TWSSG I - 千年の愛

Hi Hi sisters ....... last week, cloudnine and I watched the first chapter of the TWSSG movie in Toho cinema. To ensure we had a perfect view of the handsome Damdeok, I even ran to the cinema 2 days prior to showing and reserved the best seats in the house (hehe, and can’t help patting myself on the back for acting so quickly this time :)


On the morning of the showing, I was expecting crowds of BYJ fans gathered in the lobby, chatting and busy taking pictures of Yonsama's poster (much like the time when I watched Winter Sonata during my visit here in summer 2007) Aye? …… “Did I mix up the dates? Where is everybody?” I was wondering. I double-checked my ticket again, yup, it’s today. “But why is it so empty?” I guess 25 out of 165 seats can safely be considered as ‘empty’, right? My heart was dropping, has everybody forgotten? (Trust me, Toho cinema has shown Winter Sonata, Barefooted Youth and Papa before and it was always full house) I came up quickly with my own justification..… it could be the fact that the movie has been showing everyday since April 10 in many cinemas across Japan. Or as cloudnine explained to me that most fans would go on Wednesday, ‘ladies day’, which they pay only 1000 instead of 1800 yen for a movie, therefore Thursday is usually quiet. Arayso …… before I had time to analyze further, the theme song of TWSSG started playing and I was eager to watch the handsome Damdeok again!

第1章：千年の愛
The movie began with the drama-ending which the teary King Damdeok speaking to Kiha, who had turned into a black sujak. Then the story was directed back to 2000 years ago on the mythology of Lord Hwangwoon, Gajin and Sae-oh. The director was basically re-telling the story as in the drama – plot by plot, scene by scene in the same order. From the title "Thousands Year's Love", I thought there would be more emphasis on the love relationships, emotions and sensitivity revolving around the characters. Maybe I have misunderstood the intention of this project, there was no new perspective, no new scenes as I was hoping for. The re-editing from 6 hours of drama to 2 hours seemed choppy at times as certain scenes went too fast and you felt like something was not explained in between (of course for BYJ fans like us, we can practically recite the dialogue backwards :) I wonder for someone who has never watched the drama before, if they are able to follow what happened.

For example, this romantic scene showing Lord Hwangwoon’s attraction and courting of Sea-oh was skipped. which made it quite abrupt when Hwangwoon (out of nowhere) declared to his aboji that Sa-oh would bear his child and be the mother of Earth??
By the same token : the scene when Hwangwoon cured Gajin from her injury which led to her falling in love with him was also skipped - which made it hard to explain Gajin's jealous eyes as she watched Hwangwoon kissing Sae-oh??
Having said that, TWSSG is TWSSG. We all know it's a magnificent production with the best cast and crew from Korea. The drama has a heavy historical element init and the story has to be told. There are a lot of plots and it's certainly not an easy task to condense and re-edit 21 episodes into a 4 parts movie. Hehe, the good news is a condensed version means they have cut out a lot of non-BYJ scenes and the frequency of Yong Joon showing up is so much more higher. Hehe, not to give away too much details, the ending scene is Kiha embracing the teary Damdeok in the wooden shed. Now in this scene, they did show a new angle shooting from Damdeok's back for a few more seconds :) All in all, there is really no NEW surprise in this movie so far, if that's what you are looking for. For fans who miss Yong Joon and like to see his acting, I guess it's a wonderful outing with your Bae sisters :)

Chapter 2 ：すれちがいの運命 (The Destiny of Missing Encounter) will be showing starting May 8!