the RV with the puppy is very fulfilling.
It's a pity that the surprise ends here, and the problems of "Lotus House" gradually accumulated and exposed after several cases. As a martial arts film that focuses on suspense and detective cases, it turns out that it is not enough detectives and not enough martial arts.
There is no "detection" part of the investigation. Every time it comes to the final solution, Li Lianhua, like a Doraemon, takes out evidence that no one else (including the audience) has ever seen, saying that no one else has ever heard of it. He is like a live surveillance player, or a player with open eyes in the script, he narrates the case from beginning to end, without any foreshadowing in the early stage and no idea of investigating the case, just a small mouth is the truth, Won the loud applause of all others. On the other side, the seemingly thoughtful criminal never packs up the evidence of the crime, and always keeps it for the protagonist to discover.
In the setting of criminal motives, the key point often falls on the reason of "being trapped by love and betraying the people around you", which is really tedious. The key to solving the "Shaoshijian theft case" is to betray the master's personal maid for the lover, but this key role has almost no role, and there is no foreshadowing of the relationship line. It can only be said that this love came suddenly. In the matter of investigating the case, the audience seemed to be holding a seriously missing mystery, and they were stunned by the answer before they finished reading the questions, and they had no sense of experience.
The man behind the "Shaoshijian theft case", the lover who made the maid "betray" is really lacking in convincing.
Along with this topic of character motivation, the problem of flat character portrayal in "Lotus House" is also very prominent. The heroine Qiao Wanyu (played by Chen Duling), who focuses on the feeling of first love in Bai Yueguang, is the standard childhood sweetheart pendant of the male protagonist, and is also the tool for the male protagonist's follow-up enlightenment. As for the villain, Jiao Liqiao, whom the audience respectfully called "Sister Jiao", is just another sick and charming girl with red eyeshadow and a charming laugh.
Bai Yueguang Qiao Wan gave birth, and she still couldn't completely let go of her feelings for Li Xiangyi for ten years.
Li Qiao, the role of the witch, can play with many male characters in the palm of her hand.
Jiao Liqiao's so-called career is just to promote the plot. The men who worshiped under her pomegranate skirt were just indirect tool people. As for why these men who are already in high positions help Jiao Liqiao, a witch, to subvert her own interest group, the plot tells me that her setting is so attractive, it makes no sense. The shaping of this kind of sick and delicate villain female character still has to refer to Jin Lao’s excellent case "Mrs. Ma". .
Therefore, "Lotus House" cannot be regarded as a real martial arts, and it doesn't even have much taste. In the arena of the Lotus Tower, sects are independent. When it comes to martial arts, except for the protagonist group, the rest are all three-legged cats. "Lotus Tower" failed to build a martial arts system. If all the members except the protagonist group are tool people used to set off, then the so-called "No. 1 in the world" is just an empty title.
Generally speaking, "Lotus House" showed me a little sincerity at the beginning, but as the plot deepened, its flaws became more and more obvious. One is that in the case of detectives, they are not good at setting up suspense and have not been able to figure out the cocoons. The other is that in terms of martial arts, they lack the structure of the world view and only have the setting of shouting slogans, which makes both detectives and martial arts somewhat untenable, like an unbalanced Big head doll. It can be seen that the ambition of the TV series has far exceeded the control ability of the original work or the screenwriter. In fact, if you are not able to do it, it is not a bad idea to use your own advantages to create some small and exquisite works.
