Another enormous-scale Chinese blockbuster, the first of the Fengshen trilogy, this is an epic fantasy that depicts the battle between humans, immortals and monsters three thousand years ago, following the Shang dynasty and the desire to become King Of All Realms at the coming of The Great Curse. It takes in expected cultural and generic themes such as family, honour, sacrifice, ambition, betrayal and destiny right from the start and plays them out on the intimacy of the royal court and the most enormous-scale battlegrounds. It has a wonderful huge orchestral score, it is visually ravishing - the costumes alone are astonishing - and the ambition and scope of the mostly successful VFX work are hugely impressive, from the huge opening snowbound siege to the final showdown. There is plenty of melodrama alongside some surprisingly brutal moments, the cast gives it their all with a couple of notable performances from Ji Fa and Yin Jiao, the mythological info-dumping gets a bit dense and the mid-section is stodgy, but overall the film has all the elements that will delight fans of (Far Eastern) high fantasy that is executed extremely well. Look out for the portentous (if inevitable) sequel-baiting mid/near-end-credits scenes.
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