Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
When I ran Terry Campbell's letter yesterday about the LEGEND OF ZU, I got a number of e-mails telling me that I shouldn't be excited at all. I thought I'd share a couple of them with you. After all, these people have actually seen the film, and I haven't.
First up is a guy who calls himself "Duckroll"...
Hey there, I've been a fan of AICN for some time but never really felt the need to contribute, the talkbacks are usually lame but when it comes down to it you people are the few who are willing to go against commercialism and whatnot crap to give us the scoops first, sure everyone fucks up now and then but I still feel that its a service that most pple appreciate in some form or other. The reason I'm writing to you today is to warn you and all fans of the huge misconception that Tsui Hark is using to promote his new movie. So here's my take....
I know this sounds wrong, I know you don't want it to be true, but..... Legend of Zu fucking sucks serious shit. There's no other way to put it so I'll just get that out of the way before going into detail. I saw this movie a week ago (I live in Singapore and that's when it opened) but I wasn't going to send in a review since I figured there would be an army shitting on it by now.... apparently I was wrong. The film has several SERIOUS marketing -AND- structural problems, but before it rant on the movie itself I'll clear up the bullshit the trailers would want you to believe.
1) Zhang Ziyi is NOT the main character, nor the co-main character, nor the sub-main character. She is a totally redundant extra subplot of a subplot that adds nothing to the movie, has maybe 10-15 mins of screen time max, maybe 20 lines in all and 1/2 of a fight scene. (but I wouldn't even call it that... more like 1 min of waving a sword...) I cannot even remember her character's name (if it was even mentioned) and personally it see this as a "tag alone" marketing character that's forced into a movie that can no longer accomadate any more characters (not that any of the others are good) just to have her name there.
2) Yuen Wo Ping does jack shit in this movie. JACK FUCKING ZERO SHIT. This must have been his easiest martial arts movie ever because 90% of the "fight" scenes involved 2 wires and a blue screen. Weapons, "attacks", enemies and background to be filled in later. =P
There, I have gotten the serious shit out of the way. Oh and I find it odd that the same person hyping Legend of Zu in the recent article mentions "A man called hero", which was the biggest piece of incoherently filmed trash from HK in my recent memory... but nevermind that. =)
On to the much more serious problems the movie itself contains, firstly I will deal with design. In any fantasy film, the design is very important as any filmmaker knows. (or should know anyway) The design is supposed to build the world, the setting and the atmosphere that the characters populate, it is supposed to create a sense of epicness, of mythological imagination. In Legend of Zu the design just screams bad CGI. Over 80% of the backgrounds in the movie is CGI, and bad ameteur CGI at that. I got the same feeling walking out of Legend of Zu as I did from walking out of Mummy Returns. The endless uninterrupted bombardment of a blue-screenish effect makes the viewer extremely disorientated after 2 hours. But at least for Mummy Returns I can say "Hey that was pretty!", here I just shake my head going "What the FUCK was that fugly excuse for a CGI baddie?!". The constant use of bleeding colors in bright shades didn't really help and only made the CGI look faker than ever.
Another serious issue was the structure of the movie. The structure did not help truely establish the characters, the world nor the plot. All I basically knew from the start of the movie til the end was basically... Ekin's character is the main hero, he is the final survivor of the Kun Lun sect, after some huge CGI BLOB OF WHATFUCK kills his teacher and destroys everything. Then Louis's character (the metal wing "cool" guy) is summoned by Sammo Hung to errr... fight the CGI BLOB OF WHATFUCK when it attacks the Er Mei sect 200 years later. So Louis and Ekin team up and err... apparently they were good friends and from there its just tons of panning around horrible CGI sets, generic trash talk about finding the ultimate weapon to defeat the CGI BLOB OF WHATFUCK and stuff like that. Basically its an entire movie revolving around a villain who is a CGI BLOB OF WHATFUCK (yes it really really really is that bad) who can only be defeated by heroes who use horrible CGI WEAPONS OF UGLINESS paced around a 2 hour timespan which stretches a plot which is basically... nothing filling it in with another 5 or so characters who each get 10 mins of screentime and add nothing to the plot only to make it more and more fucking boring.
The final issue I will have to address is the combat. This is a HK martial arts movie, now I don't really care about bad CGI THAT bad as Storm Riders was great even with it. But instead Zu decides to go the extra mile in lameness. Instead of actually have combat (yes I wouldnt even have minded if they were just "flying around and hitting each other" like some previous talkbacker said) they decide to have CGI COMBAT! WOOO HOOOO!!! So we are treated to amazingly lame scenes such as Louis and Ekin fighting their "clones" (no they don't fight each other's clones, but their own!) but they NEVER make physical contact. Instead they just stand there throwing.... projectiles.... wtf come on..... To make things worse all the MAJOR combat scenes after this comprise of 1 or more of the main characters flying around a CGI background with a large CGI BLOB OF WHATFUCK there, and using CGI WEAPONS OF UGLINESS to "attack" the CGI BLOB OF WHATFUCK. Do the humans ever really fight each other? Well.... maybe in 2 scenes.... Do they ever actually use martial arts? NOPE! PROJECTILES! FLYING BEAMS! CGI WEAPONS OF WHATFUCK! Sigh.... its almost painful recalling the movie.
Now I -know- that some pple are still going to claim that its "CHEESY FUN", well let me put it this way, I loved the original Zu TV series, I fucking adore it. I love Galaxy Quest. Hell I even enjoyed Final Fantasy. I HATE Legend of ZZZZZZ. This movie is going to bomb so fucking badly I think Miramax should drop it right now. Oh and if you want an awesome martial arts film, go catch Kiss of the Dragon before its gone. (yes, Moriarty, I know you love it, go watch it again!) ^_^
duckroll
Yeeeeeks. Let's see what "Charmless" had to say...
Hey there! I've been a reader for quite awhile and I'm particularly fond of your HK movie coverage, however after reading "All Sorts Of Legend Of Zu Goodness" I must voice out my own opinion on this movie after having caught it in the cinema on its opening day here in Malaysia. (Spoilers below!)
My initial impressions of the movie were actually quite favourable, the movie opens with a voice over explaining the legend of the Zu Mountain and the immortal clans that reside on it, it then shows the Omei clan leader Whitebrows (a Sammo Hung with fake looking eyebrows longer than a friggin' broom handle) discussing the movements of a certain baddie that goes by the moniker Insomnia (the Mind Flayer looking thing that you can spot in the pics available online) with his head pupil Red (a Louis Koo who manages yet again to act like a street gangster no matter the role hes given), fast forward to the other leading clan on the mountain, which consists only of King Sky (Ekin Cheng) and Cecillia Cheung as student and master respectively. Insomnia strikes, Cecillia Cheung cracks up (literally) and her hapless student is on his own.
Fast forward 200 years, and it looks like nothings changed in the time between. To cut the absolutely long-winded narrative short it'll have to be something like Insomnia Attacks. Insomnia is Defeated Temporarily. Insomnia retreats into the Blood Cave to execute his Master Plan (tm). All in the first 20 minutes too! Later on it gets even fun when two characters get reincarnated, Red gets possessed by demons and some of the most asinine action non-sequences on film ensue.
Alright so I don't like this movie. Alot. Time and Tide actually restored my faith in Tsui Hark's capabilities as a film maker after his Hollywood debacles, despite its sometime iffy story I found Time and Tide to be a helluva fun excursion and having had to suffer through this movie was just plain disappointing. If theres anything good I have to say about The Legend Of Zu it would be that some (notice I used the word "some") of the set pieces have pretty good imagery (worth mentioning is the sequence between Sammo's character and Insomnia in a skull chamber made up of rotating skulls) and two of the fight sequences (King Sky and Red vs. their clones as well as a non-CG fight between Zhang Ziyi and some guy I can't recall) ease the boredom of the convulted story.
The Legend Of Zu tries to cram too many characters into the show, most of the characters were poorly fleshed out, prime example being Zhang Ziyi's character, who could've worked have she been used to narrate the goings-on via the eyes of a non-immortal, but instead here she has absolutely no relevance to the story whatsoever other than being an excuse to use her in a fighting sequence and to serve as a potential romance interest for a bit-part character. Past the first half of the movie even the action sequences start to look really lame.
Its amazing how much praise has been showered on HK movies of late (A Man Called Hero anyone?) when they're actually quite crap. Stuff like Running Out Of Time however is still great in my books. I can't wait for Full Time Killer to open here sometime next week!
charmless
Oh, boy. Some striking similarities in those complaints. Maybe I should try and temper my enthusiasm about this one...
"Moriarty" out.
