Creation of the Gods: Kingdom of Storms
This film has been getting strong reviews, and after watching it, my feeling was that it was decent. The story holds together from beginning to end, and by the standards of domestic productions, it is definitely on the better side. That said, there were quite a few things that felt off to me.
First, the hostages all looked basically the same. I had a hard time telling them apart, which made some of the character-driven moments less effective than they probably were meant to be.
Then there is the scene where the four dukes secretly plot rebellion, and the meeting place just happens to be where Ji Fa is hiding. That coincidence already feels forced, and once he finds out, he immediately jumps out and tries to arrest his own father in the name of righteousness. That turn was hard to buy.
The part where the four hostages kill their own fathers also felt exaggerated to the point of being unconvincing.
Bi Gan's death was especially frustrating. King Zhou, Yin Shou, had already agreed with him on what needed to be done, namely killing the fox demon, but then he simply does not honor that agreement. Bi Gan ends up dying for nothing.
Su Daji, meanwhile, does not even come across as evil here. She feels more like a good person, repaying a debt of gratitude by sacrificing her own power to heal Yin Shou's wounds.
Jiang Ziya almost seems like comic relief. He comes to deliver the Investiture of the Gods, gets halfway through the task, and then runs away. It also makes you wonder why he had not investigated things properly beforehand.
There is also that baby escort mission that somehow requires two people. If just one of them had stayed behind, Yin Jiao probably would not have been beheaded.
And the catapults might as well have been launching bombs. A few stones are enough to bring down city walls, which makes the walls look like they were made of tofu.
Another strange part is Yin Shou's older brother killing the old king. Why choose that exact moment? And after that, he even tries to kill Yin Shou too. However you look at it, that is basically asking to die.
Confessions
I had read the novel Confessions before and thought it was pretty good. More recently, I noticed that the film version ranks in Douban's Top 250 and has a solid reputation, so I decided to watch it as well.
My impression afterward was that it was neither especially impressive nor disappointing. It is a fairly standard adaptation. The film stays very faithful to the novel and makes almost no changes, covering essentially all of the key plot points from the book. What it lacks, though, is the same level of emotional and psychological subtlety. The inner lives of the characters feel much more delicate and fully realized in the novel.
Still, since the book is so well known, a film adaptation that can reproduce it this closely is already doing a respectable job.