If you want to talk about the most popular Korean drama in recent times, it is definitely "Squid Game".
Produced by Netflix and directed by "Melting Pot" director Hwang Dong Hyuk, this Korean drama brings together male gods such as Lee Jeong-jae, Lee Byung-hyun, kong Liu and so on, and its attention has continued to rise after it was broadcast.
After the launch of Netflix, it ranked first in the global ratings for 7 consecutive days, and successfully won the popularity championship of more than 190 countries and regions.
"Squid Game" also broke the downturn in the Korean drama market in recent months, allowing the audience's eyes to return to Korean dramas again.
Entering the end of October, the Korean drama market will continue to exert its strength, and many big celebrities such as Lee Young-ae, Song Huiqiao, Kim So-hyun, Liu Yaren and so on have come with new dramas, which can be called fairy fights.
And the most anticipated one is definitely this Korean drama -
"Zhiyi Mountain"
"Zhiyi Mountain" is a special planning drama launched by tvN to celebrate its 15th anniversary, and the weight of the drama can be seen from the four words of "special planning".
It is reported that the production cost of the drama is as high as 32 billion won (about 180 million yuan), and a Chinese platform has spent 150 million yuan to buy overseas broadcast rights.
Not only is the investment very high, but the production team of "Zhiyi Mountain" is also a top lineup.
The director is Lee Young-fuk, and the popular Korean dramas "Descendants of the Sun", "Lonely and Brilliant God-Ghost", "Mr. Sunshine" and other dramas in recent years are all from his hands.
Last year, he directed "Sweet Home", which broke the record of a single korean drama with a single integration of 3 billion won, creating the most expensive record in Korean film and television.
The screenwriter is Kim Eun-hee, a South Korean gold medal screenwriter who wrote "Signal" and "Kingdom", and the script she created is the guarantee of quality and ratings.
The actors are also very eye-catching, in addition to the two top streams of Jeon Ji-hyun and Zhu Ji-hoon, there are also a number of extraordinary supporting roles such as Cheng Dongyi, Wu Zhengshi, and Zhao Hanzhe.
In particular, the goddess-level Quan Jixian is the most concerned about this drama, in which she plays a ranger, and the whole person is online throughout the whole process and is very stable.
This drama is not only her second collaboration with Kim Eun-hee after "Kingdom", but also her return after "Legend of the Blue Ocean" for 5 years.
Famous directors + famous screenwriters + famous actors + 32 billion won of production funds have made this Taiwanese drama attract much attention and become one of the most anticipated Korean dramas this year.
"Zhiyi Mountain" also lived up to expectations, with a premiere rating of 9.1%, ranking first in the premiere ratings of tvN weekend dramas, and second only to the premiere ratings of "Witty Doctor Life 2" to become the runner-up of tvN's TV series premieres in the past years.
The second episode continued to rise in ratings, peaking at 14.4 percent, winning the ratings championship for the airtime slot.
It seems that after "Squid Game", Korean dramas will usher in another blockbuster.
The story of "Zhiyi Mountain" takes place in Jiyi Mountain, one of the "Three Gods Mountain" in South Korea, because of the beautiful scenery and majestic mountain, Zhiyi Mountain has become a spiritual mountain that is highly admired by the Korean people, so Zhiyi Mountain attracts many people to play mountaineering.
But the more beautiful things are, the more dangerous they are, and not all those who climb the mountain with their own stories can go down the mountain with hope, so Zhiyi Mountain is also called the junction of yin and yang.
If someone is in distress, someone must be rescued, so "Zhiyi Mountain" is a thrilling rescue at the beginning.
The male protagonist, Jiang Xianzu (played by Zhu Zhixun), is a newcomer who came to work at the Zhiyi Mountain Park Management Office, and on the first day of the report, he encountered a search and rescue operation, and he was called to participate in the operation before he could put anything away.
The missing person is a fourteen-year-old boy who grew up with his grandmother, suffered school bullying at school, left home alone on the mountain, and left his grandmother with less optimistic words.
All indications are that the little boy is suicidal and has been missing for 23 hours, while the golden time for search and rescue is about 30 hours, so the victim must be found within the next seven hours.
In the process of search and rescue, the rescue team also faced various dangers and emergencies, a pair of search and rescue personnel encountered falling rocks while climbing a cliff, and the falling boulder hit a search and rescue team member to make him lose consciousness instantly.
The stone continues to fall, if the search and rescuers are hit again, there will be a danger to their lives, and at the critical moment, the heroine Xu Yijiang (played by Quan Jixian) drove the rope to fall rapidly to save the injured team members.
Search and rescue usually takes the form of a team of two, because the teammate has just been injured, so the male and female protagonists have formed a group to carry out rescue.
Search and rescue operations are racing against time, and there are more and more places on the map that have ×, but no trace of the little boy has been found, and what is more severe is the sudden change in weather, and a huge typhoon will strike.
During the search and rescue, the female protagonist team found the bag of the victim, which contained a photo of the family of three.
The photo is taken in a wildflower bush above the cliff, and the heroine speculates that the victim wants to go to that place and wants to go there to search and rescue.
That wildflower takes three and a half hours to get there from good weather conditions, and now it's full of landslides and floods to get there and it takes more time.
The heroine wanted to go to search and rescue, but because the weather became worse and worse, the rescue operation was terminated for the safety of the rescue team.
Just as the heroine and the hero were preparing to go down the mountain, the man was stunned by the fallen trunk and woke up lying in the room where the rangers were resting.
The male protagonist checked the bag of the victim, he found that the boy wrote "Help me" in the corner of the notebook, it turned out that he came to the mountain not to commit suicide but because he missed his parents, and on the other side, the boy's grandmother also received a text message from the boy on his mobile phone.
So the male protagonist quietly took the preparation to go up the mountain to save people, on the way he met the same female protagonist who also sneaked out to save people, so the two began to search for the boy together, and finally found the boy to successfully rescue him.
From the above plot, it can be seen that the story of "Zhiyi Mountain" focuses on the rangers, and the screenwriter initially hoped to be mainly mountaineers, but after interviewing the staff of the National Park, decided to use the theme of rangers.
These rangers don't want us to think of just protecting trees, their most important job is actually to rescue people who are missing in the mountains.
The play mainly shows us two aspects of rangers, one is the danger of their work, and rangers will face various sudden dangers in rescue.
For example, in the rescue operation of the little boy, a rescue team member was hit by a falling rock while climbing a cliff and lost consciousness, and then the rescue team also encountered dangers such as heavy rainstorms, floods, and landslides.
The other is the original mission of their work. For a ranger, in addition to having professional skills, they also face a more difficult challenge in the rescue process - to save or not to save.
For example, after the heroine and her party found the missing little boy's school bag, they deduced that he had gone to the wildflower bush on the cliff, and when they were ready to go to the rescue, they were ordered to return to the team to suspend the rescue because the weather was too bad.
The female protagonist and her party had to go back, but after going back, she and the male protagonist secretly ran to rescue the boy, because they would regret not coming, so they came.
As the heroine said, they looked around for someone just to stop him before he died.
At the same time, in order to truly restore the working environment of the rangers, the drama was filmed on the Zhiyi Mountain, and it took 10 months for the team to complete due to the harsh shooting environment.
Therefore, whether it is the majestic majesty of Zhiyi Mountain or the thrill of heavy rain and flood during the ranger rescue operation, it is extremely real.
But if you just look at "Zhiyi Mountain" as an ordinary rescue story, then you think too simply, after all, the screenwriter of this drama is Kim Eun-hee, who wrote the ceiling suspense drama "Signal".
Most of her episodes are suspenseful, with tight rhythms, tense clashes and unexpected reversals.
The plot of "Zhiyi Mountain" is interspersed between the past and present of 2018 and 2020, and the writers began to bury suspense from the first episode of rescue operations.
For example, when the male protagonist first arrived at the rescue team to report, he sat on the car and looked at Zhiyi Mountain with a deep expression.
In the ensuing rescue, he suddenly flashed some images in his mind, and these pictures were where the missing people were.
In the place where the missing person was rescued, not only was a strange sign found, but the male protagonist also told the female protagonist that he could always see the place where the victims of the mountain were.
The time after the first episode comes to the present of 2020, when the male and female protagonists appear again, one is paralyzed, one is unconscious, what happened to the two of them?
As the bizarreness of the heroine's return event is further increased, the strange sign is summoned, the yellow ribbon that appears in the office, and the mysterious man who goes up the mountain.
These puzzles fill the suspense atmosphere of the play in an instant, making people full of curiosity and expectation for the direction of the follow-up plot.
So although the show focuses on the work of the rangers, the story of the rangers is only the bright line of the series.
There is also a dark line, that is, the process of the female protagonist and the male protagonist who can see the location of the victims working together to solve the unknown story in the mountain.
However, compared with the high ratings, the reputation of "Zhiyi Mountain" did not meet expectations.
In South Korea, a director posted a complaint about the plot and special effects of the play, and the Douban score dropped from 8.4 to 7.1.
Although "Zhiyi Mountain" is not as stunning as the beginning of "Signal" and "Kingdom", it is full of suspense at the end of the first episode.
So I look forward to the follow-up of this drama to be able to exert strength, and don't waste the team of famous editor Kim Eun-hee and the goddess Jeon Ji-hyun.
Bluestone Film Editorial Department | Piggy
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