2019 倚天屠龙记

I don't remember a lot about my childhood, compared to some of my friends and siblings, but 《倚天屠龙记》 was one of the first Chinese sword-fighting drama I watched. I recall eagerly waiting for the episodes to be aired on TV on Sunday evenings. Then we didn't have the internet or on-demand TV programmes. Just the good old, free-to-air TV channels and a trusty videotape recorder. I remember, in some cases, being the one to set the VHS tape to the desired location, and waiting for that exact moment when the episode aired, to press the red "Record" button. And of cos, some of the instances, when we would panic upon realising the tape was coming to the end, and hoping that there would be an advertising slot so that I could quickly pause the recording and swop a new blank tape. I would also sometimes sneakily, snap off the small square at the corner of the tape, so that it would prevent someone else from recording over that particular tape.

A youtube playlist of the 2019 drama


Back to this particular story, this 2019 version is probably the 3rd rendition I've watched. I marathoned-watched this 2019 version on Youtube(actually "watched" is the wrong verb to use, as I mostly listened to the Mandarin dialogue while doing household chores), then tried to find some (decent quality) videos online, of the original one I watched, but failed. Watched the above playlist from start to finish again a second time, which cemented my review of it as being lesser than the 1986 TVB version, starring a very young Tony Leung (see picture below).Ah, the psychological effects of first impressions and nostalgia combined. I even went one step further and found the original novel text on 金庸网. I am no good at reading Mandarin text, so I was lucky to find websites with the full length text and exported to play it on my mobile using the "@Voice Aloud Reader" app. That became my latest entertainment means after I'd stopped watching Korean dramas early this year.