Blade of Kings
Sep. 30th, 2012 03:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI'm beginning to think the boxes on these DVDs are written by people who never watch the film. Except to get the depth of misrepresentation present in this box they needed to put in a lot of work. I mean the box is all Epic Adventure!!! And it's about an army killing all the male children and one young man rising up to become a mighty emperor. The cover is all green and black and maybe a bit of blue. Everyone's making serious faces.
Except to get that cover they must have completely desaturated all the pictures, made silhouettes of the 'evil army', and had people specifically pose as serious faces, because the only person in this film who isn't making very silly faces throughout is Donnie Yen. It is a comedy, about the famous kingdom of the (Chinese) Amazon women ruled by an evil queen who hated men so much that the man who loved her castrated himself to be with her. There is no evil army, there's a lot of women wearing pinky purple armour who run around being ordered about by a very fat lady who is searching for her lost love. There's a slave trader, who wears very bright pink indeed, except not on the box cover because you might get the idea this isn't serious epic adventure at all. And there's someone hunting for the prophesied king, but they don't know which of the two guys it is, and one girl falls for one guy each, and they have the kind of Adventure where there's lots of falling on top of each other and grabbing the same thigns at the same time and making silly faces. Also sex pollen. Well, incense that makes people all googly eyes about each other. It gets used to distract Donnie Yen's character. It makes him all kissy faced about the bloke in very unconvincing bearded drag.
Donnie Yen spends the whole film treating it all like Serious Business and making Serious Faces and having Serious Martial Arts happen, though the reviews complain they're actually rip offs of other famous actually serious martial arts he's done before. But it's like he's wandered in from another film entirely. Which makes it all much, much funnier.
The evil queen's plan is to turn all the men into women, which even the women decide is Not On. And the girl army teams up with the male army after a short speech where they explain they don't want to overthrow women, just the evil queen. And there's a big fight which is half Epic Woes as their best beloveds are possessed by evil and half Epic Lols when the magic makes the slave trader be bashed around into the walls repeatedly, usually face first. ... I know it's dodgy to find it epic LOL that women is getting beat up, but I like when people fall down go splat but are actually okay. It's all road runner cartoons.
There's a lot of ways this film is terrible, but the thing is it knows it and it's just going to have fun anyway.
A lot of the reviews really, seriously hate it. And this is the problem with this kind of cover. If somebody picked this up expecting epic politics and fight scenes with Donnie Yen and Jackie Chan then they're going to be epic unimpressed with silly amazon sex pollen jokes. If the box cover was accurate though then people who buy it might in fact be looking for silly adventures with kick arse women and lots of bright colors. I was just saying how I want films with more women, and lo, I find the Chinese Amazon Women in pink and purple having swish martial arts. Suits me just fine.
But you'd really have to be in the mood to play along with it. And not hold it to high standards. Or any standards, at all.
... it's kind of a *facepalm* of a film, really, but I had fun.
Except to get that cover they must have completely desaturated all the pictures, made silhouettes of the 'evil army', and had people specifically pose as serious faces, because the only person in this film who isn't making very silly faces throughout is Donnie Yen. It is a comedy, about the famous kingdom of the (Chinese) Amazon women ruled by an evil queen who hated men so much that the man who loved her castrated himself to be with her. There is no evil army, there's a lot of women wearing pinky purple armour who run around being ordered about by a very fat lady who is searching for her lost love. There's a slave trader, who wears very bright pink indeed, except not on the box cover because you might get the idea this isn't serious epic adventure at all. And there's someone hunting for the prophesied king, but they don't know which of the two guys it is, and one girl falls for one guy each, and they have the kind of Adventure where there's lots of falling on top of each other and grabbing the same thigns at the same time and making silly faces. Also sex pollen. Well, incense that makes people all googly eyes about each other. It gets used to distract Donnie Yen's character. It makes him all kissy faced about the bloke in very unconvincing bearded drag.
Donnie Yen spends the whole film treating it all like Serious Business and making Serious Faces and having Serious Martial Arts happen, though the reviews complain they're actually rip offs of other famous actually serious martial arts he's done before. But it's like he's wandered in from another film entirely. Which makes it all much, much funnier.
The evil queen's plan is to turn all the men into women, which even the women decide is Not On. And the girl army teams up with the male army after a short speech where they explain they don't want to overthrow women, just the evil queen. And there's a big fight which is half Epic Woes as their best beloveds are possessed by evil and half Epic Lols when the magic makes the slave trader be bashed around into the walls repeatedly, usually face first. ... I know it's dodgy to find it epic LOL that women is getting beat up, but I like when people fall down go splat but are actually okay. It's all road runner cartoons.
There's a lot of ways this film is terrible, but the thing is it knows it and it's just going to have fun anyway.
A lot of the reviews really, seriously hate it. And this is the problem with this kind of cover. If somebody picked this up expecting epic politics and fight scenes with Donnie Yen and Jackie Chan then they're going to be epic unimpressed with silly amazon sex pollen jokes. If the box cover was accurate though then people who buy it might in fact be looking for silly adventures with kick arse women and lots of bright colors. I was just saying how I want films with more women, and lo, I find the Chinese Amazon Women in pink and purple having swish martial arts. Suits me just fine.
But you'd really have to be in the mood to play along with it. And not hold it to high standards. Or any standards, at all.
... it's kind of a *facepalm* of a film, really, but I had fun.