Shawn Francis brings us his look at a new film featuring Jet Li, The Sorcerer And The White Snake, known in the U.K as The Emperor and The White Snake, Aparently it suffers from an over use of CGI, but don't take my word for it, check out Shawn's words after the Jump..
Written By Shawn Francis
I’ve
never really been into Asian fantasy movies, though I have made an
exception when it came to Onmyoji (2001) and Onmyoji II
(2003), which I caught on cable back in the mid-2000s. I liked
the first one better, but I was strangely captivated by the story and
visuals of both films. So, it’s a rare thing when a film in this
genre piques my interest; case in point, Jet Li’s The Sorcerer
And The White Snake (In the UK it’s called, The Emperor And
The White Snake). I was equally captivated when I saw the trailer
many months ago, unfortunately, the film itself was a disappointment.
At
its core, the movie has a solid story, and it’s basically a love
story between a thousand year old Snake Demon named, Susu (Shengyi
Huang) and a physician by the name of Xu Xian (Raymond Lam). I guess
the term “demon” is used loosely in Asian culture, for not all
Asian “demons” are evil. Susu and her “sister,” Qingqing,
(Charlene Choi), who have the ability to assume the forms of giant
snakes, or women, or a combination of both, spot a group of men
picking herbs, and it’s love at first sight for Susu.
Meanwhile,
Qingqing has set her sights on Jet Li’s assistant, Neng Ren (Zhang
Weng), but their relationship proves a bit more problematic when he
is bitten by a bat demon, and eventually turns into one, but not an
evil bat demon, a benevolent one.
Jet
Li plays the sorcerer of the title, Abbott Fahai who, with his
assistant, seem to basically walk the earth, confronting demons and
capturing them. The movie doesn’t really center on Li all that
much, the story is really with Susu and Xian as they fall in love and
then face the wrath of Fahai as he believes all demons on are evil
and have no right to run around free on the material plane. Spoiler
Alert . . . it has a downbeat ending!
This
movie works completely cut down into trailer form, and that’s
pretty much all the good I have to say about it. This is over-the-top
fantasy in my book, complete with Disney-like talking animals that
come in the form of a turtle, a mouse and a rabbit. Thankfully,
though, only all three have a cameo, with only the mouse playing a
bigger part in the film. Regardless, I’m not a Disney fan, as it
pertains to their talking animal movies, so this was a turn off.
I’m
stating the obvious here, but the Asian film industry loves CGI just
as much as us westerners and it’s blatantly obvious in this film.
The crux of it is serviceable, but by the time the final battle comes
between the Snake Demons and the Sorcerer we’re hit over the head
with a biblical battle that has oceans flooding villages,
Godzilla-sized snakes slithering through the water and a display of
CGI magical powers that would put some of our own fantasy movies to
shame, and I mean that in a bad way.
It’s
a lot of eye candy with no substance, and the all-powerful CGI
minimizes what substance there is.
The
movie is presented in a 2.35:1 anamorphic 1080p transfer, which looks
stunning. Audio configuration comes in a 5.1 English dub (DTS-HD
Master Audio) and in it’s native Mandarin language, which is also
5.1 (DTS-HD Master Audio). If presented with a dubbed option, I
always go with that, and the dubbing didn’t sound bad. There also
subtitles present that include options for English, English Narrative
(text & titles only), English SDH and Spanish.
There are 4 featurettes included, which, as I suspected, was more
interesting than the movie:
- Behind The Scenes With Jet Li: Fighting, Stunts & Laughs
(6:17)
- Behind The Scenes: Visual Effects And Production Design (6:50)
- Behind The Scenes Of The Beauties And The Beasts (5;21)
- AXSTV: A Look At The Sorcerer And The White Snake (2:58)
Ninety percent of what these featurettes are simply collages of
behind-the-scenes stuff set to music from the movie. I thought it was
fascinating to see how the wirework was pulled off. There’s a brief
shot of a giant crab/spider in crude CGI form on a computer. No such
creature ever made it into the film. Also, when Li is fighting this
bat demon, apparently there was a person in a monster suit Li
interacted with; in the movie it was all CGI.
I
would only recommend this movie to staunch Li fans. All others
proceed with caution. This movie felt like their equivalent of what
our summer movies tend to be. The not so great ones, I mean,
where spectacle is supposed to stand in for story and substance.
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