The Journey of Legend with Cheng Yi Opens with Immediate Popularity But Quickly Drops Off Due to Complaints About Production Quality, Cheesy Acting, and Stale Plot
With a few days airing now under its belt, it’s time to check in on the first impressions of period C-drama The Journey of Legend. It’s a big budget big male lead production headlined by Cheng Yi, who is coming off a very successful last period project with Mysterious Lotus Casebook hence the additional interest in this drama. The drama rocketed to a very strong premiere day heat and viewership buoyed by the anticipation but has since fallen noticeably due to very loud criticism of the drama. The problems are piling on from complaints of Cheng Yi’s cheesy acting and oily character behavior, the cut rate visuals and special effects, the tropey plot that seems pulled from dramas a decade ago, and the expected limited acting of female lead Gulinazha. There is even a major blooper with Cheng Yi seen holding his script in hand during a scene, lol, which is both embarrassing for passing quality check and that Cheng Yi needs to have his script even when the cameras are rolling for real takes. Of course this drama could turn itself around as the plot progresses but the early reviews are not good so far. And from non-fan viewers the biggest lament is how Cheng Yi can go from how good he was and how good the drama was in Mysterious Lotus Casebook to this.
I have not watched further than eps 1…waiting till the drama ends before I start. But eps 1 did not look as good as I wished. I dislike his whitecake makeup…I dont understand why China audiences like a Whitecake makeup on a guy. As for his acting… I rather not judge yet.
I don’t understand how he’s been mentioned alongside top male actors tbh, he’s not handsome and his acting has never impressed me. So the reaction to the new drama feels inevitable.
His fandom power and growing popularity after the success of MLC 2 years ago.
Cheng Yi’s career is basically running on rented bots. He already got exposed many times, his MLC drama reeked of bots, and now Journey of Legend is such a bargain-bin catastrophe the budget clearly went to watering fake views. His fans literally buy bots to flood the comment area, only for it all to deflate a few hours later same way they bought Groupons for “cloud booking” to fake drama demand. It’s smoke, mirrors, and bot farms propping him up, nothing else.
For years Cheng Yi has been one of the most overrated actors in costume drama. Now it feels like the collective spell has finally been broken and people can see that the supposedly handsome guy looks overly effeminate, with a puffy face and narrow shoulders. Really not what you would expect from the hero of a martial arts drama.
That being said, it is unfair to pile all the other problems with the drama such as bad CGI, boring plot, ridiculous martial arts choreography and bad editing on his tiny shoulders.
The blame for most of the blunders should be directed at the production team. Clearly some people thought they could get away with sloppy work and a lot of copy-paste because Cheng Yi’s fandom will support the drama no matter how bad it is.
That’s so true. Maybe because he can only play in that genre. You’d think he is typecast but clearly his choice. Although other actors are often criticized, we need to admits that some still tries to play other themes.
Well, if you’re caught on the camera holding a script knowing that it’s a take is the biggest blunder a serious actor can commit. It reeks disrespect, arrogance, unprofessionalism and laziness.
Cheng Yi doesn’t really have the acting chops, charisma and screen presence. The drama also looks shoddy and cheap on the whole, and I don’t get why martial artists wear costumes that are better suited for airy fairy xianxia dramas. Fight choreography looks ridiculous.
C-netz are also comparing him unfavourably with Julian Cheung, who exudes the charisma and gravitas as befits the ML of a wuxia drama.
Poor Wen Rui’an should stop letting his books get c-drama adaptations.
I wondering why people so judgmental easily this day but after I watched it obviously this drama has money laundered in hint, where is 300 million budget goes to?. Everything so mediocre even plot it’s so boring. No wonder IMDb rating so low.
It’s okay and so far, not as exciting and epic I was expecting. I was taken aback by the production value…or lack thereof. Was it done carelessly or was it done purposely for nostalgia? Cheng Yi’s fight scenes are really good, though.
Immediate popularity? Nah, more like heavy marketing and injecting tons of water into data. CY has always been lambasted by C-netz for bad acting and watery data. If he’s truly popular, he wouldn’t have acted in this low quality drama.
I would like to remind everyone that this low quality drama and CY fans marketed the drama as a rival to Xiao Zhan’s highly-acclaimed The Legend of Zanghai. When their bundle marketing was exposed, they accused that LOZH was the one trying to bundle with them instead. We can see how laughable their accusations are now – LOZH, a great quality drama, wanted to bundle itself to such a low quality drama? LOL.
This does not look like high budget drama at all… mid level at most for me. But definitely cannot be compared to Xiao Zhan- Legend of Zanghai, it is not even Legend of The Female General level.
To be honest, after eps 1…I dont have much expectation of the rest.
It’s not even mid level. LOTFG is considered mid, this TJOL is the lowest level. CY’s side is now blaming the audience for not appreciating the “great efforts” CY put into the drama and claiming they will sue people for saying the drama or CY’s acting is bad LOL. They also kept marketing about kindness and hard work as if the audience should care about these more than his bad acting on screen. CY himself even criticized the audience for doing other things while watching dramas (therefore not giving full attention to the drama, I guess), and said if it’s like this, the audience might as well not watch the drama and waste the VIP subscription. Like wtf? Who are you to tell people how they should watch dramas?
I dont think this drama will be making much mark for this year…
Fans defending their idols, they can be so proactive. Fans getting their idols in trouble are not uncommon.
This drama marketed like crazy when Legend of Zanghai was about to broadcast. We spoke about that here too. They bundled heavily and positioned the two dramas as competing and then positioned Cheng Yi as the true top star who was the real actor compared to the falling off, bad actor Xiao Zhan.
This has now blown up in their faces because everything about his drama is subpar. From his bad acting, horrible lines to his looks, cgi and so called martial arts. Huanrui and Cheng Yi were so aggressive in their marketing and desperation to show him as the top star that it has blown up in their faces way worse than it would have if they just let the drama air with normal marketing.
Even now when this drama is experiencing so many problems the main line for Cheng Yi, his agency and his fans are to attack Xiao Zhan (and to a lesser extent Yang Yang and Luo Yunxi) instead of just keeping their heads down. It is crazy what they are doing and I really wonder if they truly think that Cheng Yi’s problems will go away if they keep doing this.
To top everything off, his lecturing to the fans and how they should or should not engage with his dramas, and the platforms, angered pretty much everyone. The arrogance is astounding.
Oh and btw, the drama didn’t start well. It was watered like crazy and it is actually still being watered, they have just slowed down because now so many eyes are on it.
Its their karma for what they did to XZ and LOZH last time.
Also you know they still continue until now, their marketing now trying hard to make it as “fandom issue”, they again using XZ fans as excuse that they get bad reputations. They also trying hard to faking and editing LOZH scenes to make it as bad as their drama. On weibo, xhs, dy whenever some people complaints CY fans will attack those people with LOZH fake scenes and accuse them as XZ fans. LMAO
Do they think behaving like this will help their drama?
We all know that XZ fanbase are big, but didn’t ChengYi fans claimed they are in the same level or even bigger? But now suddenly they acting like small fandom abused by big fandom acting as victim that XZ fans bullying CY and his drama that how the drama got bad reputations because of “one fandom only”? LMAO
Instead of reflecting with the bad quality drama and plot,and calling out the bad production team, they busy throwing pot to XZ which made passerby just laughing at them now.
Even XZ known traffic actor with big fanbase, he showed the capable of leading good quality dramas and gained passerby favors, thats the different. Fanbase is not enough secure.
GP is way bigger than fanbase, thats why XZ legend of condor heroes last time also didn’t do well because GP choose their favorite more like Nezha 2 and Detective Chinatown.
I think the big sucsess of LOZH are combinations of everything, mostly GP appreciations, not only based fanbase.
the same with TJOL bad reputations now is obviously not from one fandom war alone, but the bad quality drama, the bad direction and acting, CY fans should focus to promoting a little good thing to make people watch instead of attack every bad comments and call random ppl as XZ fans. It will just turn more people off.
As you know even until now their marketing and Cheng Yi fans still continue to use Xiao Zhan and provoke his fans to gain more traffics.
Lmao they blindly attacking people and passerby who posted critics and will accuse them as XZ fans.
Paid many of their marketing and other HR artist to make bundle post with XZ and CY. Like????
And instead of reflection and call out their cheap productions, they busy blaming reputation to XZ fans. They seriously become Wang Yibo fans 2.0 that their lives depend to mention XZ name on their daily and everything happen will be XZ fault lol I know they want to make fandom fight as excuse not to admit that the drama is bad quality, they are just arrogant like that. Looking for scapegoats instead of reflecting and improving.
Legend Of Zanghai already proved its good quality and loved by GP. While FSH already proven as bad quality drama. And if only they know that real organic success is not only based fanbase.
I laughed hard when my friend pointed out the script in his hand.
The comment on his acting as “oily” – isn’t that the character he’s playing. Why do people reflect the characters back on the actors?
Everything in this drama is disastrous, tasteless and ridiculous, starting with this ugly, bald clown called CY. He deserves the fame and the name of bald chicken. He only knows how to do black marketing, package with other actors and inject water into his dramas. Even the shitty lotus is pure water. There was no real heat during its broadcast. It was only after the end of the drama was broadcast that they sold it as marketing that it was a success. Only if it’s in the devil’s chicken coop.
They should keep the story of the journey of the legend faithful to the novel. The time travel/migration to the novel element is destroying the story.
Huh..? What do you mean by that? So… this isn’t actually a transmigration story in the original novel? Then what’s the original story?
No drama is safe from productions blunders. Dont forget that Joy of Life s2 which was the most anticipated drama in years had a good number of production mistakes. Quality is going downhill in general in cdramas. It’s very funny that suddenly so many people hate Cheng Yi when everyone was obsessed with him just last year. Have fun on your bandwagons
It’s true that production blunders are not uncommon, but they should never be normalized. One or two mistakes can be brushed off as “easter eggs” or even lighthearted slip-ups, but when they pile up, they expose serious problems with the overall quality of the project. In The Journey of Legend, the blunders are so frequent they’ve become impossible to ignore: Cheng Yi, the main actor, was caught multiple times with his script clearly visible in the final cut, his sloppy diction and muffled delivery showed he didn’t properly memorize or rehearse his lines, and at one point he was even filmed wearing Crocs instead of his character’s costume shoes. Costumes are an integral part of a character’s identity, so if someone who brands himself as a “serious actor” can’t even keep track of his lines or shoes, it speaks volumes about his professionalism. Yet Cheng Yi, his agency, and his fans are eager to push the blame onto the production crew and drag in other dramas to argue that “every show has mistakes.” The issue here is not the existence of blunders, but the sheer volume and what it reveals: the overall quality of The Journey of Legend is so nauseating, that even state-affiliated media have begun to issue pointed critiques and the official review board is being flooded with calls to pull this low-grade drama off-air before it further damages the reputation of cdramas. The backlash is especially intense because Cheng Yi and his agency marketed this 300-million RMB production as a prestige project that could rival Xiao Zhan’s Legend of Zanghai, but what audiences actually saw was a disaster with bargain-bin costumes, embarrassingly shoddy execution, and production values that feel like a bad parody, prompting viewers to joke that the whole thing reeks of money laundering while others are stunned by the blatantly manipulated view counts, making it clear that instead of investing in the show’s quality, the budget went to Yunhe Data to buy inflated numbers and create the illusion of success.
Aside from the fact that he’s always been a mediocre actor, the appearance of scripts in the drama really showed how unprofessional he is. Bringing scripts on set to rehearse is fine, but having scripts after filming started is cheating in exams.
Senior actors like Sun Li and Wang Jinsong emphasized the importance of memorizing lines for an actor, Cheng Yi doesn’t even do the bare minimum. The rumors that Jin Dong kicked him from the filming set and had him film with the assistant director because he couldn’t memorize his lines, not surprised if those are true.
Only demented and brainwashed international fans are obsessed with this ugly, bald, talentless 40-year-old who pretends to be cute and acts like a 3-year-old baby. Not even in China do people know who this idiot is.
His popularity is fake, just like his persona, created by marketing from his bankrupt agency and an attempt to package Xiao Zhan and XFX.
He lied about his age, his fake fame, and his fandom is full of bots and aquatic marines. He’s a loser, lazy, and has almost 20 years in the industry. His lines and acting are weak and terrible. No one understands what this idiot is saying. He needs green men to hold his legs to fake fight scenes. He’s a clown.