12-03-2022, 01:03 AM
There’s something charming about Hong Kong sci-fi. It’s kinda simple like 80sHollywood sci-fi, a basic warning fable akin to an expanded Star Trek episode. It feels lightweight and derivative in comparison to most other sci-fi.
This is the near future when we’ve ruined the climate and poisoned the world. Terminator bots serve as soldiers in endless wars. Cities are building force field domes to maintain livable conditions. A meteor brings an alien plant that cleans the atmosphere but grows alarmingly fast with lethal tentacles when exposed to water. Its flowers are poached from Stranger Things. A storm is coming that will make it grow and kill a lot of people. A small squad has a gene bomb (yay gene!) that will neutralize the growth if injected into the plant’s pistil. If they fail, plan B is to nuke it and kill a lot of people. The squad has 3 hours.
The squad has iron man suits that have rocket boosters so they can jump far as well as be super strong and fast. They have drop down masks so they can convert to cgi figures easily. And there are terminator bots - just the metal skeletons, no govenator exoskin.
And there are giant bugs that are a cross between Jerusalem crickets and devil hounds. They have slobbery fangs and mandibles, which bugged me (no pun intended) because bugs don’t have bones so they don’t have teeth. That’s what the mandibles are for. But I’ll let it slide because they were kinda cool looking.
The effects are kinda okay but the plot is a lot of senseless action - stuff like retrieving the gene bomb from a teetering car wedged in a collapsing high rise while the bugs attack. Once the mission is underway, there’s not much more plot, just a lot of running about, blasting bugs, and typical HK sentimental moments like saving the lone surging little girl who somehow dodged the bugs.
It was good to see Louis Moo and Carina Lau can still find work. If this came out in the 80s, it would’ve been groundbreaking.
Not D00M recommended.
This is the near future when we’ve ruined the climate and poisoned the world. Terminator bots serve as soldiers in endless wars. Cities are building force field domes to maintain livable conditions. A meteor brings an alien plant that cleans the atmosphere but grows alarmingly fast with lethal tentacles when exposed to water. Its flowers are poached from Stranger Things. A storm is coming that will make it grow and kill a lot of people. A small squad has a gene bomb (yay gene!) that will neutralize the growth if injected into the plant’s pistil. If they fail, plan B is to nuke it and kill a lot of people. The squad has 3 hours.
The squad has iron man suits that have rocket boosters so they can jump far as well as be super strong and fast. They have drop down masks so they can convert to cgi figures easily. And there are terminator bots - just the metal skeletons, no govenator exoskin.
And there are giant bugs that are a cross between Jerusalem crickets and devil hounds. They have slobbery fangs and mandibles, which bugged me (no pun intended) because bugs don’t have bones so they don’t have teeth. That’s what the mandibles are for. But I’ll let it slide because they were kinda cool looking.
The effects are kinda okay but the plot is a lot of senseless action - stuff like retrieving the gene bomb from a teetering car wedged in a collapsing high rise while the bugs attack. Once the mission is underway, there’s not much more plot, just a lot of running about, blasting bugs, and typical HK sentimental moments like saving the lone surging little girl who somehow dodged the bugs.
It was good to see Louis Moo and Carina Lau can still find work. If this came out in the 80s, it would’ve been groundbreaking.
Not D00M recommended.
Shadow boxing the apocalypse