Originally Posted by Ian Liew
Zhou Xun's voice took some getting used to, but after a while it sounded quite natural for this wise young girl to sound mature.
I personally prefer Athena Chu as Huang Rong. She was pretty, cute and energetic. Barbara wasn't bad, but she wasn't quite pretty enough. She was also a little bit over the top in her 'naughty girl' image - her later serials showed that she learnt how to act more serious roles, but during LOCH she gave the impression she was just having a lot of fun. It wasn't a bad performance by any means, just not quite as likeable for me as Athena (and Zhou Xun). And oh, I worshipped that series when I was younger (when it aired) but now I feel it drags so long..... best Guo Jing, Yang Kang, Huang Yaoshi and Ouyang Feng ever for me though! And... AWESOME soundtrack. TVB just doesn't do it like that anymore...
But we're talking about ROCH. I never liked it as much as LOCH in the 80s because I didn't like Idy Chan much, and it still succeeds in dragging. I watched a bit of it recently and saw the 'filler scenes' with Yang Guo pretending to be the ghost of Wang Chongyang, scaring the Quanzhen students as a prank. Maybe it was funny back then, but I couldn't watch anymore after that. Hopefully ROCH 05 sticks close to the given formula and doesn't try to be too smart.