The Yinyang Master
侍神令
China, 2021, colour, 2.35:1, 120 mins.
Director: Li Weiran 李蔚然.
Rating: 5/10.
VFX-laden costume fantasy with lots of cute animals brings nothing fresh to the table.
STORY
Ancient China, Pingjing city. Qingming (Chen Kun) – a half-human, half-demon member of the Yinyang Bureau of Daoist masters whose job is to rid the world of evil demons – is accused of killing a fellow young master and best friend, Cimu (Chen Weiting), and trying to steal the Scale Stone that protects the city from the evil serpent Xiangliu. Before he flees, Qingming claims the real murderer was a captured demon, the Snow Queen (Wang Zixuan), who had broken out of the Sealing Chamber. Qingming is defended in front of the elders by his childhood friend Baini (Zhou Xun), who is training to be a Yingyang Bureau minister. Seven years later Yuan Boya (Qu Chuxiao), a captain in the Capital Guard, leads a small detachment of soldiers to present the emperor’s offerings during the Ghost Festival. The convoy is attacked by Qingming’s animal friends, including a group of ferrets, with whom he lives in the forest along with two benign demons, Peach Blossom Spirit (Wang Likun) and Eight Colours (Wang Yueyi), who answer to him. Meanwhile, back in the city some raven demons – sent by the Snow Queen – break into the Yinyang Bureau and steal the Scale Stone. Bureau elder Xican (Zhang Shuangli) blames Qingming for the forest attack. Baini, now a senior minister, defends Qingming publicly but privately swears at the grave of Cimu to punish him for being a traitor. The head of the Capital Guard gives Yuan Boya three days to retrieve the emperor’s stolen offerings from Qingming or face personal disgrace and ruin. Yuan Boya visits Yanyan Le (Zhang Zixian), a sorcerer in the city, to get help and ends up being accompanied by his pesky young female disciple, Shen Le (Shen Yue), an orphan. Shen Le guides Yuan Boya to the Demon Realm, and to its mountain capital administered by Haifangzhu (Sun Honglei, voice). Qingming is in the city to ask Haifangzhu for the powerful Tushan Sword 涂山剑 that once killed the Demon Emperor and was then stolen from the Yinyang Bureau. In return, Qingming promises Haifangzhu two live humans – Yuan Boya and Shen Le – for his public gladiatorial games. When Qingming is given the Tushan Sword, he finds members of the Yinyang Bureau, led by Baini, lying in waiting. He fights his way out and, with Yuan Boya and Shen Le, arrives back in his forest retreat, along with Baini who’s been wounded. Qingming tells the still angry Baini his version of events seven years earlier. Still not entirely believing him, Baini leaves, taking the Scale Stone with her, and vows to return. But the Snow Queen is out to stop her reaching Pingjing city, as is her master, Cimu, who is still alive.
REVIEW
Released in the Mainland only a month after another costume fantasy inspired by the same writings of Japan’s Yumemakura Baku 梦枕貘, The Yinyang Master 侍神令 is as equally underwhelming as Dream of Eternity 晴雅集 (2020) but in a different way. Where Dream was high on visual design but low on substance, and marked by the metrosexual bloodlessness typical of writer-director Guo Jingming 郭敬明, Yinyang is more involving at a character level and has more experienced leads, even if ultimately it’s just another VFX-fest with cuddly creatures that brings nothing new to the table. This third feature by Kunming-born film-maker and commercials director Li Weiran 李蔚然, 45, is very different from his desert treasure-hunter comedy Welcome to Shamatown 决战刹马镇 (2010) and impressive sweet-and-sour relationships comedy Love Will Tear Us Apart (2013), and is way too long at two hours. At the Mainland box office it’s proving the weakest of the seven CNY releases, taking only RMB250 million in its first two weeks – slightly more than half of Dream’s total.
Shot during Aug 2018 to early Jan 2019 – roughly a year before Dream – the film appears to have been slow to reach screens due to a combination of the extensive CG work and the effects of the Covid pandemic. The main creative force behind the film was Taiwan-born but long Mainland-based director-turned-producer Chen Guofu 陈国富, who’s become progressively more involved in action-fantasies during the past decade (Mojin: The Lost Legend 寻龙诀, 2015; Hanson and the Beast 二代妖精之今生有幸, 2017; Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings 狄仁杰之四大天王, 2018), all of which have shown the same pattern of becoming more rote in their second halves. Probably not helping Yinyang at the box office is the fact that it marks almost a “return” to the big screen by its two Mainland leads, actor Chen Kun 陈坤 and actress Zhou Xun 周迅, both now in their mid-40s and no longer guaranteed business: Chen’s last major screen role was in crime caper Chongqing Hot Pot 火锅英雄 (2016, produced by Chen Guofu) and Zhou’s in Remain Silent 保持沉默 (2019, but shot several years earlier) and Last Letter 你好，之华 (2018), neither of which were commercial successes.
The script, by Taiwan’s Zhang Jialu 张家鲁 (a regular Chen Guofu collaborator) and first-time feature writer Jian Yiwen 翦以玟, has a different story from Dream but two main characters familiar from Yumemakura’s The Yin-Yang Master 阴阳师 (aka Onmyoji) series – the half-human, half-demon master Qingming and imperial guard Yuan Boya. Both, in their own ways, are dedicated to fighting bad (as opposed to good) demons, with Qingming the more conflicted because of his mixed parentage. The script, which is just one of those things on which to hang a lot of VFX, finds Qingming long exiled from the imperial capital but living a life of luxury in an enchanted country house, and Yuan Boya sent to retrieve some offerings supposedly hijacked by Qingming. On the heels of the former is his childhood love Baini (Zhou), who’s now a big wheel in the demon-hunting Yinyang Bureau; and accompanying Yuan Boya is a pesky orphan girl who’s an expert in the demon world.
The characters are much more involving than Dream’s, though very conventional: the pesky orphan, spiritedly played by 24-year-old TV actress Shen Yue 沈月 in her film debut, is a good foil for the strutting soldier of Qu Chuxiao 屈楚萧 (the rich-kid lothario in Twenty 二十岁, 2018; rebellious son in The Wandering Earth 流浪地球, 2019), while Chen Kun, now 45, is fine as the somewhat louche Qingming and Zhou, now 46, is commanding as his pursuer/friend, both helped by some very cool period clothes and styling by Yi Xiaoya 易小雅 that especially benefit the latter. Both Chen and Zhou get by on star charisma but neither, and especially Zhou, get much time to deepen their characters beyond the formulaic. The same goes for Hong Kong actor-singer Chen Weiting 陈伟霆 (L.O.R.D: Legend of Ravaging Dynasties 爵迹, 2016), who dominates the final section but largely as a campy visual effect. Supporting roles, especially two house-trained demons played by Mainland actresses Wang Likun 王丽坤 and Wang Yueyi 王悦伊, are just there, with little explanation.
Most of the time is spent on making the VFX animals as cute and cuddly as possible, presumably aimed at a young audience. Widescreen photography by Wang Boxue 王博学 (Dying to Survive 我不是药神, 2018) is rarely given much chance to shine with a VFX-free sequence, though when he is (as in the first meeting of Qingming and Baini in the Demon Realm’s capital) it’s strikingly composed. Ditto for the sets by Japan’s Akatsuka Yoshihito 赤塚佳仁 (The Four Heavenly Kings), from the severe lines of the shadowy Yinyang Bureau to Qingming’s picture-postcard country retreat. Scoring by Japan’s Umebayashi Shigeru 梅林茂 (God of War 荡寇风云, 2017; The Grandmaster 一代宗师, 2013) is utterly conventional and unmemorable.
CREDITS
Presented by CKF Pictures (Ningbo) (CN), Beijing Netease Pictures & Culture (CN), Huayi Brothers Pictures (CN), China Film (CN). Produced by CKF Pictures (CN).
Script: Zhang Jialu, Jian Yiwen. Novel: Yumemakura Baku. Photography: Wang Boxue. Editing: Zhang Weili. Music: Umebayashi Shigeru. End-title vocal: Zhou Shen. Art direction: Akatsuka Yoshihito. Styling: Yi Xiaoya. Sound: Yang Jiang, Zhao Nan. Action: Li Zhizhong. Visual effects: Li Zhiyong, Justin Jones, Walt Jones (Tau Films).
Cast: Chen Kun (Qingming), Zhou Xun (Baini), Chen Weiting (Cimu), Qu Chuxiao (Yuan Boya), Wang Likun (Taohua/Peach Blossom Spirit, Qingming’s female servant), Shen Yue (Shen Le, orphan girl), Wang Zixuan (Xuenv/Snow Queen), Wang Yueyi (Hudiejing/Butterfly Spirit/Bacai/Eight Colours, Qingming’s female servant), Zhang Shuangli (Xican, Yinyang Bureau elder), Sun Honglei (voice of Haifangzhu, Demon Realm administrator), Liu Ruogu (young Qingming), Ai Mi (young Baini), He Yongsheng (Dongjue, Yinyang Bureau member), Zhang Zixian (Yanyan Le, sorcerer), Li Yi’nan (Jing’an), Yi Ran (Jue, Qingming’s female servant).
Release: China, 12 Feb 2021.