#Conjuring Curse

[taomubiji]

Wu Xie throughout the Daomu Biji adaptations

[thelaithlyworm]

Daomu Biji Watcher’s Guide, May 2024

A few new entries have been popping up lately, and I’m always hopeful new fans will stumble into the pits and never leave so I thought I’d paste up a rough map.

(Obviously the best watching order, like the best reading order of Discworld or the Aubrey-Maturin books, is ‘whatever first comes to your hand’ but for the people who don’t like that…)

tl;dr:

Daomu Biji is a series about tomb raiding. Think Indiana Jones or Lara Croft but much, much longer. The protagonist Wu Xie is deeply in love with BFF1 Zhang Qiling, a hundred-year-old cryptid, and BFF2 Wang Pangzi, who was stolen in a raid from another book series. It’s comic, tragic, horrific, zany, prone to musings on life, love, desire, attachment, and has many, many piss jokes. (‘Journey to the West but modern’ is maybe the other comparison I’d make.)

Notes:

– This guide is not talking about “quality”. All of the adaptations have their own strengths and weaknesses and tone can vary a great deal, which is to say, if one of them doesn’t suit you it’s likely something else will.

– Wacky endings, and plot threads that disappear unfinished and get picked up a long time later, are as inherent to the franchise as the piss jokes.

– It’s common for the dramas to introduce characters and subplots a lot earlier than the books do. Sometimes we’ll see a character introduced ‘for the first time’ on multiple occasions and strangely familiar scenes. I’ll try to point out the biggest continuity clashes as I go.

The Soft Entry:

There are a few movies that are entertaining as standalones but will introduce various characters and background. I would recommend:

Escape from the Monstrous Snake + Mystery/Grave of the Abyss – two monster movies featuring Hei Xiazi, a supporting character. He’s a pragmatical mercenary who’s going blind in kind of a weird way, and goofy as hell when he isn’t tiptoeing over a vast abyss of existential dread. So many fun action scenes.

Time Raiders (2015) – so there are some textual clues that late in his career Wu Xie wrote this story as a memory-jogger for an amnesiac friend. The plot is a freewheeling wild ride which doesn’t directly match any book plot but introduces some major characters and how they relate to each other. It’s colourful and fast-moving. Enjoy, enjoy.

Conjuring Curse and Misty Creed are… theoretically set late in the series even if the actors look about twelve. Both work as stand-alone adventures, though Misty Creed is maybe a little deep in the lore. Again, colourful and fast-moving.

The Chronological Order

You could honestly start with most of these – they tend to come with a ‘what has gone before’ at the start or a newbie character that things get explained to. The only one I wouldn’t start with is Heavenly Palace in the Clouds, which is lovely but also the second half of a set and things won’t make sense if you haven’t seen Lost Tomb 2 first.

Lost Tomb 1 – a highly digestible 10-12 episode version of the Seven Star Lu Palace arc, ie. Baby’s First Adventure. Introduces A-Ning, Xie Yuchen, and Huo Xiuxiu early and a couple of og characters for Wu Xie to talk to instead of monologuing to himself. The restaurant scene at the end was raided from a later arc and you’ll see it again in Ultimate Note. A book character, Da Kui, was cut which is a small problem because how he died is a minor plot point discussed in Lost Tomb 2. 

Lost Tomb 2 – covers Raging Sea, Hidden Sands (underwater tomb) and Qinling God-Tree (weird bronze tree in the mountains) plus a whole lotta side stories and original content exploring the world and foreshadowing later plots. Mooostly in continuity with Lost Tomb 1 (see Da Kui above) and made as a set with Heavenly Palace in the Clouds – they share resources and a lot of actors, and some threads begun here are finished in Heavenly Palace.

Heavenly Palace in the Clouds – covers the Mt Changbai arc, a journey up a mountain to find a very old, very grand tomb. This was made so close to Lost Tomb 2 that LT2 borrows shots from Heavenly Palace and not the other way around, which is fascinating because it pointedly contradicts the last five episodes of LT2. It also brings forward some plotlines originally from the Tamutuo and Zhang Family Old Pavilion arcs (San-shu’s past in the underwater tomb, and the Huo Family videotapes) dragging some characters on-screen and forcing them to talk about their feelings, which they would clearly rather die than do. Given those plot-tweaks and the early, deliberate continuity clash, I’m tempted to call this a Canon Parallel Universe. Got some interestingly chewy character dynamics and luverly, luverly set design.

Mystic Nine – This is a prequel about Zhang Qishan – Fo-ye – and his peers, but later dramas expect us to know who Fo-ye was so I’m sticking it here. Kinda… picaresque? Lots of action scenes and Republican-era flavour and various factions jostling for power – kinda feels like an old-school wuxia story, only set in the 1930s with all that glorious Republican-era styling. Has some unfortunate cut scenes – the details of how Fo-ye recovered at his family’s house don’t make a lot of sense in the aired version, and there are a couple of missing fights in the penultimate episode. Shrug. Still a lot of fun. Comes with four side movies about supporting characters.

Ultimate Note – Covers the Tamutuo arc (a trip through the jungle) and two-thirds of the Zhang Family Old Pavilion arc (investigating Zhang Qiling’s past is like kicking a hornet’s nest). Very, very flirty and has some zippy-zip action choreography. Politely ignores Lost Tomb 1–Heavenly Palace continuity (Xie Yuchen is, once more, introduced for the first time, now with a romantically coded friendship arc) and brings in a lot of cameos from Mystic Nine and Sand Sea, which it was filmed after. Kinda tiptoes around parts of the book plot, which I suspect would be hard for anyone to film, re: Fo-ye’s actions in the 1960s. Fair warning, this ends on a cliffhanger. This is also where the Xinyue Restaurant scene appears again – two cakes!

Tibetan Sea Flower – If Tibetan Sea Flower ever airs, it will go here.

Sand Sea – Based on the Sand Sea novel. After Tibetan Sea Flower, Wu Xie goes into a bit of a decline and makes that the world’s problem. We the audience, plus Li Cu and Liang Wan, EDIT: a lovely doctor, are pretty much dropped in media res into a number of ancient conspiracies and complicated plots coming to a head in the manner of a boil. It’s weird; it’s messy; it’s mad fun. Like Mystic Nine, has a lot of factions jostling for power and colourful jianghu characters. We will, once more, see the Xinyue Restaurant scene. Also has some side movies.

Time Raiders – The textual hints that suggest Wu Xie wrote this, suggest he wrote it around Sand Sea-era, when his life was a bit complicated. I’m putting it after Sand Sea because I believe it caps a conversation that, ah, doesn’t quite make it into the drama. But notionally this is where it should go. Ah…. at one point, someone tells a story about an ancient ruler, King Mu of Zhou, who sought immortality from the Queen of the West in Tamutuo. The longer book conversation suggests that a) King Mu of Zhou engineered a ���trap” for someone like Wu Xie to fall into in the future, and b) that Iron Mask Scholar, a villain from Lost Tomb 1, was an alias that King Mu of Zhou used in the Warring States Era. Which makes some of Iron Mask Scholar’s appearances in Time Raiders… interesting.

Reunion: Sound of Providence – sometimes known as Reboot. Having peaked in badassery in Sand Sea, Wu Xie has to consider what his life is going to be now, and also, he would like to track down a missing family member. So this was tweaked to make it more accessible to new viewers (so some parts of the back-story are not mentioned or conflated for simplicity) and that mostly works but I did find watching this first and then picking up the earlier dramas a bit of a mindscrew. Zhu Yilong is, however, a powerful draw and the rest of the cast sparkles. Probably best to think of Season 1 as two short seasons jammed together, which is to say, once the Warehouse 11 arc starts there are a number of characters who won’t reappear until Season 2. It’s a fun arc even so. Season 2 ends with a badass action scene and then a big party, which I think is a great way to end a story.

Escape from the Monstrous Snake, Mystery/Grave of the Abyss, Conjuring Curse, Misty Creed – these are all theoretically set around or after Reboot-era, though they can certainly be watched as stand-alones.

[reginleif-valkyrie]

Rewatching Conjuring Curse.

Xiaoge has his hand on Wu Xie’s shoulder in case he needs to shove him out of the way of the crazy old dude.

Xiaoge looks so worried about Pangzi ‘you okay, bro? Is your neck done trying to snap?’

Like, can you imagine being the bus driver when these three guys show up and one tells you his buddy wants to sit/stand on the roof and you’re just like ‘🤷 sure why not? He still has to buy a ticket.’

[heymeowmao]

介子鬼城 | Conjuring Curse (2023), dir. Chen Juli

[lilianhuas]

PingXie moments // Conjuring Curse [The Lost Tomb DMBJ movie]

Bonus

[hisapyon]

#pingxie again from #conjuringcurse !!

this is earlier part from #wuxie introduce #zhangqiling to others tomb robbers hahha #irontriangle #dmbj #daomubiji xiaoge likes to PDA nowadays xD

[pangzi]

New stills for Conjuring Curse 介子鬼城

[hils79]

Baby Triangle movie apparently drops on Saturday. Good thing it’s a weekend so I will have plenty of time to be not normal about it

[in-a-brown-study]

wu xie: we can't do shit but we can keep xiaoge from killing you 😈

xiaoge: whatever he says :]

we're at nearly 30min of the movie and first thing he says is just repeating what wx said,,really?😭

he reminds me so much of chongqi xiaoge but i cant remember the actor's name oops

[yueyehua]

watched the dmbj conjuring curse movie and honestly it's not bad? i wouldn't put it way up there in my favorite dmbj adaptations of all time list but the iron triangle were in synch in a believable post ten years way and overall this movie took a lot of characterization cues from the books which is refreshing you have no idea.

it's very much a 'the iron triangle goes on an adventure' movie but because i have to talk about my crumbs, have to mention there were also a lot of subtle little pingxie moments of silent communication that were sweet and perfect considering xiaoge (pretty accurately) has about 4 lines in the whole movie.

it was cute and fun and while the movie did suffer from directing issues and wu xie's is overall the weakest performance despite not being bad by any means, it slots nicely into canon, the characters are true to themselves, so you know what i'm happy with it

[bean-in-dice]

Storytime!

Tian Xiwei: The Matchmaker 😌

Once upon a time, there were two boys who were not quite seeing eye to eye. 😠

There came The Top Matchmaker of the whole world, Ms. Cupid Tian Xiwei. 😇

She saw the potential of these two bois and worked really hard to talk to them. 🥺

All the way across the time, to the Song dynasty. 😔

The final result! 🥳

Bonus-

The God of Marriage, Wu Xie of the Conjuring Curse, swears by her abilities! 👨‍🏫

[Except she may take her sweet time (centuries!) and also may pair up with the future couple herself on the way before delivering the result! 🥰]

[taomubiji]

Xiaoge's Moving Service—everyone who's used it says it's good! Seek refuge with Xiaoge and he will stare into your soul.

[shijiujun]

NEW WUXIE IS SO DARN CUTE?!! HE A BUN BUN

ok speed watched it, kinda meh, i mean ZQL is cool and the same in every one he gets a pass, this wuxie was cute but not my fave hahaha acting was a tadddd stiff? and the pangzi is also about the same as usual - plot-wise kinda ok also, the usual, at this point i just want another jixiaobing heihua movie thanks

[reginleif-valkyrie]

Almost 30 minutes in and Xiaoge says his first line of the movie.

[heymeowmao]

介子鬼城 | Conjuring Curse ° Wu Xie, Pangzi, and the Flying Night Ghost

[lilianhuas]

The Iron Triangle Returns: Conjuring Curse [Lost Tomb Webmovie 2023]