O Rei: Monarca Eterno (2020)

Exceptionally good

This drama is extremely good, the storyline itself is truly intriguing, the acting was really good, the ost,visual fx-a job well done, need I say more. I am currently re-watching the drama. You won't get disappointed, give it a try. I mean I have seen worse and I am wondering why other people gave a low rating. I almost didn't watch it because of all the negative reviews and comments

Acting:
From the main actors to the smallest roles everyone did a good job. The main actors had good chemistry.

Storyline:
I am not sure why people are getting confused. It's not science rocket, the narrative is that there is a parallel world and has similarities but slightly different that's it, very simple to understand.

All in all what i am trying to say is that the drama is really good.

Leia Mais

Excellent story

I feel like I watched a different drama than some of the other reviewers. This story had me involved from episode 1 and that doesn't happen with every drama. It usually takes a couple episodes to decide if I will continue with a story or not.

I like fantasy, parallel universes, timelines, etc. so this didn't throw me. One of my favorite TV shows of all time is Fringe. Both leads were amazing. It was my first time to watch a drama with Lee Min-ho. Some reviewers said his performance was wooden, but isn't that because he plays a king who must not let his emotions betray his thinking? Was his character drinking in information as he was trying to assess the situation and plan his next move? The FL was perfection for sure, strong, confident, just, kind, and a complete bada$$. I loved the minimal dialogue between them at times, yet it conveyed their feelings too. A reviewer had commented that Jeong Tae-Eul turned into basically a wimp as the story progressed, how so? Late in the series after she's already in love, she fights here way out of captivity. That she is soft, emotional, & vulnerable with the man she is deeply in love with is natural. He is the same with her.

Please do ignore the negative reviews for this drama and try it on for yourself.

Leia Mais

This drama had a lot of potential. Star studded cast, excellent writer, great lineup of osts. However proper execution and planning led this drama downhill. Firstly the romance felt so rushed, they didn't give viewers time to relate and didn't really give the depth and realism that a viewer like me would have liked. In simple terms there was no chemistry between the leads as they didn't not have enough build up for that to happen. Secondly the villain barely had a presence, showed in the first part of the story only to return in the last quarter. We should have more of a background of the villain and seen more of them. The romance overshowed the entire plot and to be put it nicely it was a waste of such talented actors. I wish the writer would have focused more on the link between the two worlds rather than the romance. The romance should have been more slow burn and passionate.

Leia Mais

Recently completed and I must admit that It was an excellent drama. The theories of parallel universe, monarchy and a love story, were all beautifully woven together. The acting skills were exemplary. The way Lee Min Ho perfectly got into his role as an Upright Monarch was very impressive. Kim Go Eun on the other hand potrayed a strong female lead, her character as Jeong Tae-ul and her acting skills were my personal favourites from this drama.

Her character as Luna was also impressive as the character as Luna was completely different from that of the character as Jeong Tae-ul. the formal being a pick pocket thief with a vast criminal record and the latter being an honest, strong and diligent police officer Wo Doh Hwan also did an excellent job at potraying 2 different characters who were poles apart in personality. One being a stiff and upright bodyguard cum soldier and the other being cheerful and chilled out person. All other actors too did a very good job as most of them played in double roles from the 2 parallel worlds. The screenplay and direction too was applause worthy.

Kim Go-eun, God, I am falling in love with her acting skills. Just saw her Goblin TV series and she was amazing. She didn't disappoint me. Her strong-willed and sarcasm character made me love her even more. The Superb supporting cast Woo Do-Hwan and the enigmatic Villain Lee Jung-jin shines here. You will fall in Love with their characters. Highly recommended must watch!

Leia Mais

It is my sincere opinion that despite all the love/hate floating around about the drama, it really had only one true problem - this was a 20-24 episode drama shoved into a 16 episode one.
Think about it - the most consistent criticism? The logic leaps, lack of explanations and editing. Well, to me, that is not having enough time to explain what's going on adequately. We had to guess.
I think given this, the writers did leave enough clues TO figure it out, despite the rushed feeling.
I enjoyed this drama - the production values, cinematography, acting and OST were excellent, and the story very interesting. Again, biggest problem I had with it was that sense of being rushed, of things left out or not fully explained.
Still, the ending did indeed wrap up EVERYTHING I wanted it too - which thrilled me :D
BTW, I thought the two leads had excellent chemistry :D

Leia Mais

I really liked this concept of this show, but the ending wasn't very satisfying. In the first half of the show, we were introduced to all the characters and given many questions that were left unsolved. This show had so many characters, so I was able to excuse the first 8 episodes for being slow as I expected the pace to start building up after we learned more about the world. I didn't mind all the questions, motives, or the other confusing things that couldn't be explained yet, but my issue was that the explanations would be pretty lackluster. The prime minister's motive was kinda lackluster for me; She climbed all the way up somehow and then wants to be a queen. That's a kinda dumb motive. Then there's Lee Lim who wants to be the king. That motive for me was ok, but then he goes back in time and kills himself? Adding on to that, how did he get all the way back to the present so quickly after he died, but Lee Gon had to take so long? Also don't get how whenever some went through the portal who didn't have the flute could move, because you could only move if you possessed it. Also don't get how time resumes whenever it's convenient later on when time was supposed to stop for long periods of time. Also don't get how some people retained memories and some didn't. I never understood how Tae Eul ended up falling for Lee Gon since that was never explained.

BTW, what did Luna even do with the key card?

pointless reveals/scenes/underutilized stories
the captain detective's meetings, going to visit the kid
lady noh's past
koo's mission/story
lee lim using lee hoon's mom to cause chaos but also wanting to be the king???
Jo yeong and jo seob and their promise
corea vs japan
pregnant woman

the ending was bittersweet for me. in the end, everyone had a happy ending but i wish they had all kept their memories. It doesn't make sense that only 3 of them got yo-yo boy's mercy but not everyone else involved.

Leia Mais

This drama definitely had its problems but I think many of the reviews are unnecessarily harsh. The show does start off slow with a lot of build up of the characters as "perfect". I think a lot of these earlier episodes would have been better used setting up the plot and developing other characters but thats off topic as that is not what happens. Instead the characters are mainly kept 1 dimensional and there are a lot of little hints and sub plots that the writer tried to embed into the story (the writer on this obviously thought they were being more clever than they really were).

There is a lot of hate online that the leads had no romance and that their acting was bad. Personally I like LMH and think he did a good job with this drama and pulling off the arrogant King. I think their were a lot of unnecessary side characters who them we really dont get to learn about because the writer waste all of our time in the first 10 episodes. On top of that the timeline is confusing (episode 12 I literally was like "WTF that doesnt make sense").

This drama is not all bad and does have a cool and interesting premise, including sci-fi, multi dimensional, time travel, and I personally love the "kingdom of corea."

It just fails to deliver on all that it promises.
I think it might be worth rewatching just to see if it make more sense the 2nd time around (I kinda doubt that it does).
I also think that if you are in the early episodes and having issues I suggest just jumping to episode 12+ as most of the story seems to really take place in episodes 12-16.

I still give it a 7 overall because I actually enjoyed the main characters and the concept of the drama even if I dont think it was executed well.

Leia Mais

Masterpiece!

Everything is great...Ignore what you heard about this drama...just give a chance until ep 5 and I am sure you will enjoy...
If you want to make your brain work, HERE YOU GO....
And romance:
Great chemistry between this two....they are adult and you should expect adult behaviors...and it was not rush because Lee Gon was looking for her for 25 years and about tae eul, falling in love with him took almost for months...
Writing, acting, editing and cinematography are awesome!!!!
After all, if you want watch a different kdrama and use you brain, WATCH AND ENJOY!!!!

Leia Mais

Outstanding female characters...

This drama is a must watch.
The first few episodes may come of as confusing, but once you're past that this drama will take you in for a ride. And it's an amazing ride.
The casting is perfect, the female characters are complex, smart and strong (every single one of them). The second male lead is another perfect character with so much to tell. Overall all the actors have done their characters perfectly.
The villain is great too.

Personally this is a perfect drama with time travel, adventure, thriller, a crazy villain, best female and male characters, romance, heart wrenching drama, having perfect dialogues and ending.

Leia Mais

Short: I wanted love this one. I tried. It feels like you're getting abbreviated Cliff Notes of a 20-24 episode story. Production quality is outstanding, but it's really hard to keep up with who is who between the two worlds. This should have been much better, it had everything it needed except time and a more developed story.

Detail:
ARGH! This one frustrates me so much, I like the actors involved, it has parallel worlds in different dimensions, it plays around with alternate realities and presents a world where Joseon style royalty remains to a modern "Kingdom of Corea", it has time travel - I mean, this SHOULD have been perfect. So why wasn't it?

Couple of key areas... but fundamentally it really just boils down to there seeming to be far too much skipped out. I found it extremely hard to track where each scene was - one minute you're in the Corea world and the next cut of the camera you're seeing the same person in the Korea world, and thinking... hang on, but that person isn't in both, or is he? few minutes late rit dawns - no, they've actually travelled between worlds, I mean could they not just spell that out?

This is both a complex and a simple story combined. The principals are pretty simple but it sets out a stage that has two different parallel worlds with slightly different versions of the same characters, so Kim Go Eun's character is both Jung Tae Eul (in Korea, our world) and Luna (in Corea, the other). Multiply that up for almost all characters including side characters. Now randomly flip between worlds without giving the player any hint as to which world you're in and try to keep up. It's not impossible, I *think* I just about managed it but i'm positive I missed plot points while trying to figure out if person A is talking to the person B from one world or the other because there's ramifications if it's the other and they're impersonating - which does happen.

I don't mind being misled a bit but it really felt more like chunks of story left out.

Next you've the problem with this Uncle and what his whole game is. He's a bad guy, ok we get that. He's doing bad stuff, yep, with you. But what's his goal exactly and what's his plan to achieve it? It seemed like he was doing "stuff" over the 25 years or so from the original treason to where the story actually picks up - but then there's really no actual pay off or benefit from him doing that at all, or indication as to what it should have been and at what point this was foiled and brought crashing down. Again, I think this is just a victim of the cliff-note storytelling, except it's bad cliff notes as it's clearly missing major plot points!

The time travel was quite nicely done.

The whole thing was set up to be absolutely brilliant, I can see the skeleton of what was intended (I think) and it was an incredibly ambitious project, it had a great cast and the production values on it were sky high. What it needed was either 20 or 24 episodes to actually do its epic tale justice. 16 was just too short for a project of this magnitude.

Some people are upset about it having too much product placement but honestly i'm immune to it, I find it amusing and still prefer it to advert breaks. Sometimes I like to play Product Placement Bingo when I'm watching a drama! :) Perhaps they went too far but... honestly it didn't bother me at all.

My favourite actor in this is definitely Kim Go Eun - big fan of her work anyway - but her character is tough, strong and skilled. She knows her stuff. Sometimes the story does have her be the victim to be rescued but I actually don't see a problem with that either - you can't be strong all the time, and a balanced character will lean on others as much as be leaned on.

Lee Min Ho... comes off as a mix of the strong regal king, and an arrogant ass, but overall I thought it played well for the character.

Final episode was good which just reinforces my belief that his was a well thought out project but far too ambitious to squeeze it into the timeslot it was given.

Watch if you like the actors, particularly Kim Go Eun, but expect to have to pay attention to keep up and fill in the blanks.

Leia Mais

When I heard about the release of this drama, I immediately wrote it down on my calendar and eagerly waited for the first episode.

When I watched the first episode, I ended up having a headache and more questions than answers. (In retrospect, I do know that is how it should really be to get the viewers hook on the show but the headache didn't really go away for the first few episodes). By this time, I was just actually watching because I'm intrigued. I want to know where this story will take us. To be honest, the leads I love the lead actors on this drama BUT the two of them together? I'm not really sure. I wasn't the biggest fan of their couple. It also didn't help that it wasn't clear enough why, when, and how Jeong Tae Eul fell for the ML. It was like Lee Gon went home, she missed him (or his company) and boom she was in love? That part, for me, really was a deal breaker.

I always tell my friends that if they remove the love line in this drama I think it will be 1000x more beautiful. The action/ political/ fantasy side of the drama was really off the charts. It was sooo good. Really intriguing and the concept was really good. However, I really didn't see the importance of the love line at first, it was only at the last few episodes that I somewhat saw the significance of it (but still not 100% sold to the idea).

This drama started as okay but got did get better in time. Ending was okay, I think almost everything was addressed properly except what will happen to the throne since I don't think they are planning to get married and start a family? Wished they showed more of the second leads love line. Especially our Yeong. He really deserved it.

Also, one thing I really loved in this drama since the beginning (other than the bromance of Lee Gon and Yeong) was the cinematography. Just wow. Daebak!

Anyway, congrats to the whole team of the drama for a job well done!

Leia Mais