THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Fun Stuff => ENJOY => Topic started by: oddtail on 04 Sep 2019, 12:17
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So,
there's this Korean series, available on Netflix, called "The Kingdom". I would not even be aware of it had a friend not recommended it to me.
Basically, it's a zombie outbreak story, with six forty-odd minute episodes in the currently available first season.
If you're anything like me, you might be rolling your eyes already. "great, another zombie story". To be honest, I never particularly liked zombies in fiction, and it certainly didn't get better due to popculture's oversaturation with them in the past decade or so. I couldn't get past the first episode, let alone season, of Walking Dead.
This one, though, I really recommend. It's very appealing visually, it's well-written and well-acted, and it has an original premise.
See, the story is set in Joseon Korea (17th century if I'm gonna guess?). On top of that, and this is the crucial part, Patient Zero is the king of Korea, and the main protagonist is the crown prince.
This shows pretty much every trope, cliché and plot device to develop and justify such stories in a new light. What is boring and overplayed in zombie-related stories works better here, because the setting is very important to how things develop, and not just thrown in as an exotic place for living dead to eat faces.
Throw in some political intrigue and social commentary, and the end result is much better than I'd anticipated.
Can't say much for fear of spoilers, but this shit is gold. If I'm any indication, it's the zombie story for a guy who hates zombie stories.
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So,
there's this Korean series, available on Netflix, called "The Kingdom". I would not even be aware of it had a friend not recommended it to me.
Basically, it's a zombie outbreak story, with six forty-odd minute episodes in the currently available first season.
If you're anything like me, you might be rolling your eyes already. "great, another zombie story". To be honest, I never particularly liked zombies in fiction, and it certainly didn't get better due to popculture's oversaturation with them in the past decade or so. I couldn't get past the first episode, let alone season, of Walking Dead.
This one, though, I really recommend. It's very appealing visually, it's well-written and well-acted, and it has an original premise.
See, the story is set in Joseon Korea (17th century if I'm gonna guess?). On top of that, and this is the crucial part, Patient Zero is the king of Korea, and the main protagonist is the crown prince.
This shows pretty much every trope, cliché and plot device to develop and justify such stories in a new light. What is boring and overplayed in zombie-related stories works better here, because the setting is very important to how things develop, and not just thrown in as an exotic place for living dead to eat faces.
Throw in some political intrigue and social commentary, and the end result is much better than I'd anticipated.
Can't say much for fear of spoilers, but this shit is gold. If I'm any indication, it's the zombie story for a guy who hates zombie stories.
I am definitely going to watch this, thanks!
Also, Train to Busan is a pretty darn good Korean zombie flick on Netflix. Better than World War Z even, I feel.
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So,
there's this Korean series, available on Netflix, called "The Kingdom".
I am definitely going to watch this, thanks!
Also, Train to Busan is a pretty darn good Korean zombie flick on Netflix. Better than World War Z even, I feel.
I just watched 'Train to Busan' last week.
Excellent movie.
Then I watched 'Seoul Station' (a "companion" animated movie to "Train")... didn't like that much at all.
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See, the story is set in Joseon Korea (17th century if I'm gonna guess?).
The Joseon Dynasty ruled Korea for about five hundred years (1392-1997 are the normal dates quoted)...
I must check this out. Netflix is showing an increasing amount of Chinese drama too. I recently watched "The Wandering Earth" (Verdict: Totally bonkers, but fun to watch), which was nice, because the film was on a few cinemas in Australia for about five minutes. "Shanghai Fortress" has just come on Netflix too, but I haven't seen that yet.
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Honestly, gotta second the recommendation on this one, it's a REAL fresh take on ye olde zombie outbreak tale.
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See, the story is set in Joseon Korea (17th century if I'm gonna guess?).
The Joseon Dynasty ruled Korea for about five hundred years (1392-1997 are the normal dates quoted)...
The series doesn't specify a time period, the century I guesstimated is based on the weapon technology used. Which still may be inaccurate, because I don't know the timeline of early modern firearm adoption in Korea. I don't think the story names anything that'd make it possible to pinpoint a specific decade (although that's mostly because of my general lack of knowledge of Asian history. For all I know, the show might be extremely period-accurate to a very specific time in Korean history).
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Related to nothing:
I changed the title of the thread, because the correct title is "Kingdom" (without the "The").
Incidentally, the Korean name of the show is "킹덤", which transliterates to "Kingdeom". I don't know if it's a regular borrowing from the English language that otherwise functions in Korean, or a deliberate decision to use an English word as a title (Google Translate does suggest that 킹 - "king" - is a word in addition to 왕 that also seems to mean "king", but I don't know what the distinction is and Google is not much help).
EDIT: 킹 on the Korean Wikipedia seems to be an article for the piece in chess, which would indicate that it's normally not used to refer to a monarch. Otherwise, the disambiguation page lists people with the last name "King" and mentions that it's the English word for 왕. So my assumption is that naming the series "킹덤" is a deliberate choice to use the English word.
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So a bit of a thread necro on this, but the second season is out and damn if it ain't the same caliber as the previous. Definitely a solid recommend.
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A series about a plague that threatens an entire East Asian nation.
I... think I'm gonna wait a few weeks on this one. Won't be much fun for me to watch at the moment.
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Fair.
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Honestly, gotta second the recommendation on this one, it's a REAL fresh take on ye olde zombie outbreak tale.
STarted watching this, and 4 episodes in I am joining the 'highly recommend' bandwagon.
Watching it reminded me of how much I used to enjoy the beginnings of TWD.....