Sword Stained With Royal Blood (2007)

I grew up watching the old TVB series staring the Hong Kong actors like Felix Wong, Tony Leung, Andy Lau, and Miu Kiu Wai and Kent Tong. They were the golden ages of drama series but strangely, the Sword Stained with Royal Blood 1984 didn't really stick in my mind despite having a great cast. Felix Wong starred as Yuan Cheng Zhi and Lawrence Ng starred as General Li Yan in that one. So I came into this remake with 0 expectations. I haven't read the Jin Yong novel so can't tell you how truthful to the novel this series is. But based on watching previous adaptations, it seemed to miss some parts at the start. At 30 episodes long, the series is light on (compared to other Chinese drama marathons that stretch over 60 episodes) and flows well. It's easy to watch from beginning to end. Bobby Dou looks like a rough and rugged version of Yuan Cheng Zhi. Not the noble and scholar type. Actually looks a bit uneducated and slow in the initial costume and wig design... They fixed this costume up t the end. Bobby has a manly and heroic feel about him. My gripe with a lot of the Jin Yong remakes is how they cast weak (sissy) looking males into lead roles. So it was refreshing to see an actor like Bobby. I really liked Eva Huang as Qing Qing. There was a playfulness and cheeky way in which she played her role. She was my favorite actress in the series and my favorite Qing Qing to date. Sun Fei Fei plays a more independent and stronger version of A'Jiu (the Princess). She was not weak or hateful like how I've seen how this character has been portrayed in the past. General Li Yan hardly appears in the series unlike the 1984 version, To a large degree the supporting cast was excellent. A shout out to Vincent Jiao who performed well as the Golden Snake Warrior. The costumes were pretty good and went back to the old wuxia style look, not the cartoon look I have seen in some dramas. The fighting sequences were old school wuxia and didn't go overboard with special effects. The music was okay without being great. I really loved the 80's songs that went with the wuixa series. Something I didn't like was the dialogue between some characters, especially between Yuan Cheng Zhi and A'Jiu. The dialogue was clumsy and awkward at times. The conversation starts pretty much with 'Miss A'Jiu' and then the rest of the sentence. I mean for Christ sake we know who she is without her name being mentioned 10 times in the same conversation... Overall I give this series a 6.5/10. It was good but not great. It is worth watching if you're a Jin Yong and/or traditional wuxia fan.

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Best adaptation of the novel

Zhang Ji Zhong's productions are always maligned because fans of TVB adaptations look at them as inferiors. As someone who's watched both the 2000 TVB and 2007 Chinese adaptations, this is comfortably the best. The bigger budget and better natural setting gave grandeur to the end product and it really shows.

Jin Yong has a very peculiar problem in that editions of his novels always get worse. To fans of the book, it is a dream come true that this adaptation sticks to the original as much as it did, though I would really prefer it if A Jiu disappeared from the picture completely. This is also the reason why fans of the novel dislike the 2000 adaptation, because it twisted the plot and characterisations to accommodate A Jiu's character development and her nonsensical love line with the male lead. Thankfully, in this adaptation, Qing Qing's parts were maintained (deservedly). It would be better if they kept the plot point where He Tie Shou fell in love with Qing Qing, but it was not to be. The only other issue with the plot is that the actual source material runs pretty thin, but there is nothing one can do about that. There is a reason why this is one of Louis Cha's less popular novels after all.

The casting is brilliant. I would like a taller male lead to make the hugging scenes less awkward, but otherwise Dou is alright. Casting Eva Huang is a stroke of genius because she is basically Qing Qing come alive from the book. Kudos to Zhang for staying with her despite her then contractual issues. Qing Qing is not a likeable character with her pettiness but Eva Huang portrayed her extremely well. He Tie Shou was also a perfect choice (though her career has since gone to the gutters).

The action sequences were good as well. Looking back, they were really well choreographed. I do wish that the more recent wuxia productions can put in more effort into this aspect.

Overall, a fantastic adaptation though it could probably use a bit of extra money here and there.

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