The Yin Yang Master

[Drunk Monk]

The Yin-Yang Master: Dream of Eternity (2021)

Drunk Monk

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Back at ya, cf!



The Yin-Yang Master: Dream of Eternity 

A CGI-laden Chinese sorcery tale with opulent sets and magnificent costumes. It's a tangled tale of demons, eternal love, and imperial majesty. 

At first I thought this owed a huge debt to Doctor Strange and his mystic circles. This is true but it does offer some new visions of magic and demons. It had some moments and might have been better served on the big screen. It's visual but we're so jaded with these sorts of visuals and here they are way overdone. 

It's long - too long at 2+ hours. And it's full of itself - too much slo mo dwelling on its own opulent imagery which gets tiresome. If this was edited down to a tight hour and a half, it would be so much better. It had so many false endings, so many scenes where I was ready for the credits to roll...but wait! There's more. 

There were tentacles. Well, possessive worms, but they were tentacley.

There was also a giant evil serpent. And a hair demon that was like a black Cousin It without the bowler or glasses...and could fly and kill.

Sword fights. Lots of magic and flying about. Lots of cool spells. Not really DOOM recommended unless you fast forward to the fight scenes...and the sorcery. There's too much talking in between.

[Drunk Monk]

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Is trailer #2 from a different (maybe first) film?

[Drunk Monk]

Yeah, totally different. I think it's the sequel but my Chinese isn't good enough.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Trailer #2 looks like a better flick, but trailers *lie*!

[Greg]

Wait! Advertising misleads us? You must be joking. Everyone knows the currency of the marketplace is truth.

[cranefly]

Number 2 is definitely a much better trailer.

But the true litmus test is rounding up the posters to each and doing a thorough comparative analysis.

Working on it...

Or not.

[Drunk Monk]

The Yin Yang Master  (2021)

The Yin Yang Master is a completely different film from The Yin-Yang Master: Dream of Eternity. Different story, different production, different director, different cast. Dream of Eternity is allegedly based on a Japanese manga called Onmyoji (Yin Yang Dao in Chinese). The Yin Yang Master is allegedly based on a videogame, based on that manga. It's kinda the Dante's Peak / Volcano scenario (I read about that somewhere recently) but weirder.

The Yin Yang Master is epic. There's some cheesiness with the CGI yaoguai (yokai) but there's enough visionary  spectacle in other CGI scenes that this can be forgiven. This is yaoguai done right, hallucinatory, comic, absurd and magical. With Chen Kun and Zhou Xun as the leads, it's got decent acting chops, although those are obscured by the concepts and visuals. Great demoness in Cici Wang (a Snow Queen that almost matched Tilda). Great vision of the demon city, like the Tatooine cantina on steroids. Great evil hand that's a mash up between the film version of the Addams Family's thing, Glove of the Blue Meanies, with just a sprinkle of Lovecraftian tentacles. 

Flying magical sword fights with demons. DOOM recommended. Just make sure it's not the Dream of Eternity - that one is more than 2 hours. This one is under 2, only just.

At first I thought this owed a huge debt to Doctor Strange and his mystic circles. 

I read some rumors that the director of Dream of Eternity, Guo Jingming, had to apologize for plagiarism in a 20 year old novel. I wasn't the only one to call the poach of Doctor Strange and there's consequential rumor that the movie has been pulled from all PRC theaters because of this.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

The Yin Yang Master (2021)

This was an enjoyable movie. I didn’t lose sight of the plot or any of the characters, the acting was good, the plot twists were manageable.

[Drunk Monk]

Cool. 

Check out Dream of Eternity next. Fast forward to the fight scenes tho...