League of Gods

封神传奇

Hong Kong/China, 2016, colour, 2.35:1, 3-D (China only), 107 mins.

Director: Xu An 许安 [Koan Hui].

Rating: 5/10.

Mythical action-adventure of men and gods is a CGI tsunami that drowns the human cast.

STORY

Mythical ancient China. After selling his soul to the evil Black Dragon when still young, Zhou (Liang Jiahui), king of Zhaoge and the known world, now rules alongside his queen Da Ji (Fan Bingbing), who is actually the Nine-Tail Fox demon in human disguise. The only threat to his dominance is neighbouring Xiqi, ruled by the Ji clan; their king has sent a group of commandos to rescue the Invisible Warriors whom Zhou holds prisoner in the dungeons of Zhaoge. The group includes the aged seer Jiang Ziya (Li Lianjie), who is an old enemy of Zhou, and Lei Zhenzi (Xiang Zuo), a warrior from the Wing tribe who has lost his power of flight. After a series of titanic battles, the Xiqi commandos make it back home, though Da Ji manages to impose the Reverse-Ageing Curse on Jiang, in which he will become younger every time he uses his powers. Xiqi must get hold of the Sword of Light: it is the only weapon capable of killing the Black Dragon, which is set to take over the world when the three suns converge, and only the Golden Dragon can master its use. Da Ji is determined to prevent the sword falling into the hands of Xiqi. The leader of Xiqi (Zu Feng) entrusts Lei Zhenzi with the task of finding it; as a companion on his journey he is given the pesky baby warrior Nezha. Meanwhile, in Zhaoge, Zhou’s chief general, Leopard (Gu Tianle), assigns Blue Butterfly (Yang Ying) to lead him to Lei Zhenzi’s whereabouts. After an attack by a giant centipede, Nezha morphs into his adult self (Wen Zhang); but he agrees to stay with Lei Zhenzi when the latter says he can help Nezha recover his Magic Fire Wheels. En route they meet the warrior Yang Jian, aka Erlangshen (Huang Xiaoming), who is sworn to defeat Nine-Tail Fox. By the sea, Lei Zhenzi meets Blue Butterfly, who is disguised as a member of a tribe which owns the Porta-Boat, a craft that’s steered by the mind. He takes a liking to her, and he, she and Nezha steal off in the boat through the East Sea. On the way, Nezha destroys a whole underwater community of merfolk, led by the East Sea Dragon King (Li Zixiong), in order to retrieve his Magic Fire Wheels. Finally, the group finds the Sword of Light, but then Leopard and his troops suddenly appear.

REVIEW

Everything that was true about The Monkey King 西游记之大闹天空 (2014) goes double for League of Gods 封神传奇, another splashy 3-D saga of mythical, warring beings in which the characters are drowned by a tsunami of visual effects. Also adapted from a classic of Chinese literature – in this case the mid-16th century Investiture of the Gods 封神演义 by Xu Zhonglin 许仲琳 – it’s an ambitious career jump by its director, Hong Kong industry veteran Xu An 许安 [Koan Hui], after his directing debut with costume drama Snow Blossom 大寒桃花开 (2014). But beyond all the CG, League falls miles short in things like storytelling, character building and even logical plotting, making the film a numbing, repetitive exercise after the first half hour.

Xu, who was born in Hong Kong to a Chinese father and Australian mother, has been in the industry since the early 1990s, as a scriptwriter (The Blade 刀, 1995; Black Mask 黑侠, 1996), assistant director, and special-effects supervisor (The Legend of Zu 蜀山传, 2001; Painted Skin: The Resurrection 画皮II, 2012), frequently working with director-producer Xu Ke 徐克 [Tsui Hark]. Unfortunately, League replicates all of Xu’s worst traits – chaotic action, poor structure – rather than his better ones, and once again raises the question whether the film would have been better made as an anime or computer game.

There’s nothing wrong with an entirely CG-imagined universe, but it needs to be inhabited by characters the audience can root for. Even an animator like Xu Chengyi 许诚毅 [Raman Hui] managed in Monster Hunt 捉妖记 (2015) to give his characters some personality and development between all the CG, as did Zhou Xingchi 周星驰 [Stephen Chow] in Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons 西游  降魔篇 (2013) and even Monkey King director Zheng Baorui 郑保瑞 [Soi Cheang] in his 2016 sequel. But it seems that every director has to first play with an expensive train set (here, costing a reported HK$300 million) before learning some basic lessons of film-making. The omens don’t look good for the sequel, shot simultaneously and trailed at the end of this one.

The much-adapted, Ming-dynasty classic – a kind of giant grab-bag of mythical characters and stories – has already spawned manga, anime, videogames and TV series, including the 2001 Hong Kong TV drama Gods of Honour 封神榜, 2007 Mainland drama The Legend and the Hero 封神榜之凤鸣岐山, and its 2009 sequel The Legend and the Hero 2 封神榜之武王代纣. Where Xu’s original novel was set at the end of the Shang dynasty, as a kind of fantastic version of the overthrow of its last king in the mid-11th century BC, League goes for a timeless, mythical setting, at least in its production design. The look of the movie, supervised by Hong Kong ace Zhang Shuping 张叔平 [William Chang], is in fact its greatest pleasure: the bad guys’ fortress city of Zhaoge, a kind of Central Asian pleasure palace atop an M.C. Escher-like maze, and the good guys’ fortress city of Xiqi, built on and defended by gigantic piles.

However, the characters that inhabit this 3-D world are just 1-D cut-outs, and sometimes so fleeting and heavily disguised that the film becomes a spot-the-star extravaganza. Mainland actress Fan Bingbing 范冰冰 vamps and waves her arms around a lot as a wicked queen who’s actually a demon in disguise, Hong Kong veteran Liang Jiahui 梁家辉 [Tony Leung Ka-fai] coasts as her power-crazed king, while other Mainlanders like Huang Xiaoming 黄晓明 and Xu Qing 许晴 pop up in cameos, as gold-garbed warrior Erlangshen and a pining goddess. As the putative central character, Hong Kong’s Xiang Zuo 向佐 [Jacky Heung], son of the film’s producers Xiang Huaqiang 向华强 [Charles Heung] and Chen Lan 陈岚 [Tiffany Chen], proves a muscular but charmless lead, evincing no special chemistry with his romantic partner, played by Mainland actress-model Yang Ying 杨颖 [Angelababy] with her usual blend of cute. Making the liveliest impression is China’s Wen Zhang 文章, as the pesky warrior Nezha; top-billed Li Lianjie 李连杰 [Jet Li], hardly recognisable beneath all the makeup as a veteran master, injects some more, badly-needed humour, but it’s fleeting among all the CGI.

Between the non-stop fighting by characters who are largely familiar to Chinese audiences, the screenplay, by three hands, spends as much time filling in backstories as it does advancing the present story, which, after a showpiece half-hour intro, comes down to a quest for a magic sword to defeat the forces of evil. Sword found, the film ends, with the sequel presumably devoted to the Big Showdown. Visual effects, present in every shot, vary from OK to less than that, but generally get the job done; the action, supervised by Hong Kong’s experienced Lin Di’an 林迪安 [Dion Lam] is sometimes inventive – shields used as surfboards – but is too often rendered shapeless by all the CGI. The score by the US’ John Debney (The Scorpion King, 2002) sounds like a cross between Carmina Burana and Conan the Barbarian at the start and finish, content just to rise above the sound effects.

Hong Kong actor Chen Xiaochun 陈小春 [Jordan Chan] gets a special thanks at the end; reportedly, he played East Sea Dragon King but the role was later reshot with veteran Li Zixiong 李子雄 [Waise Lee]. Hong Kong actress Zhang Bozhi 张柏芝 [Cecilia Cheung] was originally cast as the adult Nezha but was sacked for unreasonable on-set behaviour and replaced by Mainland actor Wen, reportedly the producers’ original choice for the role.

CREDITS

Presented by China Star Movie (HK), Bona Film Group (CN). Produced by China Star Movie (HK), Bona Film Group (CN), Star Alliance Movie (Beijing) (CN), Hero Star Movie Cultural (Beijing) (CN).

Script: Zhang Tan, Zhang Zhiguang, Sun Zirong. Photography: Huang Yuetai [Arthur Wong]. Editing: Wayne Wahrman. Music: John Debney. Production design: Zhang Shuping [William Chang]. Art direction: Lin Weijian, Mai Guoqiang [Kenneth Mak], Huang Jialun. Costume design: Lv Fengshan. Sound: Guo Xiaoshi, Brent Burge. Action: Lin Di’an [Dion Lam]. Visual effects: John Dietz, Chen Yanjun, Li Feng (Dexter Studios, Tippett Studio, Blur Studio). Animation: Randall Cook. Second-unit direction: Yang Longcheng.

Cast: Li Lianjie [Jet Li] (Jiang Ziya/Master Jiang), Wen Zhang (adult Nezha), Fan Bingbing (Da Ji, queen/Nine-Tail Fox), Huang Xiaoming (Yang Jian/Erlangshen), Gu Tianle [Louis Koo] (Shengong Bao/General Leopard), Xiang Zuo [Jacky Heung] (Lei Zhenzi/Ji Lei), Yang Ying [Angelababy] (Lan Die/Blue Butterfly), Liang Jiahui [Tony Leung Ka-fai] (Zhou, king), Zu Feng (Ji Chang, leader of Xiqi), An Zhijie [Andy On] (Ji Fa, Ji Chang’s son), Xu Qing (Taiyizhenren), Wang Zipeng (Ji Ping), Li Zixiong [Waise Lee] (East Sea Dragon King), Wang Teng (Ji Yong), Gu Wenze (young Jiang Ziya).

Release: Hong Kong, 29 Jul 2016; China, 29 Jul 2016.