Time Raiders

[Drunk Monk]

Gratuitous gears. Good 3D. Superhero swordfights. Mallika was another cgi-tentacled demoness yet not as alluring as Fan in League or Gods surprisingly. Needed more Jack Tu - he had a good opening fight scene and then was relegated to henchman status. Crypt bugs ala The Mummy. Fanged wyrms ala Alien. Wacky anime swords. Great puppets.

Did I miss anything CF?

[cranefly]

Just a couple observations.  Unlike our last outing (League of Gods), where we were two of maybe five in the audience, Time Raiders drew 50 to 75 people, maybe more -- almost entirely Asian.  I don't really understand what made the difference.  I guess the Chinese just really liked Raiders of the Lost Ark.

There was one scene where the uncle bankrolling the expedition decides to get serious about getting all the necessary equipment, regardless of cost, and goes to a Chinese website.  It was a two-letter site starting with J -- such as jm.com.  It went by too fast for me to see. But the Chinese in the audience were all atwitter about it, chuckling, making comments.  Any idea what that was about, DM?

My favorite line, for whatever reason, was when they enter a new level of the tombs and somebody says, "Wow, this is like ancient Persian architecture."  I guess the Persians were really into "gratuitous gears," as DM put it.

A surprisingly blatant homoerotic angle between the two male leads.  Just didn't expect that in a Chinese film with all their censors.  Or was I just reading too much into several of the scenes?

Agree with DM that this tentacled woman wasn't on a par with the one in League of Gods.  The insects and worms also seemed a bit crudely done.  Still, it works, perhaps by the sheer weight of inventiveness and unrelenting action.

P.S. Figured it out. The website was jd.com, a major competitor of Alibaba's stuff.

[Drunk Monk]

I forgot about the audience. It is amusing to go with an audience that understands the language because they laugh at puns and double entendre that don't translate into subtitles. Note that there was a lot on English in this film too, oddly enough. But a Chinese audience is so rude - I haven't heard so much chatter in a movie in a long time, and I've never seen so many cell lights.

Skiptrace opens next weekend but I plan to catch that in the Cruz sometime...