Flying Swords at Dragon Gate

[Drunk Monk]

When they say 'flying swords', they mean it. This is the anticipated reunion of Tsui Hark and Jet Li in glorious 3D, if only you can go to China and see it in 3D. It's probably really good in 3D. They got one of the Avatar 3D wizards to work on it and it has no pretensions about the media - a lot of shit flies at you: tea cups, throwing knives, blood, logs, and, of course, swords. It's got spectacle for sure: fabulously ornate costumes and sets, gorgeous panoramic shots and lots of CGI landscapes. There are a lot of characters including a fine sinister gang of villains, too many for me to keep track of without subtitles. It's loosely on a 92 film which is loosely based on a book I read, but I couldn't place the characters at all. The color schemes are overblown, very retro, almost looks hand-tinted at times; at other times, it's reminiscent of classic 70s kung fu flicks, which is obviously what the film was going for. A fair amount of sword fights, although it's all wire work stuff. Jet's martial skills, along with Gordon Liu's, are totally wasted.

Is this a good film? It totally depends on the quality of the 3D. If the 3D is good, this film is awesome. The sword fight while chained together in a tornado may beat my all time fav 3D scene, the spaghetti tornado in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Then again, the 3D might suck and then, this film would be interesting, yet mediocre at best. I'll probably never know as there isn't a 3D release planned for the U.S. ad:

[Drunk Monk]

I just caught the midnight US debut of this in 3D IMAX. It's playing for only this week in 2 theaters here (like 16 across the US).

In 3D IMAX, this film is awesome....

...oh snap...wtf am i doing up at this hour? goddamn blue moon....

[Drunk Monk]

Like Avatar, you have to see this film in 3D IMAX for it to work. If you like high-flying wuxia flicks and the fant-ASIA of Tsui Hark - this is a big budget gem IN 3D. Wuxia is very comic book, very cheesy (you know how I luv cheese). Like Avengers, you have to accept a lot of absurdities to get to the flying fights, but those fights are absurdly fun when you let go of any pretense of physics. If you like that sort of thing, this is extremely entertaining.

It's all about the 3D. The tornado fight is dizzying, but by that time, the 3D was making my eyes tired, so it didn't have the impact of the rest of the film. But by the, there's been so many eye-popping 3D scenes - even the credits look 20 feet in front of everything else. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

Against DM's heated pleas, I did not see this in 3-D. I saw it on the DVD at home. But as part of the new movie distribution pattern, it came out right after it's limited release in theaters here in the US. They are using theatrical releases as adverts for the DVD release. Which is why Iron Sky is in my DVD queue.
So, not big fan of the Wuxia because I probably don't have enough background to understand them. Don't like wire work, especially when you combine it with CGI characters to make it look super fake. And it wasn't in 3-D, so where does that leave me? I guess with the story.

I kind of like what the story was supposed to be but they didn't pull it off. There were a lot of warring factions but you didn't see them interact all that much. Lots of scenes of talking and exposition. My favorite group were the Tartars especially that tattooed female leader. She seemed to be having the best time in the movie.

My most confusing point was the twin aspect of it all. Call it profiling, but I have a hard time keeping the characters straight in a Chinese movie. So, when you start talking about how one guy looks just like another guy, I get lost quickly. I'm thankful for the guy with the mole because identifying him as a baddy was easy. Or maybe it was the fact that the twins didn't look all that alike, because one had incredibly long hair. Or maybe I had the wrong guy as the potential twin?

There was just too much talking interspersed with silly fights. My favorite was the ability to break your sword apart and fling the fragments at your opponent. Who, if good enough, would capture the shards in his cape and fling them back at you. In a similar vein was the one girl who had a million knives on her and could use the hooks on the handle of the knife to catch other thrown knives and redirect them. so you would throw a knife at a knife embedded in a beam. The second knife would get caught on the first knife's circular handle with it's circular handle and then spin off in another direction.

I say wait until this movie is back in the theaters to see it in 3-DImax.

[Drunk Monk]

my first review was from a dvd version (without subs - so imagine how the twin thing played out in my head) and as you can see, i was on the fence about it - it's all about the 3D IMAX. it's rather mediocre without that.

the next big chinese 3d flick is tai chi 0, which will have a limited distribution in the u.s. next week. i should start a thread...

[El Dingo]

This finally surfaced in my NetFlix queue.

What a perfect example of a 3D movie that does not translate to 2D. The costumes were nice, but that's about it.

The CG was awful and so much was being thrown at the screen I could not concentrate on the story. The fight choreography was boring, nothing but hands, feet and swords. No imaginative set improv, no crazy weapons, no creative stunts; just sloppy wire-work and retro Kung-Fu.

Maybe I'm spoiled on Jackie Chan prop work and Ong Bak environments but I found this film to be dull, uninspired and dependent on 3D viewing.