Life on Mars (2018) 라이프 온 마스
Directed by Lee Jung-hyo, starring Jung Kyung-ho as Han Tae-joo, Go Ah-sung as Yoon Na-young, Park Sung-woong as Kang Dong-chul, Ro Jong-hyun as Jo Nam-sik and Oh Dae-hwan as Lee Yong-ki.
Watched 14 - 18 July 2024 — 16 episodes (DRAMACOOL)
*Finished this time-travel story (based on the British TV-series of the same name) yesterday, and I'm glad it manages to maintain the steady pace throughout. I totally enjoyed it. It's compelling, suspenseful, heartwarming, and funny. Strength of the show is the relationships between the main characters.
*Jung Kyung-ho gives an excellent performance as Han Tae-joo. I love his looks (more in the past than in the present timeline) and the way he fits a suit, and his white sneakers with the suit trousers. I like the change Tae-joo goes through and how he learns to trust people.
Directed by Lee Jung-hyo, starring Jung Kyung-ho as Han Tae-joo, Go Ah-sung as Yoon Na-young, Park Sung-woong as Kang Dong-chul, Ro Jong-hyun as Jo Nam-sik and Oh Dae-hwan as Lee Yong-ki.
Watched 14 - 18 July 2024 — 16 episodes (DRAMACOOL)
*Finished this time-travel story (based on the British TV-series of the same name) yesterday, and I'm glad it manages to maintain the steady pace throughout. I totally enjoyed it. It's compelling, suspenseful, heartwarming, and funny. Strength of the show is the relationships between the main characters.
*Jung Kyung-ho gives an excellent performance as Han Tae-joo. I love his looks (more in the past than in the present timeline) and the way he fits a suit, and his white sneakers with the suit trousers. I like the change Tae-joo goes through and how he learns to trust people.
*Love Han Tae-joo and Yoon Na-young together. Their budding romance is subtle but sweet, and Na-young is a great female character. From coffeemaker to volunteering for various dangerous tasks is quite a leap, and I love how Na-young's colleagues finally value her as a worthy addition to their team.
*The bromance between Tae-joo and Dong-chul is so great and heartwarming. Park Sung-woong as Kang Dong-chul is perfect in his role as the team's captain. He's very loyal and I love how he sticks up for his team.
*The bromance between Tae-joo and Dong-chul is so great and heartwarming. Park Sung-woong as Kang Dong-chul is perfect in his role as the team's captain. He's very loyal and I love how he sticks up for his team.
*At first I didn't like Oh Dae-hwan as Lee Yong-ki at all. He's lazy and sexist, but fortunately he came around and also got on good terms with Tae-joo.
*The episode with the hostages is probably the best of the 16 episodes. It's tense and heartbreaking, played to perfection by the lead ánd supporting cast, and it also has something important and meaningful to say about society.
*The episode with the hostages is probably the best of the 16 episodes. It's tense and heartbreaking, played to perfection by the lead ánd supporting cast, and it also has something important and meaningful to say about society.
*ENDING SPOILER AHEAD: The time-travel aspect left viewers (including me) a bit confused and I read various interpretations of the ending online. So let me gather my thoughts here. The main consensus is this interpretation: after Tae-joo is shot in the head and run over by a car, he falls into a coma (2018 timeline). Then he travels back to 1988 in his subconscious state/coma dream. He wakes up from the coma into reality in 2018, deals with his unfinished business (solves the serial killer case), suffers from depression, and jumps off a building. He then either dies or falls into a coma again. We see him back in 1988, in the afterlife (in case of his death) or in a subconscious state (in case of a coma). A lot of viewers don't like the suicide plot point so they go with the interpretation where Tae-joo stays in a coma in 2018 and doesn't wake up, but in the 2018 timeline he resolves his unfinished business in a comatose state. Then he goes back to 1988. I also read another interpretation where Tae-joo already died from the headshot wound and the car accident, and everything after that happens in the afterlife. I'll go with the main consensus so the first interpretation. But it's still confusing and I'm not sure whether everything adds up. What I make of it is that after Tae-joo's return to 1988, he's dead himself (by suicide) and we see him and his friends in the afterlife. (He couldn't save his team from the vicious gang; the victorious fight scene with the gang, where he and his friends all live, happens in an imaginative world.) The happy last moment in the car is basically a car with dead cops, lol. In any case, dead or alive, it's nice to see the team reunited and to see them overjoyed to be together again.
*I did like the fact that Tae-joo looked into the cold case of his fellow team members (being killed by the gang) before he got in the accident (and before he knew them), thus feeding his brain and subconscious with details of the team. Maybe that's why his coma dream was about them.
*I like time-travel stories a lot and the idea that you can alter the past and therefore make a change in the future. Here I like the concept of the coma dream (never encountered that before in a time-travel plot) but I would have preferred it if Tae-joo could have prevented the kid (in the 1988 timeline) from becoming a serial killer in 2018. To my knowledge, the only thing (regarding the serial killer case) Tae-joo gained from having spent time in the past is knowing the identity of the serial killer's accomplice and catching him in 2018. Still, travelling to the past did fill in the blanks in his childhood memories (the death of his father) and made him overcome his childhood trauma.
*I like time-travel stories a lot and the idea that you can alter the past and therefore make a change in the future. Here I like the concept of the coma dream (never encountered that before in a time-travel plot) but I would have preferred it if Tae-joo could have prevented the kid (in the 1988 timeline) from becoming a serial killer in 2018. To my knowledge, the only thing (regarding the serial killer case) Tae-joo gained from having spent time in the past is knowing the identity of the serial killer's accomplice and catching him in 2018. Still, travelling to the past did fill in the blanks in his childhood memories (the death of his father) and made him overcome his childhood trauma.
*With Tae-joo being confused whether he's in a dream or in the real world, Doctor Jang tells him: "The place you can live with a smile … is your reality."
*No doubt 1988 is Tae-joo's happy place. He gets to spend time with his favourite people (his new-found family), we see him smile, and he isn't lonely anymore. I liked a comment from an online reviewer. He/she says it's like Tae-joo is telling us, with his choice of going back to 1988, how we viewers should feel about the ending. Instead of trying to make sense of what's real or not, maybe we should just accept that Tae-joo is in his happy place, and because we love him, we should be happy for him.
*No doubt 1988 is Tae-joo's happy place. He gets to spend time with his favourite people (his new-found family), we see him smile, and he isn't lonely anymore. I liked a comment from an online reviewer. He/she says it's like Tae-joo is telling us, with his choice of going back to 1988, how we viewers should feel about the ending. Instead of trying to make sense of what's real or not, maybe we should just accept that Tae-joo is in his happy place, and because we love him, we should be happy for him.