As a Chinese lives in France, I got to see the film several weeks after its premier in China, and actually enjoyed the film a lot despite the bad reviews it gets back home.
The plot is plain and simple, I can see the struggle that the screenwriters have in navigating between the potential whitewashing criticism and its Chineseness (or the lack of, by my Chinese standard). The transition between acts are well thought out (very Hollywood in a positive way), many good ideas in the design of battle sequence. But overall it feels a little bit rushed, I wish it would be 10 or 20 minutes longer for proper character building, and a demonstration of lives behind the Great Wall. For example, a recreation of the painting "Along the river during the Qingming festival" would be a dream come true.
The visual is very satisfactory, my only complain is that the armors are too shiny, the battlefields are too clean to my taste. I prefer the dirty rusty kind of look in Star Wars and Mad Max. The scenery is wonderful, it makes me want to visit Zhangye of Gansu Province in the summer.
The plot is plain and simple, I can see the struggle that the screenwriters have in navigating between the potential whitewashing criticism and its Chineseness (or the lack of, by my Chinese standard). The transition between acts are well thought out (very Hollywood in a positive way), many good ideas in the design of battle sequence. But overall it feels a little bit rushed, I wish it would be 10 or 20 minutes longer for proper character building, and a demonstration of lives behind the Great Wall. For example, a recreation of the painting "Along the river during the Qingming festival" would be a dream come true.
The visual is very satisfactory, my only complain is that the armors are too shiny, the battlefields are too clean to my taste. I prefer the dirty rusty kind of look in Star Wars and Mad Max. The scenery is wonderful, it makes me want to visit Zhangye of Gansu Province in the summer.