Hogan Reviews

I’ll admit it’s going to be hard to review this one as while it is an adaptation of a game series I’ve loved since its fifth of currently nine entries it’s also a Chinese film that pulls together an all-star ensemble cast but due to being completely unfamiliar with the country’s films that was completely lost on me, and I can’t compare it to other films of its country-specific subgenre (known as Wu Xia, apparently) either. Still though, I can judge it purely on whether I liked it or not, and after all isn’t that all I normally do anyway? So let’s take a look!

The film focuses on the latter days of the Han Dynasty, starting with the Yellow Turban Rebellion that both the book, “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” and the Dynasty Warriors games themselves all do. Due to an uprising of the starving populace a bunch of warlords band together to quell the rebellion and save the Emperor, and among those warlords and warriors are such historically important people as Cao Cao (Wang Kai), Liu Bei (Tony Yang), Guan Yu (Han Geng), Zhang Fei (Justin Cheung) and Yuan Shao (Ray Lui). They stop the rebellion with some fun crowd-clearing scenes straight out of the games and some fun choreographed fight scenes before things cool down for a good while as we skip forward to when the land is dominated by the tyrant Dong Zhou (Lam Suet) and his extremely powerful bodyguard / adopted son Lu Bu (Louis Koo).

The calm before the storm … or the calm during the storm? Whatever.

We see infamous moments from Romance like Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei swearing an oath to be sworn brothers at a peach garden, Cao Cao and Liu Bei having a discussion about what it means to be heroes over a drink on a stormy night, and a good chunk of the movie focuses on Cao Cao’s attempt to assassinate Dong Zhou and how he managed to make it back alive. There are also several scenes in a magic forest where the three sworn brothers, Cao Cao and Lu Bu (not that we see that one) all get supernaturally powerful weapons that add in some good old fashioned Dynasty Warriors style lightning effects for the climactic battle but did we really need an explanation for that? That’s kind of where the film falters quite a bit, sometimes it goes ages without anything Dynasty Warriors-esque and it feels like just a historical retelling of the Three Kingdoms era, then suddenly something like that happens. Either just commit to the idea that some of these warriors are supernaturally strong or don’t, no need to explain why some are and some aren’t by using a magic forge in a fantasy dimension, or whatever that was. Hey, it might be based on some Chinese legend, I don’t know, but it was still odd and not something from either the book or the games (or real life, I assume!)

Guan Yu… ‘s far smaller younger brother, it looks like…

It’s also strange that for something that wanted to be a multiple part franchise they focused narrowly on just the sworn brothers and Cao Cao as it meant some other important characters got next to no screen time, like Sun Jian, the father of men who will go on to found one of the Three Kingdoms and who played a big part in quelling the Yellow Turban Rebellion himself barely featured in a film at all, and Diaochan, who is the reason Lu Bu will eventually turn on Dong Zhou and end his reign, appears half an hour before the end of the film and barely does anything either. Plus I’m sorry but I have to mention Han Geng as Guan Yu, this is an adaptation of Dynasty Warriors so you’d think they’d have cast someone physically imposing as the God of War, but instead Han looks really small and unimposing. It made all his scenes of “bad ass-ness” look comical rather than cool. Again, if this was supposed to be an adaptation of Romance or a straight up historical then fine, I’m sure the actual Guan Yu wasn’t a seven-foot powerhouse, but this is Dynasty Warriors and we see him fling hundreds of generic soldiers in the air with a swing of his spear, he should look a bit more intimidating!

The film’s final part is based on the Battle of Hulao Gate but sadly the final fight is a disappointing CG fest where its mostly people flying in the air with explosions and fire everywhere rather than an actually exciting fight scene like I was hoping, so that was a let down. Given how much the film cost I assume we won’t be seeing a sequel, which both a shame but also completely understandable…

Overall Thoughts:

Okay, that is at least a very Dynasty Warrior-y screenshot!

Dynasty Warriors is a bit of a mess. Part Dynasty Warriors game adaptation, part Romance of the Three Kingdoms book adaptation, sometimes it just feels like a historical based on the actual era even! While some moments are fun and I did enjoy the extra lore nods the film is poorly paced on top of everything else and has a rather flat finale. Best avoided, sadly…

So as mentioned the finale is an adaptation of the Battle of Hulao Gate as a coalition of warlords once again led by Yuan Shao tries to take down Dong Zhuo and free the Emperor from his grasp, but standing in their way are some strong soldiers including Lu Bu. After Guan Yu, who at this point is still just an unknown peasant, ups his and his master / sworn brother Liu Bei’s reputation by slaying several strong warriors “before his wine got cold” as the novel quote went (is wine traditionally hot in ancient China?) the coalition forces face off with Dong Zhou’s army and the big final showdown takes place as Lu Bu faces off with Liu Bei, Zhang Fei and most importantly Guan Yu.

My best attempt at screenshotting the big Dragon Ball Z-like final fight…

Sadly as I already mentioned the fight itself is rather a flat CG fest with little in the way of actually fighting, but hey-ho. Lu Bu is defeated but not soundly, and we cut to a tag line about the foundation for the era of Three Kingdoms being set. Shame we’re likely not going to see what was built on those foundations!