12-12-2011, 01:28 PM
If you can hang with the following, you can hang with this film. NOTE: it's somewhat of a SPOILER. According to this film, chain mail can be quickly unraveled and then woven into long escape ropes. Now, China doesn't have that much history with chain mail, at least not of the medieval Euro sort. And all the chain mail in this film is actually knitted yarn, spray-painted silver. It's an old Hollywood costume device. So maybe the filmmakers just have no idea what chain mail really is? I don't know. But it was a funny deux ex machina and is used twice.
The title sucks. This is a retelling of the Yang Lady Generals, an 11th century legend of a group of women warriors. It's sort of a redux of an old Shaw Brothers flick 14 Amazons, so that's probably where the title came from. The ladies are all bad ass warriors and introduced quickly. It's kind of hard to follow if you don't know who's who. They introduce each character with a Chinese side-title, so Chinese readers can keep track. But if you don't know, it doesn't really matter. Originally, there was a huge A list of stars attached, Gong Li, Michelle Yeoh, Z, but it whittled down to just Cheng Pei Pei and Cecilia Cheung. There's still a lot of hot actresses, but it's not at all sexy as they are wearing armor all the time (but if you're into that, like some are into space suits, well, you might like it).
This film is basically lots of medieval battle scenes. LOTS. Sieges scenes, duels (it's common for generals to duke it out while all the troops watch), and lots and lots of sword fights. There's a slow part at the beginning where the amazons learn their fate. There's a few other slow scenes. The rest is just fight scenes. LOTS OF SWORD FIGHTS
And it's outrageously goofy. The costumes look like tokusatsu - outlandish helmets, colorful capes, crazy plastic armor painted metallic, and yarn chain mail. There's a lot of wire-work flying about, and absurd battle formations. People throw their weapons like boomerangs which kill intended targets and then bounce back into their hands. Heroes make one swing of their blade and a dozen extras go flying.
This film introduced a new term to me: arrow shower. It's very Hero.
Especially for Greg, Luc & Li Jing have prominent roles in the beginning of the film - they have lines, a few close-ups, fight scenes and everything.
I saw a jumpy pirate version w/subs. At first, I was going to write it off as stupid, but as it got more and more absurd, I came to a definite conclusion. Legendary Amazons is a DOOM flick. If I can secure a clean version, I'll share.
The title sucks. This is a retelling of the Yang Lady Generals, an 11th century legend of a group of women warriors. It's sort of a redux of an old Shaw Brothers flick 14 Amazons, so that's probably where the title came from. The ladies are all bad ass warriors and introduced quickly. It's kind of hard to follow if you don't know who's who. They introduce each character with a Chinese side-title, so Chinese readers can keep track. But if you don't know, it doesn't really matter. Originally, there was a huge A list of stars attached, Gong Li, Michelle Yeoh, Z, but it whittled down to just Cheng Pei Pei and Cecilia Cheung. There's still a lot of hot actresses, but it's not at all sexy as they are wearing armor all the time (but if you're into that, like some are into space suits, well, you might like it).
This film is basically lots of medieval battle scenes. LOTS. Sieges scenes, duels (it's common for generals to duke it out while all the troops watch), and lots and lots of sword fights. There's a slow part at the beginning where the amazons learn their fate. There's a few other slow scenes. The rest is just fight scenes. LOTS OF SWORD FIGHTS
And it's outrageously goofy. The costumes look like tokusatsu - outlandish helmets, colorful capes, crazy plastic armor painted metallic, and yarn chain mail. There's a lot of wire-work flying about, and absurd battle formations. People throw their weapons like boomerangs which kill intended targets and then bounce back into their hands. Heroes make one swing of their blade and a dozen extras go flying.
This film introduced a new term to me: arrow shower. It's very Hero.
Especially for Greg, Luc & Li Jing have prominent roles in the beginning of the film - they have lines, a few close-ups, fight scenes and everything.
I saw a jumpy pirate version w/subs. At first, I was going to write it off as stupid, but as it got more and more absurd, I came to a definite conclusion. Legendary Amazons is a DOOM flick. If I can secure a clean version, I'll share.
Shadow boxing the apocalypse
