Heavenly Sword and Dragon Slaying Sabre (2019)

[Drunk Monk]

I've been putting this one off because it's 50 hour long eps and I didn't want to get involved. It's an acclaimed retelling of Louis Cha's wuxia epic which I've been meaning to engage because I don't know the story. There have been 7 TV series based on this, and a few movies, including the Wong Jing/Jet Li Kung Fu Cult Master, which I've seen but only remember it as being insanely incomprehensible. We carried the graphic novel but I don't really remember it. 

3 eps in. So far, it's pro-Wudang, anti-Shaolin. Lots of Kung Fu cults. The opening fight scene in ep 1 is absurd - lots of flying about wire work, CGI darts, crashing through furniture and pillars, and absurd Wuxia Kung Fu physics. It kept up the pace until ep 3 when it got all romantic and slow. 

There are huge plot gaps already. Fight scenes segue into chase scenes which end up in places where the pursuant is completely forgotten - like 'wait...what happened to those dudes chasing them?'

It's got cool costumes and sets, accentuated by mediocre CGI. 

I'll probably keep chipping at this just to learn the story. 

As you can glean from the title, it's all about sword fights. I'll DOOM recommend the opening fight scene because it's just so over-the-top absurd but the rest is wuxia soap opera, not really worth your attention. The second ep had another good overthetop fight - Fast forward to the fight scenes.

[Drunk Monk]

“Next year today will be the anniversary of your death!”

My new battle cry

The weird thing about this series is that the breaks feel incidental. Each episode picks up right welhere the last one left off and even the commercial break points don’t have much rhyme or reason in regards to the pacing of the storytelling. If the bumpers were removed, it would just run for 50 eps.

[Drunk Monk]

I think I'm on 8 or 9. SPOILER ALERT They just killed off the two main protagonists. Didn't see that coming, but I'm okay with it because I didn't really care for them - a Romeo/Juliet couple but instead of Capulet/Montague, it's Wudang/Eagle Clan. Now we're stuck with their cutesy boy. END SPOILER

This is pro-Wudang (Zhang San Feng is the abbot and a great character) so Shaolin monks are assholes. Hasn't been any good fights in a while. A lot of melodrama. Might bail soon, but now that I don't have The Expanse, I'm jonzing for a good series.

[cranefly]

Response to the spoiler alert, which I suppose needs to be a spoiler alert:

SPOILER ALERT As I recall, Romance of the Three Kingdoms had a similar early kill-off of the three main players (by midway through the second volume?), and then you had secondary and tertiary characters constituting the long final anti-climax.  END SPOILER ALERT

[Drunk Monk]

Response to the response to the spoiler alert: SPOILER ALERT True. It's commonplace for heroes to die in Chinese epics. Adds to the suspense. I thought about writing a book on Kung Fu films titled "Spit Blood & Die". I remember watching KF flix with my dad and we'd make bets on who would die. END SPOILER

[Drunk Monk]

E13: still hanging in on this. I keep thinking I’ll bail and then there’s a decent twist.

Beyond Shaolin being assholes, Emei (the other sect I was under for most of my fremont years) is all swordswomen. Man, if only...

[Drunk Monk]

Another thing that was bugging me about this show is it was about this kid for a while. The kid was a decent actor, but annoying. 

He finally grew up. Maybe there will be more fights now.