![]() Guan Yu riding off to kill an enemy general before his wine gets cold, Cao Cao claiming himself and Liu Bei are the only heroes in the land over tea in a thunderstorm, Liu Bei’s ouster as a provincial governor… these are all narrative beats from Three Kingdoms that are typically too specific and incidental to make it into an actual Dynasty Warriors game. At the film’s climax, the series’ main theme plays in all its glory behind the hyperkinetic wire-fu, and it’s a perfect fit.įor fans and readers of the actual novel, there are plenty of “Hey, I remember that!” moments in the plot as well. The music is the same: A handful of songs from the actual games make their way into the score, typically during fight scenes, and Roy skillfully employs the Dynasty Warriors series’ usual mix of traditional Chinese melodies with hard-rock guitar. There just aren’t very many of those fights in the film, which is confusing, given the genre. They’re enjoyable the same way the actual Dynasty Warriors games are enjoyable: over-the-top and stylish, with dramatic visual flair. But they’re nonsense in the best possible way. These fights are nonsense, especially the final, climatic battle, where Liu Bei and his brothers face Lu Bu. Owing to the high-impact martial-arts action gameplay of the actual games, fight scenes involving the movie’s central characters combine typical wire-work combat with sweeps of scarlet flame in the path of a sword, or a halberd that craters the ground on impact, while bleeding white lightning into the surrounding area. As is often the case, the wide vistas are used to give a sense of grandness and scale to the story, often by contrast with the characters’ smallness in any given shot. Lush exterior shots showing off incredible countryside vistas (from New Zealand, in this case) are a martial-arts film staple, and there are plenty of those here, used to good effect in many of the smaller outdoor scenes. Other film adaptations of Three Kingdoms have also taken this approach: John Woo’s two-part Red Cliff is a pair of films devoted entirely to one battle from the novel, albeit a historically critical battle that takes up numerous chapters, and is in many ways the climax of Three Kingdoms.ĭynasty Warriors definitely has a lot of the things common to the wu xia genre that make it enjoyable. That’s why these two battles are often the first two playable stages of a Dynasty Warriors game as well: They’re effectively the prologue, the impetus of the story. Hu Lao in particular sets the stage for the rulers of those kingdoms (Liu Bei, Cao Cao, and Sun Jian) to rise to power in their own spheres. The two largest conflicts covered in the film - the Yellow Turban rebellion and the siege of Hu Lao Gate - are, in the novel, the gateway to the book’s eventual focus on the titular three kingdoms vying for control of China. ![]() The movie ends with the phrase “The story of the Three Kingdoms commences,” and that’s a good encapsulation of the story’s scope. Add the movie’s erratic approach to the chronological flow of the plot, and it’s a recipe for some very divisive opinions. Dynasty Warriors has a bit of an identity crisis: Roy seemingly can’t decide whether he wants to make a historical period drama that just happens to have some high-octane fighty bits, or a wu xia film that features long swathes of historical drama between a relatively small number of fight scenes. The film has some great moments, but it’s also inconsistent about them. Viewers who aren’t familiar with either that book or the games may have a hard time following the movie’s plot, which is often a nightmare tangle of sharp turns, out-of-nowhere developments, and important events relegated to a few lines of dialogue. The Dynasty Warriors games are based on an old classic piece of Chinese literature, the novel Three Kingdoms, sometimes called Romance of the Three Kingdoms. ![]() On the one hand, it’s a perfectly suitable martial-arts action film, when director Roy Hin Yeung Chow focuses on making it into one. Netflix’s Dynasty Warriors movie - like the video game series of the same name on which it’s based - is a complicated thing to review, or to recommend for viewing or avoiding.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |