Rise of the Legend

There are some cool ideas in Rise of the Legend, but they aren't carried out well. The action looks fake, there's a bizarre fascination with poorly done CG fire, and the plot is dull.

I keep watching these Well Go movies, and they're always terrible, but for some reason that doesn't stop me. I saw the trailer for Rise of the Legend, and I thought it might have some interesting action scenes. I guess it did. There was one in water that was kind of cool. And I liked the idea of the fire one more than anything that really happened during it. The dialogue was horrendous, but I think that was partially the fault of whoever did the subtitles. The story probably would have been better if it had been translated differently. All the "F" names were confusing, with Fei and Fiery and Fa, and the first time I saw them I wondered if the subtitles were just messed up (they did refer to Fei as the "forth adopted son" for the entire time). 

I didn't recognize Eddie Peng from Tai Chi Hero at all. He seemed a lot better-looking in this movie than that one. Maybe he was just surrounded by people who weren't as good-looking in this one, though. Overall the action was pretty flat. It all seemed super fake. Even the giant "thoom" sound effect every time somebody got kicked was a bit much. 

Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon

Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon has some gorgeous settings, a fairly interesting plot, and likeable characters, but the atrocious CGI and bizarrely unrealistic action sequences are a little distracting.

The first Detective Dee movie was pretty disappointing, but I only watched it in the first place because this one looked interesting, so I was hoping it would be better. It was better, but not amazing or anything. I felt like the first one was a little hard to follow; this one was less confusing. The Empress' headdresses were supposed to be a big deal in the first one, but I feel like they were more impressive in this one. Dee didn't seem to do much "detecting" to me in the first one, and I think they did a better job of that with this one, too. This one is actually ranked slightly lower than Phantom Flame on IMDb, so I guess they don't agree with me.

The CGI was horrid in this one. It looked like a video game. It was tough to reconcile it with the live action stuff going on. The stunts were also pretty ridiculous; more like a cartoon than live action. There were some really beautiful shots of some of the sets, though. The scene at the dye shop with all the fabric was cool, although it took me a while to figure out why there was all that fabric hanging up; at first it seemed like they were just doing it to have an interesting set.

I thought Angelababy was in the first one; I must've been getting that mixed up with the Tai Chi Hero series. I was really confused about how Yin Ruiji got to the position she had in Phantom Flame, and why it didn't seem like Dee recognized her in that one. But it turns out Yin Ruiji wasn't in Phantom Flame, Shangguan Jing'er was, so now it makes sense.