Film Name: 射雕英雄传：侠之大者 / The Legend of the Condor Heroes: The Great Hero
In this year’s Spring Festival, the most controversial film is “The Legend of the Condor Heroes” – starring Xiao Zhan, the first pre-sale box office, but after the official release of the film rate is not high, no matter which point can be written about.
In contrast, the film’s adaptation of Jin Yong’s classic IP and Tsui Hark’s direction are selling points that make it seem less topical.
This is probably the most embarrassing thing about “The Legend of the Condor Heroes”. When I went to the movie with the intention of watching it, I found that the movie was really lackluster……. Although there are some bright spots when you break it down, the movie is lame. Although there are a few bright spots when you break it down, the lame pacing, the fantasy fights, the out-of-control scenes, and the ambiguity of the movie’s intent are all problems that can ruin any good feelings you may have had about the movie.
What’s worse, the later parts of “The Legend of Condor Heroes” about the national narrative are some of the hardest to write today, but the movie is presented in such a third-rate, poorly written manner that it seems unsurprising that the movie would receive any kind of bad reviews at all.
[Friendly reminder: there will be spoilers below].
First of all, let’s give myself an optional but essential armor: I’m not a fan or a fan of Shaw, and I don’t have any extra expectations or prejudices about “The Legend of the Condor Heroes”, otherwise I’d be actively hawking it or just not going to see it at all. …… I’m just an audience member who wants to see a movie.
But now that I’ve got that out of the way, I’m going to talk briefly about the two leads.
In my opinion, Xiao Zhan’s Guo Jing certainly can’t be considered much better, he may have shown some of Guo Jing’s incompetence, loyalty and frankness, but the key to the bright and open and wise is not grasped, and Xiao Zhan always gives people a feeling of selling a hard concave, and maybe that’s why many people don’t like his acting. ……
And Zhuang Dafei as Huang Rong is a bit too cautious, her image itself seems to be quite smart, spirit, theoretically should be able to and Huang Rong more suitable, but in fact her performance is always careful, a little loose some time and then retracted, inevitably seems to be the appearance of the God apart.
In other words, Guo Jing and Huang Rong in “The Legend of the Condor Heroes” don’t get along, but the movie spends at least half of the movie on their emotional relationship, which is unsatisfactory for both martial arts and relationship audiences.
What is amazing is that the movie accomplished the role of Hua Zhen.
I found that regardless of whether they liked “The Legend of the Condor Heroes” or not, most of the audience had a positive attitude towards Hua Zhen in the movie, which, on reflection, should be attributed to the character’s “truth” and “fullness”. This should be attributed to the character’s “truth” and “fullness”.
In the film, Zhang Wenxin as Hua Zhen valiant, dare to love and hate, with the unique grassland princess blunt, generous and passionate, the courage to pursue but not forced – in other words, although she likes Guo Jing, but even if the final and Guo Jing together, Hua Zhen is still Hua Zhen, which is obviously more in line with today’s public aesthetics.
In the triangle of Guo Jing, Huang Rong, and Hua Zing, there should be enough to look at in each person, but due to the hesitation, scruples, and concern on the part of the first two, Hua Zing, who was supposed to be a supporting character, hardens Guo Jing and Huang Rong down ……
Compared to the aforementioned problems, the movie’s content take and narrative pacing are clearly more faulty.” The Legend of the Condor Heroes” is very long, ‘The Legend of the Condor Heroes’ intercepts the part where Guo Jing starts to fight against the Mongols in the late stage and reveals his chivalrous spirit for the country and the people, the movie needs to balance the ‘old audience familiar with the story of the eagle shooters’ and the ‘unfamiliar with the original story’ with the ‘unfamiliar with the original story’. The movie needs to balance the feelings of “old audiences who are familiar with the story” and “new audiences who are unfamiliar with the original work”.
If you focus on the former, then you can pass over the historical background of the characters and focus on the main body of the story; if you want to take care of the latter, then you have to try to explain the background of the relevant characters in as many pages as possible – as a result, “The Legend of the Condor Heroes” has chosen to “I want it all”.
The opening credits up to ten minutes of basic knowledge, and occasionally inserted some key memories, so that the Seven Monsters of Jiangnan, Hong Qigong, a lantern master, etc. out of the card, it seems to be taken care of, but for the old viewers, this kind of shallow walk through the long and smelly, for new viewers and simply not enough, the actual effect of belonging to the two ends of the unappealing.
There’s also one big complaint I can’t get enough of, and that’s that the martial arts/action sequences in the movie are completely out of the realm of normal human beings, and are heading in the direction of “Western-style magic + Chinese-style cultivation”.
I do not know whether I have not watched martial arts for too long, with the mainstream public out of line, or now really popular this kind of metaphysical style of fighting, “The Legend of the Condor Heroes” watch down the whole film, actually did not produce a few physical collision of martial arts, enough weight of the fighting scene is almost all in their own gas, the space hair wave, take a wand that is the magician read the incantation on the bombing, or You say that this is the refining stage of immortal cultivators in the fight, I would think more reasonable.
I know it’s hard to make a martial arts movie nowadays with hardcore action scenes, but to make it as fantastical as this is a breakthrough for me.
The only thing left to commend the movie is the live-action shooting in the grassland, and a large number of dialogues in Mongolian, which are close to the real thing – but the latter is not always a good experience, considering that most of the people are unfamiliar with the Mongolian language, coupled with its pronunciation of the long spitting words, it is more like a foreign language that is very tiring to listen to after watching for a long time. The original freshness and immersion brought by the Mongolian language will inevitably be compromised.
Lastly, I would like to talk about the most fatal flaw of “The Legend of the Condor Heroes”: it doesn’t know how to interpret its own theme spirit of “the great man of chivalry, for the country and for the people”.
The climax of the movie at the end of the scene is very illustrative of the problem: Mongolia’s army is approaching the border city of the Southern Song Dynasty, the practice of the Ouyang Feng, a person who is obsessed with fire, and is about to attack the commander-in-chief, not long ago, just countered out of the Mongolian army of Guo Jing in the city to see the situation, and immediately go to stop the Ouyang Feng, the Song Dynasty army to take advantage of the chaos wanted to surprise attack on the Mongolian army, but also was held hostage the commander-in-chief of the Huang Rong to stop, and so on, the two armies in good shape, Guo Jing and Huang Rong and hold hands to block the Mongolian army, and also successfully persuaded to Temujin withdraw their troops. They also successfully persuaded Temujin to withdraw from the army.
Any of the above plot alone out of no problem, can be combined together to see all the holes – this is not the three streams of small white cool text, the hero by their own king of the strength of the retreat of millions of soldiers of the bridge, everyone is a dragon set and the audience, only to set off their own unrivaled.
And the film Guo Jing that set of rhetoric is very pale and simple, he does not know the cause of the war and the direction, but also give no specific solution, only know not to let the two sides of the war, the people are suffering, the words are equal to become only to persuade their own “shouting slogans”.
In this day and age, it is very difficult to tell a good traditional national narrative, whether it is to honor the Han people or national unity? Is it about guarding the square inch or putting the world’s worries first? There are all kinds of arguments. Frankly speaking, I’m afraid it’s not easy to tell the story even in the current environment, let alone Tsui Hark, who has not even put his heart into making movies.
We don’t know what the answer is that will maximize the number of choices, but it certainly won’t be the choice of “The Legend of the Condor Heroes”.
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