Comments on: The IRIS franchise keeps chugging along

By: honey

honey — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 15:37:41 +0000

i think iris rating is higher because the soundtrack is great.

By: Two Cents

Two Cents — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 16:20:07 +0000

I could not have put it better, Chasen8888. I never watched Iris because I’m a huge Lee Byung Hyun and Kim Tae Hee ANTI-FAN, but I have tried watching a few episodes of Athena despite my dislike of the main guy. What baffles me over and over again is how utterly and breathtakingly stupid and incompetent the Korean secret service agents are. They are constantly 100 steps behind the bad guys. Come on, the writers have to give the story line some credibility even in a suspension of disbelief drama land. There’s got to at least be some kind of competition. How come they are always so baffled and surprised at the antics of the opposing forces? And the main guy is portrayed as a love sick fool with no objectivity whatsoever. No James Bond, for sure. Another thing that has me cracking up all the time is that all the bad guys have these big, bad guns while the good guys only have these tiny little toy guns. I think K-drama writers/producers think the K-drama audience is dumb and they’ll just eat anything up if they put enough pretty faces and add enough explosions or shiny things without any consideration for the intelligence of its audience. That’s rather insulting to us the audience, in my opinion.

Which brings me to your second point about J-dramas. I have gravitated towards j-dramas lately. Despite their quirkiness, I find that there is more plot and are better written and more interesting. At least they don’t assume the audience have no brain cells.

By: belleza

belleza — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 19:25:01 +0000

Yeah, this is part of Shiri’s legacy on Chungmuro, that never-ending drive to become a Hollywood blockbuster factory. The irony is that the results have always been mixed, in particular when they’ve done big budget thrillers (for example, Shiri’s follow up Yesterday.)

It makes sense to continue the Iris fandom. It’s not producing action/spy shows, it’s about luring A-listers into doing TV, getting foreign investors, and making money in Hallyu market. Cha Seung Won kinda admitted as such in an interview. Given the elevated profile from City Hall, he decided this would be a great opportunity for him to promote his Hallyu brand. Even though the Hallyu market is still geared toward romantic trendies (Secret Garden is going to make BANK) and “vacay spot” sageuks, it also works as general PR for what the industry can produce for TV.

Anyway, I like Athena. The show was never going to really transcend that it’s a Korean-style “workplace romance” show. The internal logic of the story, however they may hide it, is still standard romantic triangle stuff, with a lot of escalation. Even a show like “Time of Dog and Wolf” never really broke from that. In that regard, I think the show’s okay, and I liked Cha Seung Won’s Depp-style turn as the villain. There’s a wonderful texture to the scenes between Hye In and Son Hyuk — his intensity for her is by turns moving and scary.

And I like the Kill Bill-style setup for Iris 2. If you have Kim So Yeon in the lead role, well hey maybe they can pull out the $$$$ for Jang Dong Gun and give us an All About Eve reunion.

It would be awesome if they could get a Jang Dong Gun, Cho Seung Woo, or Kang Dong Wan. But Iris 2 has “Jang Hyuk” written all over it.

By: belleza

belleza — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 19:01:12 +0000

“J-drama doesn’t do well in actions/detective genre,”

I would disagree with that. Detective and police procedurals are bread+butter genres for J-doramas for at least 20 years.

By: Dafné

Dafné — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 11:07:11 +0000

Yeah, beside generally the main theme is different..the formula is not quite the same ^^, as japanese drama tend to be more on human story than the romantic one, if you understand what I mean…
I’m frustrated by my poor english *_*
The way japanese stories are developpped are not the same as korean’s, culture also is different.
I love kimura takuya, but also Matsumoto Jun ..

but best drama EVER are kdrama xD …

By: nell123

nell123 — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 06:51:52 +0000

Hmmm …interesting. For me jdramas have always been good with detective stories and bad with action/spy stuff. Like Iris/Athena level bad. Just like in Iris/Athena case I really wanted to like Bloody Monday series but couldn’t.

By: Asa

Asa — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 06:25:43 +0000

They could have thrown all the money in the world at these shows and they’d still be crap thanks to the writing..

Wait, scratch that. They could have hired good scriptwriters and gotten someone to write a sensible story with consistent characters.

By: Daniela

Daniela — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 05:02:47 +0000

…And I was complaining of a, for now, non existent Secret Garden sequel… they really want to squeez all to juice to Iris.

By: moley

moley — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 04:53:07 +0000

I loved IRIS, tried watching Athena and got really bored with it. o___o

By: Toya

Toya — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 04:47:31 +0000

What really would be astounding would be if they sold the story to the US for a crappy US remake. That would be the cherry on the “milk this for all it’s got” pie.