Storm Warriors is the loudest movie I've ever seen, and I've seen Transformers 2 and G.I. Joe.
It is also awesome and fail all in one. This is the first time I've felt that way about any movie.
Why? Because Aaron Kwok bloody dies, that's why! More on this later.
SW is the follow-up to Storm Riders, from over 10 years ago. This time around, Wind and Cloud has to contend with Lord Godless, a powerful Japanese warlord that wants to take over China, and his son, Heart. To defeat him, both Cloud and Wind have to train and increase their martial arts skills; Wind taking the evil path, and Cloud taking the normal one. Wind becomes demonic, so it falls to Cloud to stop him before he does any more destruction.
First, the good stuff:
The CGI is fan-bloody-tastic, very comic-bookish, and very 300, except more color. Cue 60-plus seconds of badassery 10-15 minutes into the movie, with Heart, Earth and Sky, and a whole ton of
Plus, montages of innocent people dying, yeah!
The fight scenes are very comic book-ish, and the choreography is pretty good as well, although some instances they just stand there and throw chi / energies / [insert correct term here] at each other. Doesn't lessen the cool factor, though.
Then, the not-so-good:
The theme song for this movie kinda blows. It's awesome that they got both our leads to sing it, compared to the previous one where it's just Aaron Kwok, but I preferred the theme for the first movie. Overall score is lovely, though, and really went well with the fight scenes.
The love interests are annoying as usual, especially Charlene Choi, whom I've never really liked. I mean, the writers had the chance to kill her off and they didn't. Girls are pointless in these types of movies. It's a bit like Supernatural: we only want to see the boys and the monsters (or in this case, the kung-fu), and only them.
[Everything else can jump off a bridge.]
Speaking of female presence, where is Shu Qi? I didn't even know her character from the first film was carried forward to this one till I got on Wikipedia. As such, I managed to guess that her character was going to die, but kudos to the filmmakers, her death was so abrupt that I didn't see it coming.
[Just as well, though; ChoCho was even more pointlessly-annoying than the first film.]
The final fight scene should've been longer, and Wind's evil side shouldn't have been defeated that easily. (Though it was pretty cool.). Evil eye should've opened all the way, too.
Annnddd... the downright unpretty:
Pulling a Cyclops (an X-Men 3, if you will) with Heart and the Emperor's soldiers. The whole bunch just vanished into thin air after Wind
As I mentioned earlier, Aaron Kwok dies. Or seemingly dies. Whatev. To save the falling Wind-and-Choi, Cloud dives down after them and
And I don't know whether there were any after-credits scene, because the theatre people shut it down halfway through the credits, and Wikipedia is not being informative at this moment.
ARGH!
And there was absolutely no mention (in interviews and news articles) of the movie being the first part of a larger story-arc, which really pisses me off because if I had known of the ending, it wouldn't have been so anti-climactic for me. I still wouldn't have liked it, but at least I wouldn't have ended up being disappointed. Despite the movie's treatment of Nicholas Tse / Heart, I was planning to watch the movie a second time, but the ending just blew me off.
At least the Harry Potter people have already announced their movie plans for Book 7.
Overall, CGI and fights are simply lovely; just the stupid ending and that Nicholas Tse-part that killed it for me. Sorry if my review is a bit awkward; it's difficult to rant about all of this in English :P
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