"Dark Glory 2": 9.2 points, not only revenge cool dramas

"Dark Glory 2" 3.10 was launched, and all eight episodes were released in one breath on the same day, crisp and neat, and full of confidence.

Screenwriter Kim Eun-sook talked about the fire of the first season in an interview, saying that he was a little afraid of how he wrote the second season, but after re-watching it, he felt that he really wrote the second season well!

——With a score of 9.2 scored by more than 200,000 people, the audience responded to this "self-good" in their simplest way.

The executioner's sword dance, leaving you with only the last person left by your side... The good of revenge dramas only refers to these bridges full of conflict tension, the topic of evil and evil retribution, or does it explore the diverse new ways of playing genre dramas from "Dark Glory"?

According to the official introduction of Netflix, in the second week of March, "Dark Glory" reached 120 million hours of viewing time, ranking first in the non-English-speaking sector, and far exceeding the 70 million viewing time of the first place in the English-speaking circle "Your Everything".

From "Squid Game" to the current "Dark Glory", it is not difficult to see that Netflix's streaming strategy ultimately depends on works with localized style and content thickness.

As a film and television business kingdom with a complete production and operation pipeline, Netflix still "stubbornly" continues to throw the classic topic of victim revenge to the audience in the opening year layout of 2023. It is undeniable that the topicality and emotional resonance of this topic are "clever", but among countless works of the same type, "Dark Glory" stands out by activating more than 4.7 million users in a single day.

What moved these 4.7 million new users was not the theme of revenge, but the aesthetics of revenge in "Dark Glory".

The aesthetics of revenge began with "The Count of Monte Cristo", and was later carried forward by countless films, television and literary works, and the aesthetics of violence often presents a powerful collision between human nature. This collision ended in the first season with the secrets held by Wen Dongen, and the second season of "Dark Glory" did not unfold, but continued to dig deep into Wen Dongen's private revenge plan.

To be precise, it is the victim's homomorphic revenge, that is, the so-called eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

(The following contains some spoilers, please read with caution)

In the first season, Wen Dong-eun successfully lured Son Mingwu to come forward by using two physical evidences in his possession: the whereabouts of Yoon Suxi's body and the name tag lost at the crime scene. Use this punk who wants money and life to arouse the panic of the real murderer.

Sun Mingwu's death is the core of Wen Dongen's plan, and the two physical evidences in Wen Dongen's hands are actually not very effective because of time and pollution, and it is Sun Mingwu's death that really disrupts the delicate balance between the five people.

It doesn't matter who killed Son Myung-woo, what Moon Dong-eun has to do is point Son Myung-woo's death exactly to the core of the five: Park Yeon-jin (played by Lim Ji-yeon).

Park Yeon-jin is Moon's central target, a weather announcer who, as a public figure, brings far more danger to her reputation than others. And the selfishness and indifference of the small group of five will make them choose to stand by when they see their companions suffering retaliation, because they are not implicated.

In the first season, Ryon Don Eun used this trick to threaten Choi Huiting (played by Cha Joo-young) and Li Sarah (played by Kim Hera).

But as the source of 18-year-old Moon Dong-eun's nightmare, Park Yeon-jin is clearly a villain who is "very talented at doing bad things", and after feeling the signal of imminent retaliation in Moon's rental house, she very quickly detected the anomaly in the photo.

Using a photo of a strange man, he successfully cracked the alliance between Wen Dong-eun and Lee Sun-ah (played by Choi so-in) mother, and found Wen Don-eun's first perpetrator that year, Wen Don-en's mother, and used two new straight hair sticks to deal with Wen Dongen.

Wen Dongen is an unconventional avenger, and in the usual revenge drama routine, the protagonist will often hide his revenge plan, or keep his mouth shut, which will make the whole plan very difficult under the asymmetry and misunderstanding of information.

But Moon Dong-eun chooses to be honest with all the people who cooperate, the aunt will help her keep an eye on her, and even give Park Yeon-jin a note of the people who are dead, and the sister who works together will introduce her friends on the underworld and solve some inconvenient jobs for her.

Of course, there is also Zhou Ruzheng (played by Li Zhixi), who is willing to dance the executioner's sword dance for Wen Dongen.

Can you talk about love in the theme of revenge? The first thing to examine is the meaning of this love to the core theme. Zhou Ruzheng's understanding of Wen Dongen comes from exact empathy, not a universal sympathy.

His father died of the indiscriminate malice of a perverted murderer, and he has been harassed by the murderer's letters for more than ten years, and Zhou Ruzheng is facing the same emotional gap as Wen Dongen, which cannot be crossed by reason.

This emotional contrast is especially evident in Ha Do-young (Jung Sung-il).

The success of "Dark Glory" undoubtedly captures the true aesthetic essence of revenge drama: the portrayal of process. The result of revenge is no longer the most important thing for the Avengers, and after all the torture, their world can no longer tolerate the joy of tasting the result.

Countless Wen Dongen were trapped in that year's gymnasium and couldn't get out, they would be afraid of the oven, and even resist the shadow of hot food.

In the review of "Dark Glory", there is a highly praised comment pointing out that the success of this drama is largely due to the abandonment of the bad guy's bad routine of repenting of the good guy's forgiveness, and instead insisting on pushing this dead end to the end.

The sense of community and the golden mean in East Asian culture is a kind of observance of rules, and Wen Dongen's path of revenge is to trample on the rules step by step. When she was young, she tried to report to the police and anonymously deliver Yoon Suxi's name tag, and when she grew up, Wen Dongen did not even shy away from admitting all this chaos in front of the police, which was inseparable from her.

In the plot design here, none of the shots justify her, but there is no condemnation of this behavior. Just through Wen Dongen's mouth lightly said that God was often not by her side.

This is not only an omission of the rules, but also an undercurrent under the calm of the group. Because in a world where Wen Don En is falling apart, where all kinds of people interpret morality through performance, the meaning of positive emotions is being tarnished, and the correlation between language and action is being dissolved. And underneath this is the most naked violence and malice, which is the fact that this small gang has not changed from beginning to end.

People always habitually stand on the moral high ground to retrieve the questions of others, which also answers the question that perhaps from the audience's point of view, Park Yeon-jin's words and deeds are unreasonable quibbles.

But this is also the core of Moon Dong-eun's destruction of Park Yeon-jin's "dream of a good wife and good mother" - only by forcing you to have no one around can you return to self-examination, because under the protection of the group, there are too many people to protect your life, and you will not see the evil as an evil deed, but only pass it on to the victim.

In reality, this gloom happens almost every day, is reported every day, and even shortly after the second season aired, the director of "Dark Glory" admitted that he also participated in school violence in high school.

In the irony of reality and film and television unreal, looking at the drama "Dark Glory" again, does the audience want the result that everyone is happy with, or is it the source of these materials, and someone can really be sent to prison, sent to their hell?

Perhaps, as the police officer who chose to "end the case" said, he listened to Wen Dongen's story more than a decade late.